Night Giving Back, Part 1

For a while, after the others left, Andy and Katherine sat together at the long banquet table in a gentle, brimming quiet. The air had settled and the candlelight, reflected in dozens of small, shallow pools of glassware and half-empty dessert plates, was the only movement left in the room. The echoes of laughter still lingered—a resonance in the wood and stone—but nobody was adding to it now. The background hum of the harem’s new life had drained out to a hush.

Katherine was the first to let her shoulders fall. She leaned forward with her elbows on the table, hands steepled, head bowed, as if she needed to gather herself before standing. It was a new kind of stillness for her: not the vigilant, ever-present pose she’d perfected over fourteen years in oil and pigment, but something soft and allowed. She flexed her hands, turned her wrists over and back, pressed her fingertips to the linen as if memorizing the roughness and nap, then did it again, slower. She drew a finger through a little smear of berry compote on her plate, touched it to her tongue, then giggled silently. For a minute, she just watched the flame of a tealight, and let the warmth pool in her eyes.

Andy watched her, resisting the urge to break the silence. He saw her take inventory: the flush in her cheeks, the way her chest rose and fell in deep, unhurried breaths, the faint tremor in her arms that seemed, now, only relief. He could tell she was holding the moment for herself, **** to let it slip away. There was a kind of fullness to her—an emotional contentment so rich it almost glazed her skin in gold.

She looked up at him, a question in her face but no uncertainty. Then, deliberately, she touched her chest, then pointed toward the elevator and, by extension, the Master’s Suite. She laid both hands flat on the table, fingertips grazing the seam of Andy’s own. When she folded her fingers together, it wasn’t a plea, but a choice: her own terms, her own way.

Andy understood. He tried to make his smile steady, but it wobbled anyway. “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice soft as cloth. “You don’t have to. Not yet.”

Katherine shook her head, once. But then she paused, and something shifted in her face—a sudden inward look, as if she’d heard a sound from very far away. She pressed two fingers to her sternum and held them there. Her eyes went briefly unfocused, moving over nothing in particular: the tablecloth, the guttered edge of a candle, the middle distance. She blinked, slow, the way someone blinks when they are trying to keep something from spilling. Then she looked back at him, and the look she gave him was not an apology but an explanation—the wide-open clarity of someone who had seen both suffering and grace, and was not afraid of either, but needed, for just a moment, to stand still inside it. Her fingers found his again. They squeezed once, then rested.

Andy understood. After fourteen years of sensory starvation, this must have felt like a flood. She needed to retreat, for a while, to digest everything that had happened, this new reality in which she could walk among other people again, in which she could touch, she could hold, she could hug.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Andy said, but it came out with a break in the middle, and he had to clear his throat before repeating, “I’ll see you in person tomorrow, Katherine.”

She smiled—gentle, sly, and a little weary. With a last, slow lean, she pressed her mouth to his. The kiss was entirely different than the urgent, greedy one in the Suite: it was long and tender, a closing of the loop rather than a beginning. Her hair fell around them, blanketing their faces and shutting out the world. The kiss wasn’t about taking or keeping, but returning something, a memory, maybe, or a final gift.

Then she drew back, eyes closed. She stayed that way, resting her chin in her hands, a small smile left behind like a signature. For a minute, nothing happened. Then, without warning, the lines of her body softened at the edges. Her skin took on a faint, opalescent shimmer, the light catching on every angle until she seemed less a person than the ghost of herself, perfectly preserved and absolutely at peace. Andy watched, not moving, as the shimmer became transparency, and then, as if it had never existed, her body simply wasn’t there.

A half-moon of warmth lingered on the tabletop where she’d sat. Andy reached for it, pressed his palm into the warmth, and held it there, eyes squeezed shut. He tried to think of what to say, what to feel—triumph, maybe, or sorrow, or just a dumb, grateful awe—but it was all too much for words. He stayed like that for several minutes, letting the glow of the moment burn itself into his memory.

When he opened his eyes again, the room was empty and the candles were almost guttered out. He stood, gathered the dishes into a neat stack, and with one last look at the place where she had been, left the hall behind. He knew Katherine would wait for him, in the painting, until she’d feel ready to emerge again. But now, at least, she had the option. She finally, after fourteen years, had agency.

