Page 150 of What We Bury

“Amy.”

“He’s stressed. Brock’s still—” She gets up and gets our lattes from the table and talks to me over her shoulder. “He’s really worried about Brock. They’ve been friends since they were kids. And I get it, I do, I just—” She hands my coffee to me and settles back onto the couch. “I think he’s a little bit taking it out on me.”

“Taking it out on you how?”

“Just—mood. He gets short. He doesn’t like when I’m here.” She gestures at our apartment. “He says I’m a different person when I’m with you. Which, fine, maybe. But it’s my—” She catches herself. Smiles, smaller. “It’s nothing. Rough patch.”

I keep my voice level, because the second I sound like I’m prosecuting, she’ll shut the door. “I’m here to listen, Aims. You’ve never judged me once. I’m not about to do the same to you.”

She picks at the cardboard sleeve on her cup. Peels a strip of it back. Doesn’t look at me.

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid if you can’t say it.”

That lands somewhere. Her jaw works. When she finally talks, it’s quiet, like she’s confessing to the coffee.

“I feel like a prude or something.”

“Are you?”

She glances up at me. “No. But, he’s into stuff. In bed. And when I’m not into the same things he acts like I’m being difficult. Like there’s something wrong withmefor not wanting it.” She lets out a breath that shakes on the way out. “And he keeps wanting to—take pictures. Videos. And I keep saying no, and he keeps asking, in this way that makes it feel like the no is the problem.”

The temperature in me drops about forty degrees. I keep my face soft because hers has gone fragile.

“What kind of stuff?” I ask. “In bed. If you’re comfortable sharing.”

“Just—” She waves a hand, vague, eyes going glassy. “Stuff that makes me feel small. Degrading. I don’t want to get into it.” She shakes her head, hard. “It’s fine. I just don’t love it.”

I don’t love it.Like it’s a restaurant he keeps dragging her to.

Every part of me that learned the hard way what it looks like when a man decides your no is a negotiation is standing up and screaming. But I know how this goes. Push too hard and she folds back into Tyler like a turtle, and I lose the inch I just got. So I sit on my hands. Literally. Tuck my fingers under my thighs.

“Do you need to come home?” I ask.

She looks up, and her eyes are wet and stubborn and so painfullyAmy.

“I am home,” she says.

And it guts me, because she means both things: this couch, this apartment with her name still on the lease, and the fact that she isn’t ready to do anything about Tyler. Not yet.

I open my mouth to push, gently, one more inch?—

Her phone goes off on the table. It rattles against the cardboard tray, the screen lighting with a photo of Tyler grinning in sunglasses, and her whole body changes. Spine straightening. Shoulders climbing toward her ears.

She answers fast. “Hey?—”

I can’t hear the words on the other end. I don’t need to. I can hear theshapeof them—the clipped male rhythm, the rising edge—and I watch it land on her, watch her fold a little smaller with every sentence I can’t make out.

“I’m at home . . . Sage is here, yes . . . I told you I—I know. I guess I lost track of time.” Her eyes flick to me, apologetic, panicked. “No. No, I’m leaving right now. Five minutes.” A pause. Whatever he says makes her flinch. “Okay. Okay. Bye.”

She’s already standing. Already gathering her purse, her keys, her sunglasses.

“He’s home earlier than he said,” she says, breathless, not meeting my eyes. “I have to go.”

“Amy.” I stand too. “Areyousafe?”

She stops at the question. The brightness comes back, manufactured and brittle—the kind I recognize because I’ve worn it.