The Unspoken Arrangement

From the armchair, its floral pattern worn smooth in the places they both always sat, Kyra watched Sophie. The book in her lap was open to page forty-seven, but her eyes were fixed over the top of it, focused on the way the evening light from the window caught the fine hairs at Sophie’s temple.

Sophie was curled into the far corner of the sofa, her body arranged in a familiar posture of digital anxiety. Her thumb moved in a short, repetitive swipe across the phone’s screen. It was a gesture Kyra knew meant she was reading something she did not want to be reading. A moment later, Sophie’s free hand came up to push a strand of hair back behind her ear. It was a movement so practiced and unconscious, so fundamentally Sophie, that seeing it felt like an echo of a thousand other evenings, stretching back through the six years they had lived together in this flat.

A low noise of frustration vibrated in Sophie’s throat. “I am going to commit a murder.”

Kyra kept a finger pressed to her page, a pretense of being interrupted. “Your mother?” she asked. It was, statistically, the most likely option.

“Worse,” Sophie said, her voice flat. “Aunt Carol.” She tossed the phone onto the cushion beside her as if it had personally offended her. It landed with a soft thud. “She’s sent a follow-up email.”

“A follow-up to the invitation you’ve been using as a coaster?”

“That’s the one.” Sophie let her head fall back against the sofa, her gaze landing on the faint, brownish water stain on the ceiling they’d been meaning to paint over for a year. “My cousin Sarah’s wedding. In Wexford.”

“The barn-dance wedding,” Kyra said, recalling the details.

“The very same.” Sophie closed her eyes, a flicker of pain crossing her face. “But the forced folk-dancing isn’t the issue. The issue is that my aunt has decided this is the perfect, unmissable opportunity to introduce me to the son of one of her bridge friends. A ‘lovely, stable young man who works in finance’.” She said the last part in a high, simpering imitation of her aunt’s voice.

Kyra felt a smile form. “Sounds promising. What’s his name?”

“I have no idea. Probably something aggressively normal like ‘Mark’ or ‘David’.” Sophie sat up, grabbing a cushion and hugging it to her chest like a shield. “She says he’s ‘very handsome’ and that we’ll have ‘so much in common,’ which is her code for he’s breathing and owns a tie. She’s already planned our first three children in her head. I can feel her projecting it at me through the internet.”

Kyra watched the agitated energy radiating from her. Sophie’s cheeks were flushed with a familiar, righteous indignation that made her look younger, more like she had when they first met at university. Kyra found she enjoyed seeing her like this, wound up over something so mundane it became monumental.

“You could just say no to the setup,” Kyra suggested, knowing the suggestion was useless.

“And endure the phone call? ‘But why, Sophie? You’re not getting any younger, you know. Is there a reason you don’t want to meet a nice man?’ She’ll do the sad, concerned head-tilt, I know she will. It’s emotionally violent.”

“Emotionally violent,” Kyra repeated, testing the weight of the phrase.

“Yes. It is.” Sophie’s expression was deadly serious. “It makes me want to show up with some completely unsuitable person just to watch her face implode. Or just not go. Claim I have a sudden case of… I don’t know, scurvy.”

“You used ‘imminent nervous breakdown’ for your cousin Paul’s christening,” Kyra reminded her gently.

“Did I?” Sophie frowned. “Right. Well. I need a new strategy.”

She fell silent then, her fingers picking at a loose thread on the cushion. The problem had been presented, inflated with dramatic language, and now it hung in the quiet air of their living room, waiting to dissipate. It was a routine they knew well. Kyra looked down at her book, at the dense, unread paragraph where her finger was still resting. She thought about the ‘lovely, stable young man’ in finance and felt a strange, sour knot form low in her stomach. It was an unpleasant and unwelcome sensation, one she chose not to examine too closely. She just knew she did not like the idea of him at all.

The following Saturday, Kyra found herself in a bookshop near the canal, running a finger along the spines of modern poetry collections she had no intention of buying. It was a way to pass the afternoon, to feel like a person who did things like browse for poetry on a Saturday. The air smelled of paper and dust and brewed coffee from the small café at the back. It was quiet, the kind of quiet that felt purposeful.

