Nobody moves for what feels like a full minute but is probably closer to three seconds.
My hand is still at Mia's jaw. I feel her go rigid under my fingers, feel the exact moment her body remembers where we are and who's standing in the doorway, and I pull my hand back like it's been burned, which does nothing, obviously, because the damage is already done. My father's face is doing something I've genuinely never seen it do before — not anger, not yet, just a kind of stunned recalibration, like he's watching a sentence rearrange itself into a different sentence entirely.
"Dad—"
"I was going to ask about pizza," he says, quiet, like he's still catching up to his own voice. "I'll just—" He gestures vaguely behind him, toward the hallway, toward anywhere that isn't here. "I'll be downstair
