Page 44 of Velvet Betrayal
He took a while to answer.
Kieran
You really want me to sleep on the fucking couch? It sucks.
Better than fighting, I figured.
That’s the point. Couch is punishment, not hospitality.
A minute went by.
Kieran
If you really wanted to punish me, you’d have me sleep in the bed with you. I remember how much you hate snoring.
I remembered it, too—all the nights Kieran kept me up, sprawling and shifting, always sneaking a knee or elbow over to my side. That was the way Kieran loved…not curated, not even a little bit. I almost missed it.
Almost.
I told myself it was just nostalgia. Or exhaustion.
I rolled my eyes at the phone.
Eat shit. See you in the morning.
Kieran
Good night, Rubes.
I fell asleep watching the winter light flicker on the wall, listening to Rosie’s deep breathing and Kieran’s muffled grumbling from the living room. I dreamed of being chased—through tunnels, through parking garages, through a courthouse that melted room by room until it was just the two of us andRosie, older, perched on boxes marked “fragile.” In the dream, I was always searching for something I’d lost. I never found it.
I woke up to the smell of eggs and the soft blue of early morning. Rosie wasn’t in bed. Panic hit—full-body, ribcage clamp—until I heard her giggle from the kitchen. Kieran’s voice, low and unfamiliar, said, “That’s not how you do it…wait, here, let me show you.” Like he actually cared about getting it right.
I let the panic ebb, then pulled on jeans and a shirt and padded down the hall.
“You’re not bad at this,” Rosie was saying. “You just need more practice.”
There he was: hunched over the stove, spatula in hand, hair sticking up like he’d lost a fight with the frying pan. He was wearing Julian’s “Marathon Dad” apron, which he must have fished out of the pantry. He didn’t look like he belonged in a kitchen, but he was trying.
Rosie sat on a stool, eating clementine slices from a pink china teacup I’d bought at the Museum of Fine Arts. She watched Kieran with the skeptical look she usually reserved for cartoon villains or substitute teachers. She was, I realized, the only one in the house unimpressed by a Callahan. It made me feel safer, somehow.
Kieran gave her a salute. “I’ll practice every day until I can make perfect eggs.”
Rosie, chewing, said, “You’d get more perfect if you stopped flipping them so much.”
He grinned. “You calling me out, kid?”
She shrugged, then sucked the juice from another segment. “Mami says the only way to get better is to keep messing up and pretend it doesn’t bother you.” She popped a piece into her mouth. “Are you going to practice with her, too?”
“God, I hope so,” Kieran said. He winked at me, and the hope in his face almost made me look away.
I couldn’t make myself eat—the jitter in my hands made it impossible—but I drank coffee and watched, silent, as the two of them navigated the morning. There was nothing to do, nowhere to be, nothing hanging over us except the suspicion that this was just a pause before the next disaster.
After Rosie finished her clementines, she asked, “Can we go to the library today? I want the new Pigeon book.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, voice rough. I tried to smile. I wanted Rosie to have normalcy, but I didn’t think we should be seen anywhere with Kieran.
Kieran looked at me. “You want me to come, or…?”
