The days between then and now passed the way difficult things sometimes do, quietly, without drama, each one adding a little more distance from the worst of it until the worst of it starts to feel like something that happened rather than something still happening.
Bael and I exist in the same house. We eat at the same table when Grandmother is present. We pass each other in hallways and say what needs to be said and don't say what doesn't.
The study has gone back to being a shared space in the evenings, laptops open, the particular silence between us that has its own texture now, different from what it was before but not entirely without warmth.
He doesn't push.
I don't pull away.
We are somewhere in between, which is not nothing.
