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They wandered the town, the conversation lightening until they were both laughing, until her smile felt genuine and semi-permanent in a way it hadn’t in years. The jokes were mostly dark and self-deprecating, old stories of her own ineptness or his state of entirely having given up. Anything else would have been insincere.
At some point, impulsively, Sara took Everest’s hand. She couldn’t remember ever holding Zach’s hand in public, a habit born out of a year of hiding their relationship from their coworkers that continued into their regular lives even once the secret broke. Holding hands felt almost unbearably intimate.
The sky faded to light pink and lovely, as if nature agreed with her assessment of how things were going. Maybe it didn’t come from smoke after all; maybe it was nat