Then she saw him. Liam. He was standing two aisles over, in the history section, his back to her. Even from a distance, she recognized the shape of his shoulders, the way he tilted his head when he was concentrating. A cold, heavy feeling dropped through her stomach, the way it does when you miss a step in the dark. Her first instinct was to turn and walk out, but she was frozen in place, trapped by the social convention that would make a sudden exit seem strange and significant.

He wasn’t alone. A woman stood beside him, her head angled towards his. She was laughing softly at something he’d said, a low, private sound. She was tall, with a curtain of dark, glossy hair that fell perfectly straight to her shoulders. She wore a camel-coloured coat that looked expensive and soft, draped over a cream-coloured knit jumper. Everything about her seemed deliberate and clean. Kyra looked down at her own jeans, which had a faint, pale stain of indeterminate origin near the knee, and her scuffed trainers.

As if sensing her gaze, Liam turned. His eyes met hers over the top of a display of biographies. For a second, his expression was blank with non-recognition, and then it sharpened. “Kyra,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

He walked towards her, the woman following a half-step behind. Kyra forced her mouth into a shape that she hoped resembled a casual smile.

“Liam. Hi.” Her own voice sounded thin.

“How are you?” he asked. It was the universal, meaningless opening.

“Good, yeah. You?”

“Good,” he said. He gestured to the woman beside him, who was offering Kyra a polite, closed-lip smile. Her teeth were probably perfect. “This is Amelia.”

“Hi,” Kyra said to her. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Amelia said. Her voice was as smooth and placid as her expression. She looked from Kyra to Liam, her eyes asking a silent question that Kyra could not read. She seemed entirely untroubled.

An awful silence stretched between the three of them. Kyra could feel the effort of her smile straining the muscles in her face. She tried to think of something to say, something normal and breezy, but her mind was a frantic, empty space. She was intensely aware of the poetry book she was still holding, as if it were a prop in a poorly rehearsed play.

“Well,” Liam said, breaking the quiet. He shifted his weight. “We were just heading off.”

“Right,” Kyra said. “Okay.”

“Good to see you,” he said. The words were automatic, drained of any real meaning.

“You too.”

He gave her a final, small nod, and then he and Amelia turned. Kyra watched them walk towards the front of the shop. Just before they reached the door, Liam reached out and took Amelia’s hand. His fingers laced through hers easily, a simple, fluid gesture of ownership and belonging. Kyra watched their joined hands until they disappeared through the glass door and out onto the street.

She stood there for another full minute, staring at the space they had just occupied. The air felt thin. She felt small, like a footnote in someone else’s story. The book in her hand, a collection by a poet she admired, now felt heavy and absurd. She placed it back on the shelf, not caring if it was in the right place, and the only thing she could think about was the bottle of cheap red wine waiting for her back at the flat.

Back at the flat, Kyra dropped her keys into the ceramic bowl by the door with a clatter that sounded too loud in the quiet hallway. She went straight to the kitchen, her movements stiff. She pulled the corkscrew from the drawer and twisted it into the neck of the wine bottle with more force than was necessary. The cork came out with a sad, sucking sound.

Sophie appeared in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. “Bad poetry?” she asked.

Kyra didn’t look at her. She poured a large measure of wine into a tumbler, then another. “Saw Liam,” she said.

She pushed a glass across the counter towards Sophie. Sophie took it but didn’t move from the doorway. “Oh,” she said. “Was he alone?”

“No.” Kyra took a long swallow of her wine. It was thin and acidic. “He was with his new girlfriend. Amelia.” She said the name as if it were a foreign object in her mouth. “She’s exactly what you’d expect. Tall, perfect hair. Looks like she smells of expensive soap and quiet satisfaction.”

Sophie was quiet for a moment. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Kyra said, her voice a little too bright. “It was just… awkward. He looked so surprised to see me, like I was a tax bill he’d forgotten to pay.” She swirled the wine in her glass, watching the dark red liquid climb the sides. “She was very polite. The kind of polite that makes you want to set fire to something.”

Sophie came into the kitchen and sat on one of the stools at the small breakfast bar. She nudged Kyra’s elbow with her own. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds awful.”

