Ryder
She had actually asked me.
I had been laughing about it for twenty minutes after she walked out of the sitting room, that quiet private laugh that came out when something was so absurd it almost felt generous. Ravenna standing in the middle of the room in her coat, asking me for a rejection like it was something she was owed. Like she had woken up one morning and decided she had the kind of standing that made that kind of request reasonable.
Then the laughter stopped.
I sat in the sitting room with my glass and I thought about it properly for the first time instead of as a punchline. I thought about what it actually meant that she had come in here and asked. Not begged. Asked. Standing up straight with that new quality she had about her, the chin that did not drop anymore, the vo
