Chapter 12

Lookmhee told Freen on a Saturday morning.

Not at Common Ground — that was hers and Sonya’s, and she was protective of it in a way she hadn’t examined too closely. Instead she and Freen went to a small café two streets over that Freen had been recommending since the second week, a bright, slightly cramped place with yellow walls and a chalkboard menu and a rotating selection of cakes that Freen took very seriously.

They ordered — Freen got the lemon cake and a large hot chocolate and spent forty seconds deliberating over which cake before choosing the one she had clearly already decided on before they walked in — and then they sat by the window and Lookmhee told her.

Not everything. But enough. The lobby. The book. Sonya stepping out to check the mail. The hand.

Freen listened with her chin in both hands and her eyes getting progressively wider as the story went on, which was a lot for someone whose eyes were already very expressive to begin with.

When Lookmhee finished, Freen was quiet for approximately three seconds — which was, for Freen, a significant pause.

Then she said: “She just — took your hand?”

“Yes.”

“In the lobby?”

“Yes.”

“Without — she just did it.”

“That’s what I said.”

Freen sat back in her chair. She looked at the ceiling. Then at the window. Then at her lemon cake, which she had not yet touched, which was how Lookmhee knew she was taking this very seriously.

“Sonya,” Freen said, in the tone of someone confirming a remarkable fact.

“Yes, Freen. Sonya.”

“Our Sonya. From 4C. Who once told Becky that feelings were—” she paused, trying to remember, “—what was it — ‘an inefficient use of energy’—”

“She did not say that—”

“She said something like that. The point is.” Freen looked at her with enormous, delighted eyes. “She held your hand. In the lobby. For no reason. With nobody watching.”

“Yes,” Lookmhee said. “That’s the part.”

Freen picked up her hot chocolate. She held it with both hands and looked at Lookmhee over the rim with an expression that was warm and certain and very fond.

“She’s so gone for you,” she said. Simply, like it was obvious. Like it had always been obvious. “She has been for a long time. You know that, right?”

Lookmhee looked at her latte. “I’m starting to.”

“Not starting to,” Freen said. “Knowing. There’s a difference.” She put her cup down and leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, in the manner of someone about to say something important. “I’ve been watching Sonya for three years. She doesn’t do things without reason. She doesn’t do anything — the coffee at your door, the book, the Saturday mornings, any of it — without having already decided that it matters.” She paused. “The hand was not an accident or an impulse. That was Sonya telling you something she hasn’t said out loud yet.”

Lookmhee thought about not yet. About getting ready to say.

“I know,” she said softly. “I think I know that.”

“Good.” Freen finally ate a piece of lemon cake. Her expression returned to its natural state of general delight. “Now. Are you going to tell Becky or am I?”

Lookmhee looked at her. “Does Becky have to know?”

Freen looked back with the patient expression of someone who had known Becky for three years. “Lookmhee,” she said. “Becky has a spreadsheet.”

“That doesn’t mean she needs—”

“She has been updating it twice a week.” Freen pointed at her. “She deserves to know she is winning.”

“Winning what—”

“Whatever she has bet on herself in that spreadsheet.” Freen waved a hand. “The point is she will find out anyway because she always finds out, and it’s better coming from you than from her drawing conclusions, because her conclusions are always right and also extremely loud.”

Lookmhee considered this. It was, she had to admit, accurate.

“Fine,” she said. “You can tell her.”

Freen’s face lit up.

“After I leave the building.” Lookmhee added.

✦ ✦ ✦

She did not, in fact, leave the building fast enough.

She had gotten as far as the lobby — having said goodbye to Freen at the café and taken the long way back, partly for the walk and partly, if she was honest, to delay the inevitable — when she heard Becky before she saw her.

“—I KNEW it—”

The sound was coming from the second floor. Loud, triumphant, the specific register of Becky having been proven correct about something she had been tracking for a significant amount of time.

Lookmhee stopped in the lobby. She looked at the ceiling. She took a breath.

The elevator doors opened and Becky stepped out, already looking for her, holding her phone with the expression of someone who had just received news of great personal significance.

“THE HAND!” Becky said.

“Freen told you already,” Lookmhee said.

“Freen called me from the café the moment you left.” Becky crossed the lobby with great purpose. “The hand. In the lobby. While Meena was leaving. Sonya went down to check the mail—”

“She goes down every evening—”

“I know she does, that’s not the point, the point is—” Becky stopped in front of her and looked at her with bright, sharp, deeply satisfied eyes. “She held your hand, Lookmhee.”

