They both started talking at the same time.
She had been composing her words since she put the kettle on — something measured, something that established the terms clearly without tipping into anger she hadn't fully decided she was entitled to yet. He had apparently been composing something too, because the moment she drew breath to begin he said: "I want to explain the reasoning behind—" and she said simultaneously: "What I need you to understand is—" and they both stopped.
A beat.
Something shifted in his expression — not quite amusement, too complicated for that, but something adjacent to it, something that acknowledged the moment without diminishing it. She felt the corner of her own mouth move fractionally before she brought it back under control, because this was not a situation f
