RILRY
Mara came into the shop on a Tuesday with two coffees and the expression she only gets when she's decided to have a conversation I'm going to find uncomfortable.
I kept painting. "Whatever you're about to say—"
"Tell me about the mark." She set my coffee next to the brush tray. "The real version. Not the version where you say it's fine."
I put the brush down.
We sat on the floor of the shop with our backs against the workbench, the way we used to sit in her apartment the first year in Seattle when the floor was all we had and the floor was enough, and I told her.
The mark is — it's hard to describe to someone who doesn't have one, who didn't grow up in a world where mate bonds are physical things with physical weight. The best I'd been able to manage with Mara before was *like