Tonight was Laura’s night, the last before the round would begin again. And he knew exactly where to find her.

---

Laura walked the halls as two versions of herself, perfectly in phase. She could have staggered her steps, let one get ahead of the other or have each take a different route, but she didn’t want to waste effort, and she had come to enjoy the synchrony. The airless hush of the post-dinner hotel was so dense it almost amplified every movement she made. She passed by the empty lounges, the pale blue light of the skyless atrium, the Mildreds stationed at their posts—each bowing with the same intervaled, clockwork deference as she went by.

There was no one else about. Most of the harem had drifted away in clots after dinner: some for the beach, some for night-swimming, some for the kinds of conversation that were safer in the dark and without the weight of Arabella’s words. Even Andy, who would normally have trailed her with a sixth sense, was in his own head tonight. She could feel it—not the details, but the vector, the color, the tension that hummed through the connection. After what happened in the Banquet Hall this afternoon, even their bond needed a breather.

Laura padded through the lobby. The light from the Commissary’s terminal was always too bright, flickering slightly in a way that made her blink more than usual. Both bodies stepped up to the interface and she summoned up the “Transformation Upgrades” menu.

She scrolled fast, but not so fast that she missed anything. There were the same old upgrades, but her eyes sought the new entry.

There. Middle of the list.

• Bond of Marriage [UPGRADE] Consent Dial: Laura may at any moment adjust the bandwidth and intensity of the Bond of Marriage, from full fidelity to gentle echo and back. The default is as before. Adjusting the Bond to reduce intensity takes five uninterrupted minutes. Resetting the bond to default intensity is instant.

She tapped the entry. It cost 1000 BP, but she didn’t care. For a moment, nothing happened. She drew in a deep breath, then let both bodies exhale in matching rhythm.

Laura 8950 BP - 1000 BP = 7950 BP

She tried to test it, but nothing answered. She would have to wait until Andy was with someone else, until the Bond fired again. For now, she just stood there, arms folded, letting the after-image of the purchase settle into her bones.

That was when she noticed Arabella, standing to the side of the Commissary, her form half-reflected in the chromed finish of the terminal. She wasn’t watching, not exactly; her posture was relaxed, head tilted, a strand of red hair slipping across her face in what looked like a deliberate break from perfection.

“Was that what you needed?” Arabella’s voice was low, almost inaudible, but perfectly clear even over the static of the lights.

Laura didn’t answer right away. She turned both heads, let the focus shift, then let one body step forward while the other lingered a respectful pace behind. “I didn’t want to switch it off,” she said, in stereo. “But I needed to be able to turn it down. Or brace for it, maybe.”

Arabella’s lips quirked. “You know, I never expected you to pick that option as your favorite. But you did always have an all-or-nothing streak. Even as a girl.”

Both Lauras went still. “Even as a girl,” Laura repeated, her voices dropping out of sync for just a moment before she caught them. She turned to face Arabella fully. “What do you mean, even as a girl?”

Arabella’s expression didn’t shift. “It’s a figure of speech,” she said.

“It wasn’t,” Laura said.

Arabella looked at the terminal, then back. “No,” she said, after a pause. “It wasn’t.” She reached up and tucked the loose strand of red hair back behind her ear, unhurried, unbothered. “Don’t read into it.”

Laura held her gaze for a long moment, then let it go. “I just never liked being made to feel less than,” she said, finally. “I don’t want a filter. I like the connection. I just want… the option.”

Arabella leaned against the wall, crossed her arms. “This round will be hard on you,” she said. “But you found yourself, at last, and I think you’ll do fine.” Her gaze flicked from one Laura to the other, then settled on the space between them. “How much do you love him?”

Laura thought about that. Not the cheap answer, not the reflex, but the real thing. “Enough that I’d do this for two thousand years,” she said. “Enough that I’d rather feel everything, even the hard parts, than miss a single piece of it.”

Arabella’s smile softened, a note of pride shading in behind it. “Good,” she said. “Remember that.”

“Why?” Laura asked. She didn’t mean it as a challenge, just an honest curiosity.

Arabella shrugged. “Because when the time comes, you’ll need to say it out loud. For yourself, not for him.”

Laura let that hang for a bit, then shifted to a different tack. “I realized something, during your speech,” she said. “When you assigned the date nights, I’m always on challenge night. I’ll never have a real one. Not as the Consort. So I can’t take part in the date mini-challenge.”

