Unlabeled

Unlabeled

POV: Bash

"You're rubbing your neck again."

I dropped my hand from my throat so fast my knuckle hit the edge of the kitchen table with a dull crack. Rhys was standing by the sink, rinsing a glass, his back to me, but he didn't need eyes to catch every tiny glitch in my skin.

"It's nothing," I said, which wasn't true, but it was the only word small enough to hand him without handing him everything else underneath it.

My coffee had gone cold in the mug in front of me, a thin skin forming on top that I kept meaning to stir away and kept forgetting to. I traced the collar of my shirt instead, the seam scratching faintly against a spot on my throat that felt more sensitive than it had any logical reason to feel. Four stitches along that seam. Five. I counted them without meaning to, the same way I always did when my brain needed somewhere quiet to put itself instead of where it actually wanted to go.

I wasn't going to think about his hand. I wasn't going to think about the weight of his palm against my jaw or the way my pulse had jumped against his fingers like it was answering a question my mouth would never agree to ask. It hadn't meant anything. It was just Rhys being Rhys — checking on me, grounding me, the way he'd always grounded me, ever since we were kids and I used to press my back against his in the dark until my breathing matched his and the panic went quiet. That was all it was. It had to be all it was.

He set the glass in the drying rack and turned around, drying his hands on the towel slung over his shoulder, completely unbothered, like the kitchen hadn't held something enormous in it twelve hours ago.

"You want eggs?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

"That's not what I asked."

I didn't answer because answering meant looking at him, and looking at him this morning felt like a test I hadn't studied for. He crossed the kitchen anyway, reaching past me for the pan on the stove, and for one unbearable second his arm brushed mine, and my whole body did the thing it always did — leaned toward the contact half a beat before my brain caught up and yanked me back.

He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. I saw it happen behind his eyes anyway, some quiet, patient filing-away of the fact that I'd flinched a second too late.

I grabbed my bag off the counter before he could hand me anything else — a plate, a mug, another moment I'd have to survive up close — and told him I was leaving early for my shift, which wasn't a lie, just wasn't the whole truth either.

The walk to the diner did something for my lungs that the house never managed to do. I could feel my shoulders drop by degrees with every block, the tightness in my chest loosening just enough that I could actually breathe instead of just performing breathing for an audience of one.

Priya was already wiping down the counter when I clocked in, and she looked up at me with the particular squint she reserved for mornings when I looked like I hadn't slept.

"You look like you got hit by a truck," she said, not unkindly.

"Thanks. Really needed that today."

"I'm just saying." She tossed the rag under the counter and leaned against it, arms crossed. "Julian said your date got cancelled. He felt terrible about it."

"It's fine. Work happens."

"Bash." She said my name the way people said it when they were about to see through whatever I was about to say next. "You've been weird since you walked in. Weirder than usual, I mean."

"Gee, thanks."

"I'm serious." She lowered her voice, glancing toward the kitchen window where the cook was yelling an order at nobody in particular. "Is everything okay at home? With your brother?"

My whole body went still in a way I hoped, but it didn't show on my face. "Why would you ask that."

"No reason. You just—" she shrugged, searching for the word, "—flinch. Sometimes. When people bring him up. I noticed it a while back."

"He's my brother. We're close. That's not weird."

"I didn't say it was weird." She held up both hands, backing off, though her eyes stayed on me a second longer than the gesture suggested. "Forget I said anything. You want me to take table six so you can catch your breath?"

"I'm fine," I said, for what felt like the tenth time that day, and this time, I almost believed it myself.

She let it go, the way she always did, refilling the coffee station instead of pushing further, and I loved her a little for that even as some small, insistent part of me wished, just once, someone would push hard enough that I couldn't dodge it anymore.

The shift blurred by after that — orders, refills, the low hum of the diner swallowing up my thoughts one ticket at a time. I spent most of the morning rebuilding the story in my head, the one where staying home last night had actually been fine, had maybe even been better, because at least nothing at home asked anything of me that I didn't already know how to give. Julian's cancelled dinner sat in my chest like a stone I kept trying to swallow around. I told myself it didn't matter. I told myself people cancelled plans all the time, that it wasn't some sign, that the diner ran, people ragged on slow money, and nobody could help getting stuck on a mandatory shift.

I told myself that so many times it almost started to sound true.

My break came at two, and I ducked into the stockroom with a granola bar I had no intention of eating, mostly just for five minutes where nobody could look at my neck and draw conclusions. The apron strings were still tangled around my fingers when the phone buzzed against my hip. I pulled it out, hiding the screen behind the kitchen door of the diner.

Julian: Yesterday was a nightmare — the manager tossed a mandatory double on me five minutes before I left. Can I make it up to you tonight? Dinner. I'll pick you up after your shift.

My heart kicked hard against my ribs, half panic, half something dangerous that looked like hope. Somewhere underneath both of those, so quiet I almost didn't catch it, was a third thing — a small, sharp flicker of recognition, the shape of a coincidence lining up with another coincidence, though I shoved that thought down before it could finish forming. It was easier not to look at it directly. It always was.

"He's asking again," I whispered to the empty stockroom wall.