Inheritance

“Hey look, Carl’s got some mac-and-cheese leftovers. Do you think he’d care if we ate them?” Amber held up a casserole dish half full of macaroni and cheese.

“What were you guys talking about?” Reese asked.

Amber didn’t look at her. “It’s between me and David, okay? Do you want some mac and cheese?” She put the casserole in the microwave and searched the drawers until she found forks. She laid them on the counter and began to open the cabinets. She took down two glasses and filled them with water from the tap. “Here,” she said, putting one on the counter in front of Reese. “You must be thirsty.”

Reese took it, studying Amber’s suspiciously calm face. Reese drank the water. When the microwave dinged, Amber took the casserole out and set it on the counter between them, then forked up a mouthful. Her eyes closed when she tasted her first bite.

“Oh my God, Carl Baldwin is a great cook,” Amber said, quickly taking another bite.

“Really?” Reese put down her water glass and tried the macaroni and cheese. It was salty and creamy, and she tasted the unmistakable tang of blue cheese. “Wow.” Reese took a bigger bite.

By the time David returned a few minutes later, they had eaten almost all of it. “I’m sorry,” Amber said apologetically. “Look, there’s still a little left.” She grabbed another fork and gave it to him.

“Thanks,” David said dryly.

Amber flashed him a brief smile, which made Reese’s suspicion return. What had happened between them when she was in the bathroom?

“I’m gonna go wash up,” Amber said, avoiding Reese’s questioning gaze. She put down her fork and hightailed it out of the kitchen.

David was opening the cabinets, and Reese asked, “What are you looking for?”

“Water glasses?”

She pointed to the cabinet to the left of the stove. As he filled a glass at the sink she said, “You should eat the rest of the mac and cheese. I think there’s bread and stuff too if you want a sandwich.” She noticed that he had washed the blood off his face and hand, but some still remained beneath his chin. She pulled a paper towel off the roll and dampened it beneath the faucet. “You missed a spot,” she said, and dabbed at the dried blood on his neck. The towel came away red. She stepped back. His tie was crooked, and now the collar of his shirt was wet as well as stained. “You kind of look like a refugee from a postapocalyptic debate tournament,” she said, smiling.

He laughed. “I think we lost.”

She shook her head. “They haven’t finished judging yet.”

He reached for her hand, pulling the stained paper towel out of her grasp before he linked his fingers with hers. “We have to talk.”

She stiffened. “About what?”

“Amber talked to me.”

Reese’s stomach dropped. “Oh God.”

He almost smiled. “Reese—”

“I told her it wouldn’t work,” she said. He wouldn’t let go of her hand, and she knew he was feeling everything she was: the sharp acceleration of her heart; the fear that he would be insulted; the mortification that Amber had been the one to broach the subject of the three of them.

“I know,” he said.

“I don’t want to put you through that. It’s not fair. Amber’s not thinking clearly. I mean, we’re not Imrians, we’re—” She stopped. He wasn’t insulted or angry. In fact, she sensed something else entirely, but it confused her.

“What are we?” he asked softly.

The tips of David’s black hair were wet from the bathroom sink. His brown eyes were focused intently on her, and she could sense all of him through the touch of his fingers: whole, separate, his consciousness an entire world apart from hers.

Before the adaptation, she had never known the way someone else felt—not truly. She could guess. She was usually bad at that, or at least she thought she was. She had a hard enough time figuring out what she was feeling herself, and now, standing in Carl Baldwin’s kitchen in the middle of Ohio, she realized that was why she had been so scared of getting involved with anyone. It wasn’t about being afraid of being hurt. It was about being afraid of the inchoate heart of herself. If she wasn’t sure of herself—if she couldn’t predict how she was going to feel from one moment to the next—how could she be in a relationship with anyone else?

That night in Phoenix last June, when David walked her back to her room and almost kissed her, her emotions had risen up in an unexpected tidal wave of fear and self-doubt, and she had had no idea what to do about them except shove them—and him—away. She wasn’t going to do that again. Now she was different. Now she knew what David was feeling, and by opening up to his consciousness, she saw the way he saw her. He didn’t think she was a tangled mess of conflicting emotions to be avoided at all costs. He thought she was complicated and beautiful and stubborn, and he loved it all, and she whispered, “I don’t know what we are, but I know I love you.”

She slid her arms around him and nestled her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder and took a long, shuddering breath. He squeezed her tighter and said, “I love you too.”

She smiled, hiding it against his shoulder, but she knew he couldn’t mistake the warmth that flared in her. She wanted to stand there forever, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart next to hers.

It was much too soon when he said gently, “We do need to talk about that other thing.”

She disentangled herself from him and he backed away, putting a couple of feet between them. “Okay,” she said nervously.

He reached for his water glass and took a drink first. His cheeks were a little pink. “So, Amber suggested that, um, you could date both of us.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Let me just say this. I know you told her I wouldn’t go for it. She told me that too. And you were probably right. I was—” He hesitated, rubbing his hand through his hair so that it stood straight up. “I was really jealous before. I didn’t like her because I knew how much you liked her, and I couldn’t get past the fact that other people would see you with her and judge me for being—not enough, or something.” The pink spots on his cheeks darkened. “The day we broke up, you said that the way you felt about me should be more important than what other people thought. I couldn’t hear that then. I was too jealous. But now…” He looked at her, and it was obvious how difficult it was for him to say these things. She wanted to reach for him, to tell him he didn’t have to say another word, but as she stepped forward he shook his head.

“You were right,” he said. “The way you feel is way more important than how other people think about me and you. And I know how you feel about me. I know.”

“I know,” she said, the words thick in her throat.

He took a quick breath. “I know how you feel about me, and I know how you feel about her, and…” He hesitated. “I know how she feels about you, and I don’t want to be the reason you don’t get to feel that. But most of all, I don’t want to have to pretend that I don’t love you.”

Reese was astonished. “What are you saying?” she whispered. Every nerve in her body seemed to tremble.

He was backed up against the counter, arms crossed. “I’m saying we can try. If you want to date us both, we can try.”

She stared at his flushed face. She saw the tension in his shoulders. “Are you sure?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, I’m sure. Do you want to do that?”

“I don’t—I mean—maybe?” It was so hard for her to say yes. It still seemed like an impossibility. “I don’t know how it would work,” she said, waving her hands.

“We’d have to talk about that.”

She groaned. “Oh God, I hate talking.”

One corner of his mouth curved up. “I’d say we could not talk, but I think it would be better if we said these things out loud.”

She almost said Why? The word was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. She knew the answer. Saying it out loud made it real in a way that susum’urda never