We sat there, on the couch, getting our breath back, not looking at each other. I had no idea what to say. No idea if I’d helped. No idea if Damien was going to be mad at me for seeing something so personal.

“I—” I started, not sure what I was going to say, if I was going to apologize, if I was going to ask a question.

“You were there, weren’t you?” Damien jumped in, his voice soft. “It worked?”

“Oh, uh…” I blinked. “Yeah. Yeah, I was there but … I don’t know if it worked. I tried—I tried to change things.”

He nodded, cleared his throat, rubbed his hands on his legs, and stood up.

“I’ve gotta—” He made a vague gesture toward the back of the apartment. I stood up too, unsure what he was trying to say.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked, a pained look on his face.

Aha, he was kicking me out.

“Oh, yeah, okay,” I said, moving toward the door.

“Cool.” He moved farther away. “Cool.”

It was silly to feel rejected, but that was what was coursing through my body in that moment. Panic and doubt that I had done the right thing, that I hadn’t ruined the first friendship I’d made in years.

I put my hand on the doorknob.

“Rose?”

I turned to look at Damien, his hunched shoulders, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his pained face. I braced myself for an excuse for why he couldn’t meet tomorrow after all, a chastisement.

“Thank you.”

FEBRUARY 2ND, 2017

I don’t know what I expected after yesterday, after going into Damien’s head, but I hadn’t anticipated that we would just ignore it completely. Today started the way every day starts since we had that first coffee; Damien and I texting each other. We’ve been talking about everything: our abilities and the AM, yes, but also our lives, sharing random YouTube videos and Spotify playlists back and forth, just … normal stuff. Damien likes to read too, has read all the fantasy novels I loved as a kid, so we talked about books when we ran out of people in the park to make up stories about. I haven’t really read a book in what feels like years—it was nice to be reminded that it’s something I used to love.

I really thought I was starting to make a friend. A real friend. Not someone I work with and kind of get along with, not someone I’m dating while hiding half of myself, not a family member I tiptoe around on the best of days and fully collide with on the worst. But someone who liked me for me, for the entire person I am, and who I could trust.

That all promptly went to shit this afternoon.

It all started when Damien turned up to our coffee hungover. At five in the afternoon.