Arabella’s face gave nothing away. “That’s not entirely true,” she said. “You won’t have a traditional date night, no. But there’s a new one-time purchase in the system now—‘Moment in the Sun.’ It gives you a full day with Andy, anywhere in the real world, at the cost of five thousand BPs. Just you and him. That would fulfill the requirements of the mini-challenge.”

Laura narrowed her eyes. “Will it even work? Or will you just pull us back if it gets too complicated?”

Arabella shook her head. “You have my word. The day will be yours.” A pause. “Unless you invite me, of course.”

That got the first real smile out of Laura all night. “I’ll check it out,” she said.

Arabella pushed off from the wall, then walked closer, so that the light hit her face full-on. For a second, the two Lauras and the Host formed a triangle, a three-body constellation at the dead center of the hotel’s web.

“Laura?” Arabella said. “It’s good to see you at home.”

Laura absorbed that—both bodies, both minds. For a second, she let herself feel what it meant to be home. She had wanted this, with Andy, more than anything. She had doubted herself, doubted she deserved it, but despite herself, now it was hers.

“Thank you,” Laura said, both voices in unison. Then, with a slight bow (and a wry glance at the ridiculousness of bowing twice), she turned and left the Commissary behind.

As she walked back through the lobby, the lights seemed softer. She set out to find Andy, both bodies moving as one, the echoes of Arabella’s words lingering in her ears.

---

The air in the Inner Gardens at night was softer than day, lavender-thick and secretive, with a hush that suggested the world outside the resort had gone dormant. Andy walked the path by feel, hands in pockets, eyes scanning the dim, flickering landscape. The moon was a memory up above, caught in the palms’ crowns and vine-draped arches, but most of the light came from the lanterns dotting the garden walk, their amber glow pooling on flagstones and wet leaves. Despite the ever-shifting nature of the paths, though, it didn’t matter. He could have found Laura blindfolded, as always. He could always find her.

She was waiting by the library door, arms folded, both bodies leaning against pillars wrapped in night-blooming jasmine. She watched him approach with a double smile, equal parts patient and mischievous. He braced himself for a crack, a challenge, a “what took you so long,” but she didn’t say anything until he was standing right in front of her.

“Wasn’t sure you’d make it,” she said, and though her lips twitched, he could hear the seriousness underneath.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Andy replied, and both of Laura’s faces softened. For a second, she looked away, as if embarrassed to have been so plain.

Then she held out her hands, and he took one with each of his own. Both of her squeezed, and Andy felt the tension in her shoulders drain away.

They didn’t bother with a bench. Andy leaned back against the pillar next to Laura, and together they watched the illuminated ripples of a nearby koi pond, silent for a few minutes. The hush was complete except for distant insect song and the faintest thrum of the main building’s air system. Andy let himself relax, feeling the night wrap around him.

“Did you see what Marissa did?” Laura asked, after a while. “She gave Dawn a hug. In public. Didn’t even notice until afterward, and then spent five minutes apologizing to everyone at the table for crossing a boundary she wasn’t even sure existed.”

Andy grinned. “Might be a bit of Comfort Cuddling, but Marissa’s not as composed now as she used to be.”

“She’s a marshmallow,” Laura said, with a fond roll of her eyes. “But don’t tell her I said that.”

He considered. “She’s a sensitive person, but she spent a decade training herself not to feel. It’s like her armor is all on the inside.”

Laura, both of her, nodded. The left one picked up a fallen jasmine flower and twirled it between her fingers. The right one angled a glance at him, then at the library. “Did you talk to Katherine?”

“After dinner, yeah. She…” Andy trailed off, trying to find the words.

“What happened?” Laura asked, and this time both of her heads tilted, intent and expectant.

He closed his eyes, replayed the scene: the shimmer, the warmth, the deliberate way she had chosen to go back. “She was alive, really alive, for the first time in fourteen years. She couldn’t get enough. But after a while, she started to… I don’t know. I think it was too much, maybe. Or maybe it was just enough. She finished her food, then seemed to need to rest. She looked at me, smiled, and just… faded. She went back, Laura. She wanted to. Like she needed time to process. Like she wanted to savor it, not lose herself in it.”

