Chapter 7

Sunday light is different. Slower. Softer. It pools on the blush-pink walls of my suite like it has nowhere else to be, and the Brooks Estate is so quiet I can hear the fountain in the courtyard three floors below.

I wake without an alarm. The body stretches itself awake—arms overhead, back arching, the familiar pull of breasts and hips and the long muscles of my thighs. The duvet settles around my waist. The gold bangle slides down my wrist with the motion. Jordan's side of the bed is empty—she stayed at her studio last night—but her scent is still on the pillow. Sandalwood and bergamot. I breathe it in.

My phone shows a text from 2 a.m.: Couldn't sleep. Dreaming about you. See you tomorrow. The lockscreen photo is us at the farmers' market—her pink hair bright against my blonde, both of us laughing, the peony I bought tucked behind my ear. That was weeks ago. The peony itself is pressed now between the pages of a book on my dresser, its petals faded to parchment.

I don't rush. Sunday doesn't want rushing. I pull on a silk robe—blush pink, monogrammed M.B.—and pad barefoot to the kitchen. The marble floor is cool under my feet. The espresso machine hums to life. The first sip of coffee is hot and bitter and exactly right.

Jordan will come over later. Until then, the morning is mine.

---

I find the photograph by accident.

I'm looking for a charger in the drawer of my nightstand—Madison's nightstand, the one she keeps organized with compartments for everything—and my fingers brush against a stack of loose prints. Real photographs, the kind you get developed at a drugstore. Madison keeps them in a drawer instead of on the corkboard with the rest.

I pull them out. Three photos. The top one stops me.

A beach. The sand is pale and fine, the water a deep summer blue behind them. Madison is in the foreground, her arm around Jordan's shoulder, both of them laughing at something off-camera. Jordan's hair is different—shorter, darker, the brown she wore before the pink. She's sunburned across her nose. Madison is tan and glowing, her blonde hair windswept and tangled with salt.

The memory hits like a wave.

The salt spray on her lips. The sun hot on her shoulders. Jordan's skin warm and sticky with sunscreen under her arm. The exact shade of blue the sky was—a deep, cloudless cerulean that made the water look like glass. They'd driven up the coast on a whim, a Saturday in July, the windows down and the radio playing something Madison can't remember now but she remembers how she felt: free. Completely, incandescently free. Jordan had turned to her at some point—maybe it was after they'd run into the waves, maybe it was later, lying on the towels—and said, I want to remember this forever. And Madison had thought, I already will.

I blink. The memory recedes. The photograph is still in my hand, slightly curled at the edges. The joy in it is so complete, so specific. I can almost taste the salt.

The guilt hums. Quiet. Steady. That was her memory. Her joy. You just borrowed it.

But the photograph is in my hand. The memory is in my head. The body that lived it is my body now. And the woman in the photo—the one with the dark hair and the sunburned nose—is coming over this afternoon.

I tuck the photo back into the drawer. But I don't close it all the way.

---

Jordan arrives at two.

She lets herself in with her key—the one I gave her weeks ago, after the first time she stayed over. Her pink bob is slightly windblown from the walk from her car. She's wearing the oversized denim jacket with the painted mural, a silk camisole underneath, high-waisted culottes, platform sneakers. A tote bag over her shoulder with her laptop and a sketchbook.

"You're already in your robe," she says, dropping the tote by the door. "It's two in the afternoon."

"It's Sunday."

"That's valid." She crosses the room and kisses me—brief, warm, her lips tasting like the mint tea she drinks on the drive over. "What do you want to do today?"

The question catches me off guard. Not because it's unusual—Jordan asks me that every weekend. But because the answer that rises to my lips is mine. Not Madison's. Mine.

"Let's go out for dinner," I say. "Somewhere nice. That little Italian place you like—the one with the candles on the tables."

Jordan tilts her head. "We haven't been there in months. You said the pasta was too heavy."

"I changed my mind. I want to sit across from you and watch you talk about your art." I shrug. "It's Sunday. Let's do something."

The smile that spreads across her face is slow and warm. "Okay. Yeah. Let's do that."

---

The restaurant is called Gianni's. It's tucked into a side street in the old downtown, between a bookshop and a florist, and the front window glows gold in the early evening dark. Inside, the tables are small and round, covered in white linen, with candles in glass jars flickering on every surface. The air smells like garlic and fresh bread and the faint, sharp tang of red wine.