“I know.”

“Sonya held your hand.”

“I was there.”

“She went to get the mail and she ended up holding your hand in the lobby with nobody watching.” Becky put a hand over her heart. “I am so proud of her.”

Lookmhee stared at her. “You’re proud of her.”

“She’s been working up to this for months. It deserves acknowledgment.” Becky looked at her phone and then back at Lookmhee. “And the not yet. That’s — okay, I want to be clear, I have had a working theory about the not yet that I have been holding onto—”

“Becky.”

“—the theory is that she knows exactly what she wants to say and she’s been drafting it. Mentally. The way you draft something important before you send it.” Becky looked very pleased with herself. “Am I right?”

Lookmhee thought about Sonya on the doorstep with the pastry. About it was me not being ready to say something I’m getting ready to say.

“Possibly,” she said.

Becky made a sound of pure vindication.

“The whiteboard,” Lookmhee said. “What exactly is on it?”

Becky’s expression became carefully neutral in a way that was itself an answer. “Administrative information.” she said.

“Becky.”

“A timeline,” Becky said. “Projected. With key data points and probability assessments.” She paused. “And a color-coded legend.”

Lookmhee put her face in her hands.

“The colors are meaningful,” Becky said. “Pink is for meaningful glances. Teal is for physical proximity events. The almond pastry got its own category because I felt it warranted one.”

“How do you know about the pastry—”

“Engfa mentioned it.”

“Engfa—”

“She didn’t mean to. It came up.” Becky waved a hand. “The point is. The whiteboard is a document of care, not surveillance. I am rooting for you. Both of you.” She looked at Lookmhee with something underneath all the chaos that was, genuinely, warm and certain. “You know that, right?”

Lookmhee lowered her hands. She looked at Becky — at the sharp eyes and the phone and the entirely unrepentant expression and, underneath all of it, the thing that was just Becky caring about people in the loudest, most organized way she knew how.

“I know,” Lookmhee said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Thank me at the wedding.”

“Becky!”

“Too soon?”

“Significantly.”

Becky smiled, untroubled. “I’ll revisit in a few chapters.” she said, which was a strange thing to say but also, Lookmhee thought, very Becky.

✦ ✦ ✦

Later that afternoon, the group assembled at TK’s apartment — which happened less often than the others because TK’s apartment was, by her own description, a place of peace, and inviting the group in was something she did selectively and with the energy of someone making a considered sacrifice.

But she had made soup — a different soup from Freen’s, a better soup, which nobody said out loud because Freen was right there — and she had sent a message in the group chat that said simply soup. come if you want. which everyone had interpreted as an invitation with an open schedule and arrived within twenty minutes.

TK’s apartment was neat and quiet and smelled like the soup and something faintly botanical — a plant on the windowsill that nobody could identify but that looked extremely healthy, which said something about TK. It had one bookshelf, organized with a precision that even Sonya had acknowledged once with a small approving nod. The couch was large and slightly worn and extremely comfortable in the way that furniture got when someone had used it consistently for years.

They filled it up the way they always filled spaces — Freen on the floor with a cushion she had brought from her own apartment because she always brought a cushion, Becky on the couch with her legs up, Engfa in the chair by the window, Lookmhee next to Becky, Sonya at the other end of the couch with her feet tucked under her.

Normal. All of it completely normal.

Except.

Lookmhee was aware of Sonya in the specific, slightly exhausting way she had been aware of her since Thursday evening — a heightened noticing, like a frequency she had accidentally tuned into and couldn’t quite tune back out. The way Sonya held her bowl. The way she listened when TK was talking. The way she sat at the other end of the couch and was, somehow, a presence that Lookmhee felt on her side anyway.

She looked at her soup.

TK, from her spot beside the bookshelf where she had chosen to sit on the floor with her back against the wall, looked at both of them with the quiet, observant expression she wore when she was cataloguing something. She did not say anything. She ate her soup.

That was the other thing about TK. She saw everything and said almost none of it, which was both deeply reassuring and occasionally unnerving because you never quite knew the full extent of what she had noticed.

“Good soup,” Freen said happily. “TK this is so good.”

“It’s a recipe,” TK said.

“Whose recipe?”

“Mine.”

“You made up a recipe?”

