Ruth laughed as if Mickey hadn’t spoken. “Well, I have a confession to make.”

“What?”

“I always wanted you to be the one to find me.”

Ruth’s fingers went from Mickey’s collarbone up her jaw to her lips, and then she leaned in until talking was nearly the same as kissing.

“Want to play again?”

Mickey had never been in love before. Not with anyone besides Robin Hood—Disney’s fox version. All of that was still ahead of her. But she thought at this moment that maybe she was falling in love for the first time. Not in the way some girls fall in love with other girls; she didn’t want to make Ruth her girlfriend. She wanted to be inside her, but not like that. She wanted to occupy her, to live in her skin. To live in a body that knew what it was doing. A body that could move without burning from the inside, as if someone were narrating her every move over a loudspeaker.

So when she answered yes, she meant it.

LILY

OUT ON THE LAWN, Lily saw cans lined up along the wooden ledge, nails still holding strong. He had planned ahead. To her surprise, it made her happy. Giddy, almost. She always loved the way Silas knew exactly what he was doing. It felt like discovering inconsistencies in her favorite television series, finding evidence of his effort under all that cool. It’s what made her fall in love with him in the first place. The cool, sure; but, even more so, the glimpses of the work that built it.

“Want to make this interesting?” she asked as she took the gun from Silas. She hadn’t forgotten the flower on the table, the threat of it. But she was well versed in living between the forgotten and the feared.

“Thompson!” Silas whooped, followed by a slow clap. “You haven’t been a gambler in ages.”

“Well, it’s vacation, isn’t it?”

She pulled her hair into one fist and cinched it into an elastic. She could feel Silas’s eyes on her shoulders, her neck. And for the first time in a long time, she found that she liked it. They weren’t talking about the kids or the house, the minute details of the present, or the looming obstacles of the future. They were talking the way they used to talk, before all that.

“Do you remember how to shoot?”

Lily laughed and held the gun up so it rested in the crook of her shoulder. “I have a feeling it will come back to me.”

She squinted down the sights and took a breath, squeezing the trigger with her exhale. She heard a pop and felt the nudge of the gun, but the cans didn’t move.

“Look who got cocky,” Silas said, grinning. “I guess I should’ve placed that bet.”

“Hey, the day is still young! I’m just warming up.”