She closed the apartment
door at 11:47 PM,
slower than she needed to
— turning the knob back
as she pushed, so the
latch wouldn't click.
But Maya was already on
the couch, the TV
casting blue light across
the kitchen tiles.
"You don't have to be
quiet," Maya said,
without looking up.
"I wasn't being quiet."
"You were."
She stood in the
kitchen, filling a glass
from the tap. The water
ran too long. She was
stalling, and she knew
it, and the knowing made
the stalling worse. All
day she had been
rehearsing a sentence —
something about how she
wasn't okay, how she
needed a week, how the
version of herself
everyone expected had
started to feel like a
costume she couldn't take
off. But standing here,
in her own kitchen, with
someone who would have
listened, the sentence
felt too large to say
out loud.
"Water's overflowing,"
Maya said gently.
She turned the tap off.
"Sorry."
Maya muted the TV. "You
don't have to apologize
for being here."
The trouble was, she
hadn't figured out if
being here
meant the kitchen, or
the conversation, or her
life in general. She
suspected Maya already
knew the answer and was
simply waiting for her to
catch up.