“It wasn’t awful,” Kyra insisted, though the word felt right. “It was nothing. It was just… pathetic. The whole tableau. Him looking smug, her looking placid, me standing there in the poetry section holding a book I wasn’t going to buy. It just made me feel… irrelevant.”

“You’re not irrelevant,” Sophie said, her voice firm. She took a sip of her wine. “He’s an idiot. And she probably has no personality.”

Kyra managed a small laugh. “She probably has a very well-managed, aesthetically pleasing personality.” She leaned her elbows on the counter, the cold of the laminate seeping through her sleeves. “They held hands when they left. It was so seamless. Like they’d been doing it forever.”

The image was there again, sharp and clear behind her eyes: his hand closing over hers. The simple, public declaration of it.

Sophie sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of her own frustrations. “It’s that, isn’t it? The public part. The performance of it all.” She stared into her glass. “It’s like my aunt Carol. This whole wedding charade is just about me performing the role of the single girl who needs to be fixed. It’s a public statement that I’m lacking something.” She looked up at Kyra, her eyes dark. “I wish I could just show up with someone and shut her up. Just for one weekend.”

A silence settled over the kitchen, thick with the smell of cheap wine and unspoken feelings. Kyra thought of Liam’s surprised face. She thought of the smug satisfaction she imagined he felt, walking away with his perfect, new life.

Sophie’s expression shifted. A small, almost mischievous light appeared in her eyes. She leaned forward slightly. “You know,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “We could solve both our problems.”

Kyra looked at her, confused. “How?”

“Come to the wedding with me,” Sophie said. She smiled, but it was a thoughtful, calculating kind of smile. “As my date. My new girlfriend.” She said the word ‘girlfriend’ with a deliberate, testing emphasis. “Think about it. I get to avoid the finance bro and a weekend of pitying looks from my entire extended family. And you…” she paused, letting the idea build. “You get to show up somewhere with someone. We could take a photo. A nice one. You could post it. Nothing aggressive. Just… a soft launch.”

The suggestion was absurd. It was a joke. But it landed in the quiet space between them and did not dissolve into laughter. It hung there, shimmering with a strange, compelling logic. Kyra pictured it: a photograph of the two of them, smiling, at a wedding. Her arm around Sophie’s waist. The kind of casual, happy photo that Amelia would probably post. The kind of photo Liam would see. She thought of the look on his face, not of surprise this time, but of something else. Something she couldn’t quite name, but desperately wanted to see.

The kitchen felt very still, the only sound the faint hum of the refrigerator. The idea was utterly insane. It was something characters did in a film, a plot device that real people didn't actually employ. Kyra’s first instinct was to laugh and dismiss it, to pour more wine and change the subject. But the words didn't come.

Instead, the scene Sophie had painted began to form in her mind, detailed and vivid. A photograph. Not one taken in their cluttered living room, but somewhere else. Somewhere with soft lighting, maybe a garden. Kyra’s arm around Sophie’s waist. Sophie leaning into her, smiling a real smile, the kind Kyra knew how to provoke. It would look effortless. It would look real. She thought of Liam scrolling through his phone, perhaps sitting on a sofa next to Amelia, and seeing it. His thumb would stop. He would look closer. The image was so satisfying, so potent, that it made her feel a little dizzy.

“You’re serious,” Kyra said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m serious about not wanting to spend forty-eight hours fending off my cousin’s creepy husband and being told by my aunt that my biological clock is ticking,” Sophie said calmly. She took another sip of wine, her eyes steady on Kyra over the rim of the glass. “And I’m serious that you looked miserable when you came in here. This is a practical solution. A temporary alliance.”

A temporary alliance. The phrase made it sound strategic, almost military. It stripped the idea of its sentimentality, which made it easier to consider. Kyra thought of the bookshop. The feeling of being looked through, of being a person from a past life that was no longer relevant. The seamlessness of his hand finding Amelia’s. It had been a performance of a kind, too. A public display of a private fact. All they would be doing was the same, just in reverse.

“People would have to believe it,” Kyra said, testing the structure of the idea, looking for the weak points. “Our friends. They’d know we weren’t… together.”

