Sera and I sat on the floor of our room the way we had been sitting on floors together since we were ten years old, cross-legged, facing each other, the particular configuration that meant we were going to talk about something that mattered.
You said no, she said. ‘That was exactly right. I know. But you didn’t say leave. No. I didn’t.’
She looked at me. Sera’s looking was a specific thing, not the waiting kind of looking, not the polite kind. The kind that meant she was going to keep looking until she understood what she was looking at. ‘Why?’
I thought about it honestly, the way I always tried to think about things. Without the shortcuts, without the comfortable story I could tell myself about anger and pride and what I deserved. Just the truth of it, however complicated.
I thought a
