The rain had finally eased by the time we left Kai's house, the sky outside gone the deep gray-blue of early evening, streetlights just starting to flicker on along the block. His mom's instruction still hung in the air between us, unspoken but present, walking her home before it got too late and neither of us had argued with it, though I noticed he took the long way anyway, in no particular hurry to get me there.
"You really don't have to keep doing this," I said anyway, out of some leftover sense of obligation to my own stubbornness.
"I really don't have to do a lot of things," he said, pulling onto my street. "I still do them."
The house came into view, small and a little tired-looking the way it always did, the paint on the shutters starting to peel in a way I'd stopped noticing unt