“Would they?” Sophie countered. She set her glass down. “We live together. We spend most of our time together. We know everything about each other. Honestly, the groundwork is pretty solid. It’s not that much of a leap. We just add… holding hands. And you, looking at me admiringly.” She smiled then, a flash of her usual humour. “You might have to work on that part.”

Kyra felt a smile pull at her own mouth, in spite of herself. “I think I can manage.”

The plan was taking on a solid shape in her mind. It was no longer an absurd joke, but a project. Something to focus on. A distraction from the hollow feeling the encounter with Liam had left. It was a way to take control of the narrative, to edit her own story. It was petty, yes. She knew it was petty. But the thought of it gave her a jolt of energy, a feeling of purpose that had been absent all afternoon.

“Okay,” Kyra said, the word coming out more firmly than she expected. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Sophie’s expression didn’t change, but Kyra saw a flicker of relief in her eyes. “Really?”

“Yes,” Kyra said, a new confidence settling in her chest. “It’s a perfect plan. Mutually beneficial.” She liked the sound of those words. They made the whole thing feel like a business transaction, clean and unemotional.

Sophie grinned, a wide, genuine smile that reached her eyes. “Excellent.” She pushed her stool back and stood up, extending a hand across the counter. “Deal?”

Kyra looked at her outstretched hand. It seemed overly formal, a gesture from another era. It was silly. They were in their own kitchen, half-drunk on cheap wine, agreeing to a ridiculous lie. She reached out and took Sophie’s hand. Her palm was warm and dry. They shook on it, a single, firm up-and-down motion.

The contact was brief, but it lingered after they let go. It felt different from all the other casual ways they had touched over the years—the nudges on the sofa, the arms linked walking home from a pub. This touch had an intention behind it, a shared secret. It was the seal on their arrangement. Kyra looked at Sophie, who was still smiling, and felt a strange flutter in her stomach. It was silly, the whole thing. But as she picked up her wine glass, her hand felt steadier than it had all day.

The next morning they cleared the breakfast dishes and spread their notebooks on the scarred pine table like generals planning a siege. Sophie’s pen was a cheap biro she’d stolen from the bank; Kyra had a pencil stub she kept behind her ear for crosswords. The domestic normality of the tools made the list they were about to compose seem even more absurd.

“Rule one,” Sophie said, printing in small neat capitals. “No kissing on the mouth in public unless absolutely necessary.” She dotted the i and looked up. “Agreed?”

Kyra nodded, then immediately qualified. “What counts as necessary?”

“Wedding cake moment. Or if my aunt Carol starts interrogating us about our sex life and we need a distraction.”

Kyra laughed, but Sophie’s mouth stayed level. She was wearing the grey hoodie with the stretched cuffs; her hair was twisted into a knot that pulled fine strands loose at her temples. Kyra watched the pen move across the page and felt an unexpected tug of tenderness for the concentration in her shoulders.

“Rule two,” she offered. “We have to know the story better than our own birthdays. When, where, who said what first.”

Sophie wrote: BACKSTORY – DETAILED. “We should pick a date that overlaps with something real. Makes it easier to remember.”

They settled on the first Thursday in March because that was the night the pipes had burst and they’d both slept in the living room under the same duvet, listening to the drip of water in the saucepan. Sophie invented a moment on the sofa when their knees touched and neither moved away. Kyra added the detail about the power cut, how Sophie had found the torch on her phone first. They spoke quietly, as if the flat might overhear and report them.

When they reached item five—PUBLIC DISPLAY PARAMETERS—Sophie chewed the end of the pen. “Hand-holding is fine. Arm round waist, maximum three seconds unless dancing.” She glanced at Kyra. “You okay with that?”

Kyra shrugged. “It’s just hands.”

But later, when they rehearsed at the tiny café two bus routes away, her palm was damp before Sophie even reached across the Formica. Their fingers aligned, knuckle to knuckle, and Kyra felt the pulse in her thumb jump. She counted one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, and at three they both let go, laughing too loudly. The waitress looked over. Kyra wiped her hand on her jeans under the table.

They ordered espresso to steady their nerves and went again. This time Sophie traced a small circle on the side of Kyra’s wrist with her thumb, a movement so light it could have been accidental. Heat climbed Kyra’s arm like mercury. She stared at the sugar dispenser so hard the granules seemed to vibrate.

