Maybe Jules won’t show up today, Ava thought as she squeezed past the gaudy miniature throne. Ava had told Jules that she needed space, and had changed her schedule so that she wouldn’t have to see them at work. Jules had listened grimly, then shrugged and said, “I’m not going to fight over territory I don’t want to be in anyway. I hate that place.”

Ava wasn’t quite willing to hope that they’d gotten fired, but a generalized wish that Jules wouldn’t be at the store? That felt okay. They were already on their last excused absence for the quarter; maybe they’d just quit.

Ava clung to that thought—that Jules might not be at LitenVärld today—hating that it brought her so much comfort. She clocked in, dumped her stuff in her locker, and got ready to go out onto the floor. She would have had to come back here anyway on Tuesday. She could do this.

As she turned the corner out of the break room, Ava collided with her ex.

“Crap, sorry,” Jules said, sounding distracted. Then Jules caught sight of who they were talking to, and froze. “Ava? What are you doing here?”

Jules had brought the cold in with them, ice clinging to their jacket and the thin ends of their twists, melted snow coursing down their brown skin. They smelled like wet wool and Old Spice, which had always been improbably attractive. Ava backed out of the danger zone, back into the smell of stale coffee and ancient crusts of food splatter from the microwave that emanated from all break rooms.

“I got called in,” Ava said. “Fucking Derek is sick.”

Jules looked panicked. Ava felt bad for them; she’d been prepared for this to happen, and they hadn’t.

“It’s just for today,” she added.

“Okay,” Jules said. They were visibly pulling themself back together. “I’m just gonna—”

The two of them did that annoying dance forced on any two people who wanted to get past each other in a narrow space. Finally, Ava backed all the way against the wall, waving Jules past her.

“Look, just go,” she snapped.

Jules opened their mouth to snap back, then shut it and moved past her. As they did, Ava caught sight of the scarf around Jules’s neck; light green dotted with blue, brown, and gray, crocheted with thick yarn. She’d made it for Jules for Christmas. In retrospect, the project had sprung from a desperate hope that the two of them might come together again, stitch fragile connections over the yawning holes opening up between them.

“Is that … ?” she asked, gesturing.

Jules looked puzzled, then glanced down with a tense grimace. Jules’s emotions were always written clear on their face, and they looked like they’d found a snake wrapped around their neck.

“Never mind,” Ava said, and fled down the hallway, onto the shop floor.

* * *