Laura absorbed this, both faces gone inward. The left hand stopped twirling the flower, then slowly placed it on the edge of the pillar. “So she’s okay?”

“I think so,” Andy said. “It was like watching someone close their eyes after a perfect day. It was… good. The right kind of ending.”

Laura was quiet for a while. Then, softly: “You did that for her.”

Andy shook his head. “The Capstone did. Arabella did. I just—”

“No,” Laura said, both voices at once, cutting him off with a gentle authority. “You fought for her. You didn’t let her get forgotten.” She straightened, two bodies moving in perfect echo. “You should be proud.”

He tried to look away, but she wouldn’t let him. Both hands tightened on his. “You should be proud,” she repeated.

“Are you?” he asked, and it came out smaller than he meant it to.

Laura smiled, both versions of her lighting up. “I am,” she said. “Even if you’re a complete idiot sometimes.”

Andy chuckled. “That’s the Laura I know.”

There was a comfortable silence after that, one that could have lasted an hour, except Laura broke it with a sly side-eye. “I assume you gave her a warm welcome back to the land of the living.”

Andy almost choked. “You mean…?”

Laura’s left body grinned, while the right one made a thoughtful face. “I think the term is ‘consummation,’ but I could be wrong. Catgirl’s the word expert.”

He felt his face heat up. “Was it—did you—?”

“Feel it?” Laura said, both voices sly. “Oh, Andy, you have no idea.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, trying to find her gaze. It was like trying to focus on a cat that refused to stay still. “You didn’t seem… I mean, at dinner…”

Laura shrugged. “I don’t mind. I get it. If I were her, I would have wanted the same.” She hesitated. “I know it wasn’t about me. Or at least, not only about me.”

Andy nodded, relief flooding him. “Did it make you—”

“Jealous?” Laura finished. “I mean, yes, a little, but it’s a work in progress. That’s not the problem.” She bit her lip, thinking. “It’s like, when the bond fires, it’s not just that I know what you’re doing. I feel it. On my skin. Inside me. Both bodies. It’s overwhelming, but not in a bad way.” She made a face. “It’s like drinking four espressos at once. You love the energy, but then you remember you’re going to be awake all night.”

Andy blinked. “That sounds… intense.”

Laura shook her heads. “No, I like it. Or I will, once I get used to it.” She pulled him close, both bodies bracketing his. “In a way, it helps with the jealousy. I’m not naive and I know what you do with everyone. This way, I feel like I’m always included. I bought an upgrade, by the way. Consent Dial. I can turn the Bond of Marriage down if it gets to be too much, but I wanted to try it as-is for a while. If it gets too intense, I’ll tell you.”

Andy let out a breath. “You always were brave.”

She let that hang, then nudged him with her shoulder. “You’re not so bad yourself, Mr. Cooper.”

He let himself lean into the contact, feeling the rightness of it settle into his bones. “We should get back, Mrs. Cooper,” he said after a while, voice softer. “It’s almost time.”

Laura giggled, nodded, and together they strolled back down the path. The walk was slow, quiet, and neither rushed it. The air was thick with the perfume of wet leaves and the distant promise of the ocean, but mostly it was just them, together, moving as one. At the end of the gardens, Laura paused and looked up at the main building, at the amber squares of windows shining through the night.

“Arabella said something weird tonight,” Laura murmured, more to herself than to Andy.

He cocked his head. “Weird for Arabella, or normal weird?”

“Weird even for her,” Laura replied. “She said I was always all-or-nothing, ‘even as a girl.’ But then she tried to play it off.”

Andy considered. “Time is funny, here. She could have seen us anytime. Before, after, in between. She knew everything about me the moment I arrived. She could have studied my entire life—and you were in most of it, until…” He trailed off.

“Do you think she did?” Laura asked. “Watch us, I mean.”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if she watched us at the footbridge, the day you—” He stopped, not wanting to finish the sentence.

Laura, for once, didn’t **** him to. She just looked at him, a kind of soft, sad acceptance in both sets of eyes. “If she did, I hope she also saw us at our best.”

Andy looked at her, and felt the weight of everything that had happened between them, and everything that was yet to come. “This, now, is us at our best,” he said, and kissed her.