“Better,” Sophie said, voice even. “We look relaxed.”

Kyra wasn’t relaxed. She was conscious of every seam in her bra, the way her breath altered when Sophie’s knee bumped hers. She tried to catalogue the sensations the way she might list items for the supermarket: palm sweaty, stomach flutter, heart rate elevated. The clinical words didn’t diminish the effect.

That night they sat on opposite ends of the sofa debriefing. The flat smelled of the stir-fry Sophie had made; the air was thick with garlic and unspoken things. Kyra hugged a cushion to her chest.

“You were right about the thumb circle,” she said. “Looks natural.”

Sophie pulled her legs under herself. “I copied it from that couple at the next table. They were pros.” She hesitated. “I’m glad it’s you, Ky. I’d feel stupid doing this with anyone else.”

Kyra’s chest tightened again, the same anonymous pressure she’d felt in the café. She made a non-committal noise and went to the kitchen to fill a glass with water she didn’t want. When she came back Sophie had turned on the television, some reality show with flashing lights. The space between them on the sofa was exactly one cushion wide, a neutral zone neither attempted to cross.

Before bed Kyra brushed her teeth for the full two minutes, counting in her head. She could hear Sophie in her room, the familiar creak of drawers opening and closing. The sound had always been comforting; now it felt like evidence. She spat, rinsed, and stared at her reflection. The woman in the mirror had agreed to hold hands with her best friend in public and lie about it. The woman in the mirror needed to get a grip.

She turned off the light and slid under the duvet. Through the thin wall Sophie’s phone buzzed once, twice, then stopped. Kyra waited for the house to settle into its night-time hush. Instead of Liam’s face she saw Sophie’s hand on the café table, the faint ink stain on her index finger, the way her thumb had paused, deliberate, before drawing that small, perfect circle.

They chose the café on Ormond Road because neither of them had ever been there and the bus route didn’t pass anywhere near their usual haunts. It was the kind of place that served filter coffee in thick white mugs and left a laminated card on the table asking for patience because everything was “hand-prepared.” Sophie arrived first, sliding into a corner booth that gave them a view of the door. Kyra saw her through the window as she paid the driver, watched her tug the sleeves of her jumper over her knuckles the way she did when she was nervous about exams. The sight made Kyra’s stride falter; she had to force herself to push the door open.

Inside smelled of burnt sugar and steamed milk. A girl with a nose ring was explaining the difference between two pastries to an elderly man who clearly only wanted a plain scone. Kyra dumped her coat on the bench opposite Sophie and sat, knees bumping the underside of the table.

“Stage fright?” Sophie asked, pushing a menu card toward her.

“Just caffeinate me,” Kyra muttered. She scanned the chalkboard, but the letters blurred. When the waitress approached she ordered the first thing she saw—an Americano—then regretted it because it sounded like something Liam would drink, black and joyless.

They waited for the drinks in silence that felt theatrical, as if the other customers were paid extras. Kyra wiped a crumb from the Formica and lined it up with the edge of her place mat. Sophie drummed a quiet rhythm on her thigh. Their knees touched once; both shifted away at the exact same moment, then laughed, a brittle sound.

“Okay,” Sophie said when the mugs arrived. “We’re a couple who’ve been dating three weeks. We’re relaxed, low-key, still in the can’t-keep-our-hands-to-ourselves phase but polite enough not to snog over brunch.” She spoke like she was reading stage directions. “Ready?”

Kyra exhaled through her teeth. “Let’s get it over with.”

Sophie extended her left hand, palm up, fingers slightly curled. Kyra stared at it for a beat too long, then slid her own hand across the cool surface. Their palms met with a faint friction of skin, the tiny callus on Sophie’s index finger catching against Kyra’s lifeline. Kyra’s first instinct was to grip harder, anchor herself, but she forced her fingers to soften. Sophie’s hand was warmer than she expected, almost hot, and for a second Kyra imagined heat lamps in a bakery, dough rising under glass.

One-Mississippi.

She became aware of her own pulse knocking in her wrist, sure Sophie could feel it. She tried to regulate her breathing the way she did before presentations at work: four counts in, four counts out. Sophie’s thumb twitched, then settled. The café’s espresso machine hissed like an angry cat.

