She was standing there, with crossed arms, an adorable small smile on her lips, challenging me to prove my abilities to her in the same way she challenged me to race her, both of us with casts, on our second date. I felt reckless and brave and like I couldn’t possibly get hurt, not again, not with Emily by my side, so I did what I did then—without thinking, I barreled forward. By telling her every detail of every dream of hers that I’d been inside during the past three months. Like a COMPLETE buffoon.

And as I talked—telling her about the fic she was imagining the first day we met about Steve and Bucky in the woods after Bucky’s fall (one of the few fics she let me read), the scary anxiety dreams she has about reading in front of her creative writing seminar, her sweet homesick dreams about making food with her abuela, the dreams that I haven’t even let myself think about too much where we’re both in our late twenties, in a warm, well-worn apartment, me making her dinner while she writes—her face started to fall. And fell and fell and fell.

“And remember Thanksgiving?” I continued, piling on information like an IDIOT. “The weird moment with my brother at the beginning? He accidentally read your mind.”

She took a shaky inhale and I rushed to explain.

“It really was an accident, he’s usually good at controlling it,” I explained.

All the color had drained from her face, her arms uncrossed and hanging limply at her sides, making her look like a strange mannequin version of herself.

I eventually noticed that I had stopped talking and that she hadn’t started. We’d been standing in silence for nearly a minute, just standing on opposite ends of her tiny room.

“Emily.” I breathed, taking a small step toward her. She immediately backed up, her hands going up defensively in front of her, and my heart shattered.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, you—how—why—”

“Emily, I know that all sounded bad,” I tried, even though I really hadn’t known that until that very moment.

“Sounded bad?” she said. “You—you’ve been inside my head. Without my permission. Without me knowing. That’s—”

She sounded so disgusted, so betrayed. We both just stood there, ten feet apart, crying and barely looking at each other.

“And your brother—oh my god—” Realization dawned on her face. “Your dad! I’m not crazy, at Thanksgiving, he really did move something with his mind.”

“I’m so sorry.” I sniffed. “I never meant to—I couldn’t control it for so long and then I just—I wanted to feel closer to you—”

“That’s why you were asking about my abuela, why you asked me to show you how to make pozole, because you saw me, with her, in my dream—”

“You seemed so sad after we woke up and I thought if you talked about her, if we cooked the food she taught you … I don’t know, I thought it would make you miss her less. Or that it would feel good to share that with me—”