The walk through the lobby was uneventful, except for a quick stop at the elevator and a blink-and-you-miss-it nod from one of the Mildreds cleaning the Main Lobby. Andy suspected even the staff had opinions about them by now, but he didn’t care.

Inside the elevator, Laura pressed the button for the top floor, then leaned into him so that both her bodies bracketed his. For a while, they just watched their reflections in the mirrored doors. Then the elevator chimed, and they stepped out into the Master’s Suite.

Inside, the place was almost painfully familiar: the red sectional, the open kitchen, the huge glass doors looking out over the night-black sea. But it was home now, in a way that it hadn’t been until Laura had been anointed the Consort.

Laura dropped onto the couch, one body curling into the cushions, the other sitting upright and patting the seat next to her. “You coming?” she asked.

Andy joined her, and for a while they just sat, Laura’s heads leaning onto his shoulders, one left and one right, a symmetry that would have been eerie to anyone else. But to Andy, it was just Laura. He ran his fingers through her hair, felt the strength in her arms, the steady, even breathing. It was as if the chaos of the day had distilled down to this—just the two of them, together, at rest.

They stayed like that for a while, not bothering with speech. There was nothing performative in the way Laura arranged her heads on his shoulders—no bid for comfort, no declaration. She just let herself rest, the two versions of her breath matching and even, her hands laid lightly in her lap. Andy let his own tension slip away, eyelids half-closed, his senses narrowed to the press of her against him.

Eventually, Laura stirred. She pulled back just enough to see his face in profile, then, with the tiniest note of challenge, said, “Are you going to ask me what’s next, or are you just going to enjoy the silence all night?”

He snorted. “I like the silence,” he said. “But I’m always ready for the next thing.”

She nodded, and for a while they just let the sound of their breathing fill the room. When Laura did speak again, both voices layered perfectly, the effect soft and private: “I invited Emi and Myra up tonight.”

Andy didn’t move, but she must have felt the subtle uptick of alertness in his pulse. “Of course,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing. “You never need to ask. But… what’s the reason?”

She smiled, but it was more nostalgia than amusement. “It’s not a question,” she said. “It’s a done thing. Emi is—was—the third in our little universe. She was there for everything, and before I died, I…” She hesitated, both faces gone shadowed for a moment. “I broke her heart, Andy. Even if she won’t say it. I’ve been carrying that weight. And I know she forgave me, I know we made up. But I want to close the loop. Not with words, but with something more real. Tonight, I want to show her that the three of us can be whole again, not just pretend at it.”

He nodded, and Laura let the air around them go a little looser. “And Myra?” he prompted, gentle.

Laura’s lips pressed into a line. “I forgave her,” she said. “But it’s not real if it only lives in my head. I want to show her what it looks like to really be forgiven.” She paused, then added, “I don’t expect you to fix her, or to fix me. But I do want you to see that it matters. That what you did for Katherine, you’re doing for all of us. Even when you don’t realize it.”

He felt his throat tighten, but he managed a smile. “You’re making me sound like a saint.”

Laura smirked. “You’re not. But you try harder than anyone I’ve ever known. That’s why I love you so much.”

Andy absorbed this. He let the words settle, and did not reach for them or try to fix them. Laura always did her own processing; she only needed him to listen.

“Do you want me to say something?” he asked, after a beat.

She shook both heads. “No. Just… be here.”

He was. They let silence spool out between them, not awkward but restorative, like the hush after a difficult truth. Andy watched both sets of Laura’s eyes as they drifted to the window, uncertain, then to the painting over the fireplace, then, eventually, back to his. She seemed to want to say something and not say it at once. He waited.

“Do you still want to try the thing with your scar?” he said, finally. “You mentioned it earlier today.”

Laura touched her jaw, almost as if startled by the question, or the memory. Her left hand traced the familiar L-shaped scar that ran from ear to chin, hesitant, almost reverent. She’d worn it so long—first as the mark of what she’d survived, then the mark of what she wanted to forget, and finally as something she’d learned to live with, even joke about. Now, in the Suite’s warmth, it was paler than he remembered, as if the place itself was gradually erasing it, but it was still the first thing she saw in the mirror every morning. Andy knew this. He had watched her stare at it before, the way she always looked twice, grimaced, then set her jaw and went on.

“I do,” she said, but her voices dropped to a hush, as if she were embarrassed to want it gone.