Two-Mississippi.

Kyra’s palm was slick now; she could feel the beginning of sweat where their skin sealed. Panic flickered—what if the waitress noticed, what if someone from university walked in, what if Sophie pulled away first? She flicked her eyes up. Sophie was looking straight at her, pupils wide, a faint flush climbing her throat. The look wasn’t playful or rehearsed; it was searching, uncertain. It lasted half a second, but it cracked something open in Kyra’s chest.

Three-Mississippi.

They broke apart so fast Sophie’s mug rattled in its saucer. Kyra wiped her hand on her jeans, heart hammering. A laugh escaped her, high and nervous. Sophie joined in, shoulders shaking, but the sound was thinner than usual.

“Well,” Sophie said, reaching for a napkin, “that wasn’t completely mortifying.”

“Speak for yourself.” Kyra’s voice came out rough. She busied herself tearing the corner of the napkin into confetti. “Maybe we need a code word for bail-out.”

“Pineapple,” Sophie offered instantly. “If either of us says pineapple, we release hands and feign food poisoning.”

Kyra snorted, relief loosening her ribs. “Deal.” She risked another glance. Sophie was smoothing the napkin shred into a tiny paper football, but her eyes kept flicking up, checking Kyra’s face as if mapping new territory. Kyra felt the ghost pressure of Sophie’s thumb still printing her skin. She curled her fingers under the table, hiding the evidence.

Outside, a bus exhaled at the stop. Someone laughed into a phone. Inside their corner booth, they sat with the fresh silence of people who had just discovered a new language and hadn’t decided whether to keep speaking it.

They left the café separately, ten minutes apart, as if they were spies. Kyra rode the bus home with her hood up, forehead against the cool glass, replaying the three-second handhold until it felt like a song stuck in her head. When she let herself into the flat Sophie was already at the kitchen counter, slicing peppers for stir-fry, radio humming low. She didn’t look up.

“Pineapple,” Kyra said, hanging her coat.

Sophie snorted. “We survived.”

They cooked in the practiced choreography of people who had shared a galley kitchen for four years: Kyra reached over Sophie for the soy sauce, Sophie shifted left so Kyra could rinse the knife, their hips brushing once, twice, neither of them commenting. They ate from mismatched bowls on the sofa, some reality show flashing colours across their faces. When the plates were empty Sophie tucked her feet under Kyra’s thigh the way she always did, then seemed to remember and started to pull back.

“It’s fine,” Kyra muttered, trapping Sophie’s ankle with her hand. “Body heat saves on heating bills.”

Sophie relaxed. They watched an islander couple argue about loyalty. Kyra couldn’t follow the plot; the screen kept sliding out of focus. Eventually she muted the sound.

“Debrief,” she announced. “What worked, what sucked.”

Sophie twisted to face her, cheek against the sofa back. “Handshake was believable. Eye contact maybe too intense. We need to dial it down or we look like teenagers.”

Kyra nodded. “I kept thinking the waitress knew. Like she had a bet with the cook about whether we’d start snogging.”

“Projection,” Sophie said. “We’re hyper-aware because we’re lying. No one else cares.”

Kyra picked at a loose thread on the cushion. “You looked—convincing. The thumb thing was good.”

“Copied it from the couple by the window. They were married, I think. You can always tell by the way they stop touching but still stay in each other’s orbit.” Sophie’s voice dropped. “I’m glad it’s you, Ky. I’d feel like an idiot rehearsing this with anyone else.”

The words landed softly, then sank. Kyra’s lungs compressed. She tried to breathe through it, counting ribs. “Same,” she managed.

Sophie studied her. “No, I mean it. I trust you completely. You’re the only person I wouldn’t dread owing a favour.”

Kyra’s throat burned. She reached for her water glass, drank even though it was empty except for melted ice. The room felt over-lit, every dust mote visible. She wanted to say me too, wanted to say I’ve trusted you since the day you lent me your only umbrella and never asked for it back, but the sentences jammed behind her teeth.

Sophie yawned, stretched, her fingertips brushing the lampshade. “Early shift tomorrow. You coming to bed?”