The waiter greets us at the door. "Good evening, ladies. Table for two?"

Ladies. The word lands on me like a gift. I'm wearing the blush wrap dress—the one Madison wears when she needs confidence—and nude heels, and the gold bangle on my wrist. Jordan is beside me in a black jumpsuit she borrowed from my closet, her pink hair brushed smooth, her silver chain glinting at her throat. We are two women, a couple, walking into a restaurant on a Sunday evening.

"That's us," I say. "Ladies."

The waiter leads us to a table by the window. He pulls out my chair—my chair—and I sit, smoothing my dress under me the way Madison always does. The candle flickers across Jordan's face as she takes the seat across from me.

"What?" she says, catching me staring.

"Nothing. Just... you look beautiful."

The candlelight makes her blush. "You're in a mood today."

"A good mood." I reach across the table and take her hand. Her fingers lace through mine—cooler than my palm, a little dry from the spring air, the press of each knuckle familiar and new at the same time. "I'm glad we did this."

"Me too."

The waiter returns with menus and a wine list. Jordan orders a Cabernet. I order the same thing because I want to taste what she tastes. When the wine comes, we clink glasses, and the sound is small and bright in the quiet restaurant.

Jordan talks about her art. She's started a new series—abstract pieces inspired by the farmers' market, the colors of the produce, the textures of the stalls. She describes the way she's layering charcoal and pastel, the way the canvas is resisting her in a way she likes.

"It's fighting back," she says. "Every time I think I know what it wants, it does something unexpected. It's frustrating and also the best thing ever."

"Like us," I say.

She laughs—that low, unhurried sound. "Yeah. Like us."

The pasta arrives. It's rich and heavy and exactly what I wanted. Jordan steals a bite from my plate, and I steal one from hers, and the candle burns lower in its glass jar. Around us, the other tables fill with couples and families and groups of friends. The murmur of conversation is a warm, ambient hum.

The waiter refills our wine. "Can I get you ladies anything else?"

Ladies. Again. The private thrill of it unspools warm and quiet behind my sternum. He sees two women. Two girlfriends. A couple. He has no idea who I really am. He'll never have any idea.

"Just the check," I say. "Thank you."

Jordan squeezes my hand across the table. "You seem really happy tonight."

"I am." The word comes out before I can filter it. It's true. I am happy. The guilt hums beneath it—a low note, a quiet shadow—but the happiness is louder. "This was a good idea. My idea."

"Your best one yet." She lifts her glass. "To Sundays."

"To Sundays."

---

We don't go back to the Brooks Estate.

Jordan drives us to her studio instead. The loft is dark except for the fairy lights strung across the beams—those are always on, a permanent constellation in Jordan's world. The canvas she's been fighting with is on the easel, charcoal and olive and a new streak of blush pink she must have added yesterday.

I stand in the middle of the room, still in my wrap dress, still in my heels. The city lights glow through the big industrial window. The incense from this morning has faded, but the sandalwood is always there, layered into the walls, the fabric, Jordan's skin.

She comes up behind me. Her arms wrap around my waist. Her body presses against my back—soft, warm, the familiar shape of her fitting against the familiar shape of me. Her chin rests on my shoulder. Her breath is slow and even against my neck.

"I love Sundays," she murmurs. "I love you."

The words land in the quiet. The needle slides between my ribs—cold, bright, familiar. She's saying it to Madison. She's holding Madison's body and loving Madison's soul, and I'm not Madison.

But the arms around my waist are holding me. The breath on my neck is warm against my skin. The love I feel—filtered through Madison's memories, experienced through my own consciousness—is real. The choice to go to dinner was mine. The happiness at the restaurant was mine. The quiet peace of this moment, standing in Jordan's studio with her arms around me, is mine.

The guilt and the joy braid together so tightly I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

"I love you too," I say.

And I mean it. The way I mean everything now—through her, as her, because of her. The body is my home. The life is my life. The guilt hums beneath the joy, and the joy hums above the guilt, and the two notes together make a chord I've learned to live with.

Jordan's arms tighten around my waist. The fairy lights glow. The city hums outside the window. I close my eyes and lean back into her, and the night settles around us like a second embrace.