The thought arrives uninvited, the way worst thoughts do.
I’m going to lose this. Not maybe. Not eventually. Definitely.
Because nothing lasts. Because nothing haseverlasted. The last time I let myself stand in a kitchen and feel like this was at my aunt’s barbecue. My mom laughed at something my dad said. Someone took a photo.
Three hours later, we were on a bridge, and the railing was coming up too fast?—
"Red?"
Tyler is looking at me. The pancake is going to burn.
"Flip it," I say. My voice sounds normal.
He flips it.
I drink the orange juice, and the bracelet catches the kitchen light when I lift the glass.
I am going to lose it. Maybe not today. Maybe not in a month. But all of this—the pancakes, the man, the baby, the small silver letter on my wrist—is borrowed time, and I know it.
I’m enjoying it anyway.
By the time Harper’s down for the night, the house is quiet in the way it gets after a long, good day.
Tyler insists on handling the last of the wrapping paper alone. He says I’ve done enough today; he can do this, and I don’t argue, because I need a minute.
I go up to my room, close my door, and sit on the edge of the bed. I look down at my wrist and press my thumb against the smallN, and cry. Not because I’m sad—not exactly—but because something is happening to me that I don’t have the words for, and the only way I have to acknowledge it is to let it out where no one can see.
I cry for about three minutes, then I wipe my face, drink some water from the glass on my nightstand, and look at myself in the mirror.
I’m going to wear this bracelet every day.
I already know that. I knew it the moment he put it on me. The same way I know I’m going to take it off the day this ends, whatever this ending looks like, and put it in a box at the back of a drawer and never wear it again.
But that’s not today.
Tonight, the tree is on, Harper is asleep, and there’s a man downstairs tidying up and probably wondering if I’m coming back down. I tuck my hair behind my ears, touch the bracelet once more, and then I go downstairs to find him.
When I get back down, Tyler is sitting on the rug with the screwdriver set open on the floor in front of him, looking up at the ceiling fan.
“What are you doing?” I ask from the doorway.
“Thinking about fixing the fan.”
"Now?"
"Now."
He gets up and grabs a chair from the kitchen. He drags it under the fan, stands on it, and looks down at me.
"You can't reach," I say.
"I can reach."
"You really can't."
"I'm six-two, Red."
"It's a vaulted ceiling, Ty."