Kyra nodded too quickly. She stayed on the sofa after Sophie left, listening to the familiar sequence: bathroom tap, toothbrush clink, drawer opening, floorboard creak. Sounds she could have drawn from memory. When the flat went quiet she padded to her own room, peeled off jeans, climbed under the duvet still tasting soy and ginger.

She stared at the ceiling. Trust, she thought. A word that should feel solid, like a handrail, but tonight it felt more like the edge of a cliff she hadn’t noticed she was walking along. She pressed her right palm to her sternum, testing the ache there. It was the same spot that had tightened when Sophie’s thumb drew its small circle, the same spot that had flared when Sophie said her name across the café table like a question.

Outside, a siren dopplered down the main road. Kyra turned onto her side, facing the wall, and deliberately summoned Liam’s face. It appeared blurry, like a photo taken through a wet window. She tried to sharpen it—his crooked canine, the way his hair stuck up after cycling—but the image dissolved, replaced by Sophie’s hand palm-up on Formica, waiting. Three seconds. Heat. Pulse. Release.

She whispered “pineapple” into the dark, a joke for no audience, then felt stupid. The word tasted nothing like the feeling in her chest, which was closer to the moment before a storm breaks: pressure, expectancy, the certainty that something is about to change and you can’t do anything but stand there and let it rain.

Kyra listened to Sophie’s bedroom door click shut, then the softer sound of it being nudged open again so she could kick off her jeans and let them drop on the carpet. A drawer slid on its runners. The duvet was yanked—one sharp rustle—and the bed creaked under her weight. After that, nothing. Sophie always fell asleep faster than anyone Kyra knew, as if she had a secret switch behind her ear.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The flat was quiet enough that she could hear the fridge humming through the wall. She tried to picture Liam in the bookshop, the precise angle of his parting, the self-satisfied way he’d said her name like it was a line he’d rehearsed. The details wouldn’t stick. Instead she saw Sophie’s hand on the Formica, lifeline glowing under the pendant lamp, the tiny half-moon scar at the base of her thumb from a broken glass sophomore year. She saw the way Sophie’s fingers had twitched once, then relaxed, as if deciding something.

Kyra pressed her own thumb against her lip, testing the memory. Heat, pressure, release. A pulse traveling up her arm and landing somewhere beneath her collarbone. She dropped her hand to the sheet and listened to the fridge cycle off. In the new silence her heartbeat sounded like someone pacing upstairs.

She wondered whether Sophie’s pulse had also sprinted. Whether she’d counted the seconds too. Whether, when their eyes locked, she’d felt the same drop, like missing the last stair in the dark. Kyra turned onto her side and faced the wall. The thought was useless; Sophie trusted her, had said it out loud, and trust was a glass house you couldn’t throw stones at without shattering everything.

Still, the image returned: Sophie’s thumb brushing the inside of Kyra’s wrist, a movement so small it could have been accidental. Except Kyra had felt the intention in it, the deliberate circle that said I’m here, I’ve got you, and something else she couldn’t name without stepping off the cliff.

She kicked one foot free of the duvet and let the cool air hit her calf. On the other side of the wall Sophie exhaled—a soft, almost whistling sound—and the mattress springs gave a single creak. Kyra imagined her turning onto her stomach, one arm shoved under the pillow, the way she always slept. She had seen it a hundred times: movie nights when they dozed off, the morning after parties when the sofa was the only free bed. Those images felt safe, catalogued under friendship. Tonight they shimmered, unstable.

She tried to steer back to Liam, to the satisfaction she was supposed to feel tomorrow when he heard she was taken. The narrative refused to assemble. What lodged instead was the moment Sophie had said her name across the café table, low and urgent, like a warning or a plea. Kyra’s body had answered before her brain caught up, skin heating, breath shortening. She had wanted the three seconds to stretch into thirty, into three minutes, into long enough to know what happened if neither of them let go first.

The fridge clicked back on. A car passed, tyres hissing over wet asphalt, and the room lit briefly with swept headlights then dimmed again. Kyra closed her eyes and fitted her palm against her sternum, counting beats. She could still taste soy and ginger, could still feel the ghost grip of Sophie’s fingers. She thought: this is what a live wire feels like before you decide whether to drop it or hold on.