“I adjusted one.” TK looked at Freen with the long-suffering fond expression she always had for her. “There’s a difference.”

“Can I have it?”

A pause. “No.”

Freen made a wounded sound. Becky laughed. Engfa asked TK about an ingredient and they had a brief, knowledgeable conversation about it that nobody else fully followed but that was pleasant to listen to.

And then Becky, in the way Becky had of introducing topics she had been thinking about at exactly the moment everyone else was relaxed enough to hear them, said: “So. The hand-holding.”

The room went through a very specific sequence of reactions. Engfa looked at her bowl with great composure. TK looked at the ceiling with an expression that suggested she had been wondering when this was going to come up. Freen pressed her lips together. Sonya went very still.

Lookmhee looked at Becky.

Becky looked back with large, innocent eyes. “I’m just acknowledging it,” she said. “As a group. It happened. We can all be aware of it.”

“Becky,” Sonya said. Her voice was even. Not quite the warning tone — something that came before the warning tone, the tone that was a warning about the warning.

“I’m not asking for details,” Becky said quickly. “I’m just — noting. For the group. That things are developing.” She looked around the room. “Positively. That’s all.”

A silence.

Then TK said, without looking up from her soup: “We know.”

“Obviously we know,” Becky said. “I’m just saying it—”

“Becky,” Sonya said it quietly this time. Not sharp. Just certain. The way she said things when she meant them.

Becky looked at her. Something passed between them — something that was not quite the usual Becky-and-Sonya dynamic of argument and counter-argument. Becky’s expression shifted. Underneath the bright, sharp, satisfied look was something that was actually just — fond. Genuinely, simply fond. The way someone looked at a person they had known long enough to want good things for.

“Okay,” Becky said. Quietly. “Okay, I’m done.”

And she was, actually, done. For the rest of the evening she was just Becky — funny and loud and opinionated about the soup and about something she had read that week and about a film she thought everyone should see — and she did not mention the hand-holding again.

But at some point during the second hour, when Freen was telling a story about something that had happened at her work that week, Lookmhee noticed Becky watching her.

Not in a sharp, assessing way. In a soft way. The way Becky watched Freen when she thought nobody was looking — which was different from how Becky watched everyone else, which was always at least a little strategic. This was just — watching. The way you watched something you liked. Something you found, privately, when you forgot to perform otherwise, genuinely wonderful.

Freen finished her story. She laughed at her own punchline — loud, unself-conscious, the laugh that made the whole room warmer. She looked around at everyone to see if they were laughing too and her eyes landed on Becky and she grinned.

Becky looked away.

Lookmhee looked at her soup.

She thought: oh.

She thought: interesting.

She said nothing, because some things needed time to become themselves, and because she was, she felt, the last person in this particular building who should be rushing anyone toward anything.

But she filed it away carefully. In a notebook that was not the one she wrote poems in but the one she kept in her head — the one full of things she had noticed and was watching and suspected were, quietly, becoming something.

✦ ✦ ✦

That night, after everyone had gone and TK had accepted their thanks with the particular gracious efficiency she had and closed her door, Lookmhee walked down the hall to 4B.

Sonya was just behind her, walking to 4C.

They stopped at their respective doors. The hallway was quiet. The building had gone into its late-night mode — just the hum of the lights and the distant city.

“Becky,” Lookmhee said.

“I know,” Sonya said.

“She means well.”

“She always means well.” The familiar line, the familiar tone. Fond and exasperated and entirely without real irritation.

A pause. A comfortable one. The kind they had gotten good at.

“The hand,” Lookmhee said. Not a question. Not a demand. Just — putting it in the air between them, gently, to see what happened.

Sonya looked at her. The unguarded expression. The one with too much in it to read all at once.

“Still not yet,” she said. “But—” she paused. Just a beat. “Getting closer.”

Lookmhee held her gaze. “Okay,” she said.

Sonya nodded. She unlocked her door. Then, quietly, so quiet it was almost just for herself: “Thank you. For waiting.”

She went inside.

Lookmhee stood at her door for a long moment, the hallway quiet around her, the city humming far below.

Then she smiled — a small, private, entirely genuine smile — and went inside.

She opened her notebook.

She wrote: getting closer.

She looked at it for a moment. Then she wrote below it:

I can wait. I’ve got nowhere else to be.

She closed the notebook. She turned off the light. She listened to the music through the wall.

It felt like a promise.

✦ ✦ ✦