Nothing else there 13

Nick’s POV

The kid has been examining our refrigerator for forty-five seconds like it owes her an explanation.

Head fully inside it. One hand on the door. The focused, slightly accusatory energy of someone who has been disappointed by refrigerators before and is prepared to be disappointed again.

Three hours ago she didn’t know I existed. Now she’s conducting a forensic audit of our condiment shelf in her shoes and backpack.

All while I’m standing six feet away trying not to stare at her profile because her profile is doing something to my chest that I wasn’t prepared for. Aria’s eyes.

Exact same shade — that particular warm brown that holds your face still while it figures out exactly what you are. Same slight tension at the jaw that means she’s already a few steps ahead of the conversation and deciding whether to show it.

I look away before she pulls her head out.

“I wasn’t sure what you’d like.” I reach behind me and pull the two pizza boxes off the counter where I’ve had them warming for twenty minutes. “But what I know for sure is that everyone loves pizza.”

I open both boxes — pepperoni, margherita — and she looks at the pizza, looks at me, takes a slice of pepperoni without saying anything and bites into it standing up.

I decide to interpret that as approval.

We sit at the kitchen table, three plates, three glasses of water. Lily eats fast, the way kids eat when they’ve been hungry for a while and don’t want to admit it.

Aria sits across from me with her slice barely touched, watching Lily, probably scanning for damage she can’t see from the outside. I’m trying to figure out what you say to a twelve-year-old who just found out her mother married her uncle and decided to have pizza about it.

“So,” I say, reaching for my water. “Has your mom told you anything about Sydney?”

Lily shakes her head and takes another bite.

“There’s a pelican near the harbor by my office. Massive thing, looks like an old man in a raincoat.” I lean back. “Last year I was eating lunch on a bench and this pelican walks right up and takes my entire sandwich out of my hand. The whole thing. Then he just stood there looking at me like I was the one being rude.”

Lily’s mouth does something — not a smile yet, but the muscle that comes right before one. The involuntary twitch she’s trying to suppress because she hasn’t decided yet whether I’ve earned it.

“What kind of sandwich?” she says, and the question is so specific and so serious that I have to keep a straight face.

“Turkey and Swiss.”

“Were you mad?” She’s leaning forward now, her elbows on the table, the pizza temporarily forgotten.

“More impressed, honestly. He had real confidence.” I pick up my slice. “More confidence than most people I’ve worked with.”

She picks the pepperoni off her second slice and eats them one by one, arranging them in a line on the edge of her plate first. I watch her do this and think about how Aria folds dish towels into thirds and how some habits tell you everything about the house someone grew up in.

“What’s your office like there?” she says, sitting up straighter now, her legs crossed under the chair.

“It flooded once. A storm came through and the whole ground floor was underwater.” I wipe my hands on a napkin. “We worked out of a coffee shop for two weeks. The barista started charging us rent.”

“Did you pay for it?”

“Bought her coffee every morning. Seemed fair.”

The questions keep coming — sharp and specific. I answer everything and keep it light because I understand what she’s doing.

She’s checking the details. Kids from houses like hers learn early that the details are where the lies show up. She’s running the same diagnostics Aria runs except Aria learned to hide it and Lily hasn’t yet.

“Well, girls,” I say after a while, pushing my plate back. “I won’t bore you with my stories all night.”

I start to stand and Lily reaches for another slice.

“No, you’re cool actually. Tell me more about Sydney.” She bites into the pizza and tips her head to the side. “Do they have good pizza there?”

“Genuinely terrible pizza.”

“That’s so sad,” she says with genuine mourning, and I almost laugh but the moment is too good to break.

“Tragic,” I agree, and settle back into my chair.

Across the table, something has changed.

Aria has gone quiet in a different way — the quality of it has shifted, the texture altered from earlier in the day. Her hands are around her water glass but loose now, fingers relaxed, and her shoulders have dropped a full inch from where they’ve been sitting since this morning.

She’s watching Lily with her face open in a way I haven’t seen yet — unguarded, unhurried, not scanning for damage or calculating the next move.

Just watching. Just here.

Something about her daughter eating pizza and interrogating me about pelicans has let her put something down for a few minutes. Some weight she carries so constantly she probably doesn’t notice it until it’s briefly gone.

I don’t name it. Don’t draw attention to it. The moment you point at something like that it flinches back into place.

I just keep talking about Sydney.

We finish the pizza and Lily doesn’t slow down — she migrates to the living room and finds the board games before either of us suggests it, pulling boxes off the shelf with the focused energy of someone who has been cooped up in the wrong house for too long and is making up for it.

She destroys me at Exploding Kittens twice, which she finds genuinely satisfying, and when I lose the third game she doesn’t even try to hide the smile.

Aria sits across from us on the couch with her legs tucked under her, not playing, just watching her daughter laugh with her head tipped back, and something in her face is open in a way I haven’t seen yet — unguarded, unhurried, not scanning for damage. Just here.

By the time the light through the windows has gone from gold to grey, Lily has migrated back to the kitchen table for the last round, elbows on the surface, cards in hand, still talking. Sydney, the pelican, whether Australian schools have Venn diagrams. The questions come steadily, then with longer gaps between them, then slower still.

We talk until Lily’s eyes start getting heavy.

Aria touches her shoulder. “Bed, baby.”

“I’m not tired,” Lily says, her face approximately three inches from the table.

“Your face is on the table, Lily.”

“That’s just how I sit,” she says, and the stubbornness in it is so much like Aria pretending she’s fine that I have to turn toward the counter so neither of them sees my face.

Lily groans but gets up, carries her plate to the sink without being asked, and sets it down carefully. Then she turns and says “Goodnight, Nick” with a rehearsed politeness that breaks my heart a little.

She walks down the hallway with Aria’s hand on her back. I hear the bedroom door close and then voices through the wall — Aria’s low and steady, Lily’s getting quieter, the day finally catching up.

I do the dishes — three plates, three glasses, pizza boxes broken down. The apartment is quiet except for the water and the distant sound of Aria’s voice through the wall, talking her daughter to sleep, and I stand there with my hands in the dishwater listening to it.

Aria comes back down the hallway after a while and stops in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. She looks tired in the good way — the kind that comes from something other than fear.

“She’s out,” she says. “Been running on adrenaline since this morning — packed since six AM.”

I set the last plate in the rack and turn to face her.

“She’s incredible, Aria.” I hold her eyes because I mean what I’m about to say and I want her to hear it land. “The questions, the way she checks everything… that’s you. That’s all you.”

She holds my gaze and her fingers loosen on her sleeves. She opens her mouth, closes it, and I can see her fighting the impulse to deflect because taking a compliment about her daughter means taking one about herself.

“Thank you,” she says, quiet. “For tonight. The pizza. The stories.”

“The pelican did most of the work,” I say, and the corner of her mouth lifts and this time it stays.

I think about that almost-smile from the courthouse steps and how this one went further and I want to keep track of the distance.

She says goodnight and walks down the hallway and I hear her bedroom door close and there’s no lock this time. I listen for it the way I’ve listened every night and it doesn’t come.