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Marianna.

I have a 9 AM session at Kinetic, which means the breakfast ends with me getting ready in approximately ten minutes while Marco and Duane have a conversation in the kitchen that I am pointedly not straining to overhear.

I am absolutely straining to overhear.

"—doesn't know everything," Marco is saying, in the low register he uses when he's being serious without performing it. "About why things have been the way they've been. For her."

"I know some of it," Duane says.

"Some. Not all."

"I know." A pause. "I'm not rushing anything."

"I'm not telling you to rush. I'm telling you—" Marco stops. The sound of a coffee mug on the counter. "She's been taking care of herself without backup for a long time. She's maybe good at it. Don't let her manage this alone. She'll try."

"She does try," Duane says.

"Yeah." Another pause. "

Then Marco: "You're not going to give me a speech, are you? About—I don't know, your intentions—"

"No."

"Good. I hate those. They're always either too much or not enough. Just...she matters. More than the friend-code thing. She matters."

A beat.

"I know," Duane says.

I close my bedroom door before I can hear more.

Stand in the middle of Marco's guest room—my room, it's mine now, with the paper airplanes on the windowsill and the Kinetic polo on the chair and the evidence of a life that has taken root somewhere I didn't plan—and breathe.

I get my bag. Straighten my blazer. Walk back out into the kitchen where the two of them are standing at the counter doing the male-friendship thing of communicating an entire emotional resolution through sports analysis, specifically the Marlins' bullpen, which Marco has opinions about that Duane is pretending to care about.

"I have a nine o'clock," I say.

Duane turns. Looks at me.

He reaches out, and his hand finds the side of my jaw—brief, thumb against my cheekbone, four seconds of contact that Marco absolutely sees and chooses to watch the middle distance instead of reacting to.

"I'll come by Kinetic at noon," Duane says. "Assessment."

"You're at seventy-eight percent," I say. "You don't need an assessment."

"Seventy-eight needs work to get to ninety."

"That's—technically true but also—"

"Noon," he says.

"Noon," I agree.

He drops his hand. I pick up my bag. Marco is making a study of the Marlins game highlights on his phone.

"Thank you for breakfast," I tell Duane.

"Thank Marco. He specified the tostones."

"I will," I say. Then, because I'm learning this from him—the small true things, the ones that don't need wrapping: "I'll see you at noon."

He nods once. The receipt-acknowledged nod.

I leave.

Outside, Miami is doing its early-morning thing—warm and already humid, the sky that particular shade of blue that only exists before ten AM in Florida, before the heat has had time to bleach it. I walk toward the bus stop and think about how three months ago I stood in baggage claim with a dead phone and a missing suitcase and no plan whatsoever.

And now: a conversation had. A brother notified. Tostones eaten at a slightly too-small table.

Small, specific, completely ordinary miracles.

My phone buzzes.

Oliver: Good morning!! How are you on this BEAUTIFUL TUESDAY

Me: Fine. Why are you awake at this hour?

Oliver: Early sim session! Also I hear a certain SOMEONE is back in Miami ?

Me: I'm going to revoke your access to the group chat.

Oliver: There's no group chat!

Oliver: Wait is there a group chat

Oliver: MARIANNA IS THERE A GROUP CHAT

Me: Have a productive simulator session, Oliver.

Oliver: ???

The noon assessment goes exactly as described—professional, thorough, with the additional variable of Duane sitting on Table 3 in Recovery Suite 1 while I work through his shoulder and neither of us acknowledges that three hours ago his thumb was against my cheekbone in my brother's kitchen.

Professional. We're professional.

"External rotation," I say.

He rotates. Forty-two degrees.

"Better than seventy-eight," I note. "This is post-travel tightness. The AC joint feels good though—the inflammation is down significantly from Silverstone." I press along the posterior capsule, tracking the tissue quality. "How's the neck?"

"Fine."

"Duane."

"Four," he says. "Actually four."

"The suboccipitals are tighter than last time. You were sleeping on planes."

"Unavoidably."

"I can give you a neck pillow protocol—"

"I have a neck pillow."

"Are you using it correctly?"

"How many ways are there to use a neck pillow?"

"You'd be surprised." I move to the upper trapezius, pressing slowly into the tissue. "Spa is in three weeks."

"Two and a half."

"Will you need me there?" I keep my voice clinical. The question is genuinely clinical—Dr. Lindholm will need to know about European deployment—but it's also something else, and we both know it. "Given the shoulder trajectory."

A pause.

"Yes," he says. Matter-of-fact. Precise.

"For medical support."

"Among other things."

I press into the trapezius. He breathes around it, the way he's learned to, the held quality gone—his body trusting my hands the way it didn't at the beginning, the way that took weeks to earn.

"Marco said," I start, then stop.

"I know what Marco said."

"I wasn't going to—it's fine, I know you two talked—"

"Marianna."

"What?"

He shifts slightly, the fraction of movement that means he wants to turn and look at me but is maintaining position because I'm still working.

"Are you?"

"Am I what."

"Fine," he says. With the specific emphasis that means he's using Marco's word deliberately. "The actual version."

I think about the question. Give it the honest assessment it deserves.

"I'm better than fine," I say finally. "I'm in a category I don't have a word for yet. It's—adjacent to happy but more specific. Like I've been driving with one tire slightly soft for a very long time and someone finally checked the pressure and corrected it."

A pause.

"That's a very Marianna answer," he says.

"I'm a very Marianna person."

"Yes," he says. Something warm in it. Something that doesn't need elaborating.

I finish the trapezius. Move to the neck work he hates. Press slowly into the suboccipitals, watching his jaw, monitoring the tell.

"The Spa deployment," I say. "I'll tell Dr. Lindholm it's medically indicated. The shoulder will need monitoring through the triple-header."

"Yes."

"And she'll need to know it's Belgium specifically—the weather conditions at Spa are—"

"Marianna."

"What?"

"Stop finding reasons," he says quietly. "You don't need them."

I pause, hands still on his neck.

"You're asking me to come," I say.

"I've been asking since Montreal," he says. "I'm just saying it differently now."

The recovery suite is quiet. The eucalyptus smell. The soft lighting. Outside, Kinetic is doing its mid-day thing—voices in the corridor, the distant sound of the hydrotherapy suite.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay," he says.

I resume the neck work.

Neither of us mentions that Marco is going to have questions about a second European deployment in as many months.

We'll get to that.