Andy, who had never once found it unsightly, or even strange, reached up to brush her hair behind her ear, thumb stopping just short of the scar. “Will you tell me why?” he asked, trying to keep the question light, but not too light. “Or is it just for you?”

He already suspected the why, but it felt important—vital, even—to let Laura say it herself, in her own words. He knew her well enough to understand that whatever she’d decided today was the product of years, not hours, of thought. Andy waited, hands stilled in her hair, his own heart pacing slowly.

Laura took so long to answer that he thought she might let the moment go. She drew in a breath, let it out. The part of Andy that remembered her teenage self—the one who had once stared him down after losing an argument about the merits of some obscure anime—recognized the look on her face. She was organizing her feelings, not for the first time, but maybe for the first time out loud.

“My father gave me that scar,” she said. The air seemed to flatten at the words, the way a room does when someone utters a secret that’s been waiting at the threshold. “When I was eleven. One evening, he caught me getting out of the window to come find you. But it wasn’t because I just wanted to see you.” Her eyes narrowed, not at Andy, but at the memory itself. “I was trying to get away after he threatened me for standing up to him to protect my mom.”

She flexed her jaw, as if prying the memory loose from a place it had lodged for years. “He’d been drunk. I think—I know—he meant to scare me, not to actually hurt me. But I was already halfway out the window, and he grabbed my hair, and his ring caught the edge of my jaw. There was blood. A lot of it. I remember thinking, even then, that it was my fault for running.”

It was a story she’d never told him before, not in this much detail. Andy squeezed her hand, not to interrupt, but to let her know she wasn’t telling it to empty space.

Laura looked at their hands, then back up. “For a long time, I thought I deserved it. That I was his daughter, and I was doomed to become just like him. That I would break anything good that would be given to me.” A pause. “That if anyone ever loved me, it was because they didn’t know what I really was.”

Andy shook his head, but didn’t try to correct her. He knew the futility of arguing the logic of someone else’s pain.

“I know what you are,” he said, simply.

Laura smiled at that, small and real. “You do. And for a while, that helped. But I needed to keep it, too. Not just as proof it happened, but as a warning. Some nights I’d touch it just to remind myself that bad things can come back if you let them.” She shrugged, both bodies slumping just a little. “But now, I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want him to have left anything on me. I don’t want him to be a shadow over anything I ever build with you, or with the people I care about.”

Andy nodded. “Do you want to do it now? Or after—”

“Now,” Laura said, her voices steady. “If you can.”

Andy sat up a little straighter. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but the certainty in her answer steadied him, too. He reached up, gently, and traced the scar with the side of his thumb. “Do you trust me?”

Her eyes, four of them, were steady, clear. He saw all of her in that moment: the girl he’d grown up with, the woman who’d clawed her way back from **** and ruin, the motherless hurricane, the friend who’d always found the right word or at least the right joke when other comforts failed. “More than anyone,” she said, and it sounded like the promise it was.

The room was quiet, but the air itself felt taut, the way it did before a summer storm. Laura was holding her breath, and Andy realized he was, too. This was not about erasing pain, but about letting go of the memory of the man who had warped the skein of Laura’s life.

He closed his eyes, summoned up the Coauthor Gift, and focused on the words that defined Laura’s skin. L-shaped scar along the right jawline. And her bio section, at eleven, her father gave her a scar. He pictured it as a line of code, a rule, a memory made material. Then, with all the conviction he could muster, he willed it gone.

The change was instantaneous. The ridge of scar tissue smoothed under his touch, the color blending seamlessly into the skin. Andy watched as the line simply faded, the new skin flawless, soft, and unmarked.

He looked at her, waiting for a reaction. Both versions of Laura tilted their heads, twin fingers rising to the jaw, tracing the place where the scar had always been. She pressed, prodded, then broke into a wild, unguarded laugh. It was the laugh he remembered from childhood—bright and startling, full of wonder.

“How does it look?” she asked, both faces alight.

Andy smiled. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “But you always were.”

Laura—both of her—grinned, then kissed him, her two bodies sandwiching his. For a moment, Andy thought they might never let go, but eventually she drew back, both faces soft and a little misty.

“Thank you,” she said.

They stayed that way until the sound of the elevator’s chime signaled the next chapter of the night.