Chapter 29: The Sleepover Strategy
The fire had burned down to a bed of orange coals by the time the last of the guests drifted toward their trucks. Ellis had been the first to go, clapping Allan on the shoulder and telling him he'd see him at the station in the morning. Then the Jenkins couple, then a few of the other deputies whose names I was still learning. Margaret had kissed my cheek twice, once for luck and once for love, and told me she'd call in the morning.
Now the yard stood empty except for the two of us, the porch light casting a soft yellow pool across the boards. Allan stood with his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels the way he did when he had something on his mind.
"I had a good time tonight," I said, and the words felt small for how true they were.
He smiled, that slow smile that always made something in my chest tighten. "Yeah. Me too."
The night air carried the smell of wood smoke and cut grass. Somewhere down the valley a dog barked once and went quiet. I stepped closer to him without thinking about it, and his arm came around my waist like it belonged there.
"I have work in the morning," he said, and then a sheepish laugh escaped him. "And I forgot to bring a uniform. Left it hanging on the back of my closet door at home."
"You're telling me the deputy sheriff is going to show up in jeans and a t-shirt?"
"I'm telling you I'm an idiot who can't remember basic things when he's got a pretty girl on his arm."
I laughed, and he pulled me in tighter, his forehead dropping to rest against mine. His breath was warm and steady, and for a moment I forgot everything that had come before this life, forgot the man I used to be, forgot the cold white room where they'd put me under. There was only Allan, and the ring on my finger, and the quiet hum of crickets in the dark.
He kissed me then, soft and lingering. When he pulled back, his eyes traced my face like he was memorizing it.
"Tomorrow," he said. "I'll come by after shift and we can finish the passenger side door."
"I can't wait to see you tomorrow."
He smiled again and pressed a kiss to my forehead before walking down the porch steps. His boots crunched on the gravel drive, and he swung into his truck with an easy motion that spoke to years of doing exactly that. The engine turned over with a low rumble, and the headlights swept across the yard as he pulled out.
I stood on the porch and watched the red taillights shrink down the long dirt drive. They grew smaller and smaller until the darkness swallowed them whole, leaving only the yellow glow of the porch light and the memory of his kiss.
A cool breeze brushed across my bare arms. The house behind me stood dark and quiet, the last few dishes from the party still waiting in the kitchen. I should go in, I thought. Start the coffee maker for the morning, maybe wash a few plates, and let the day settle into memory.
"You're going to catch your death standing out here like that."
I startled, spinning toward the voice. Dana stood at the corner of the porch, half in shadow, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders. She had her arms crossed over the sheriff's department windbreaker she always wore, and a sheepish smile played on her lips.
"I didn't mean to scare you," she said. "I parked up the road a ways. Didn't want to be the last car in the driveway, felt too obvious."
"Obvious about what?"
She shifted her weight, suddenly looking younger than her twenty-four years. "About wanting to talk to you."
The party had been good to Dana, I thought. She'd laughed more than I'd seen her laugh in weeks, ever since I'd nudged her toward Ellis at the engagement party. Tonight at the bonfire she'd sat close to him, not quite touching, but close. She'd told me in the barn that she'd finally said something to him, that he'd blushed clear to the roots of his red hair, and that he'd asked if she wanted to get coffee sometime.
"You want to talk about Ellis," I said.
Her cheeks went pink even in the dim porch light. "I know it's late. And I know you probably want to go to bed. But I couldn't sleep anyway, so I figured, you know. If you were up."
I looked at her standing there on my porch, this woman who had become something like a friend in these strange few months. When I'd first arrived in this town, I'd been a man in a woman's body, terrified and alone, counting the days until someone discovered the lie I was living. Now here I was, engaged to a man I loved, standing on a porch I owned, being asked for girl talk by a dispatcher who wanted advice about a deputy.
The absurdity of it hit me sometimes. But it also felt, in a way I couldn't explain, like I had earned it.
I grinned at her. "I just put on a fresh pot of coffee, actually. Well. I was about to."
Dana's face broke into a relieved smile. "Oh thank God."
"Come on in," I said, holding the screen door open. "I've got leftover peach cake from Margaret, too."
She stepped past me into the warm kitchen, and I followed, letting the screen door bang shut behind us. The porch light clicked off, and the farmhouse settled into its quiet evening rhythm, the two of us moving through the dim kitchen to make coffee and talk about love.
The screen door banged shut behind us, and I crossed to the counter, flicking on the small lamp above the sink. The kitchen glowed soft and golden, the leftover dishes from the party a silent testament to the long evening. I filled the coffee maker with water, scooped grounds into the filter, and pressed the button. The machine gurgled to life, that familiar hiss and drip filling the quiet.
Dana dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, shrugging off her windbreaker and draping it over the back. She looked around the room, at the gardenia plant on the windowsill, at the ring of engagement party cards taped to the fridge, and a small smile tugged at her mouth.
"Your house smells like cake and wood smoke," she said. "It's nice."
I glanced at the clock on the wall. 1:17am. The party had ended hours ago, or felt like it. I pulled the peach cake from the fridge, cut two generous slices, and slid them into the oven to warm. The coffee dripped steadily, filling the kitchen with its rich aroma, and I poured two mugs, setting one in front of Dana before taking the chair across from her.
The cake warmed, filling the kitchen with butter and sugar. I slid the slices onto plates and set one in front of Dana, then settled across from her with my own. She picked up her fork, stared at the cake like it held answers, and took a bite. Her eyes closed.
"That's obscene," she said around the mouthful. "That's a crime."
"Margaret's recipe."
"Marry into that family," Dana said, pointing her fork at me. "Legitimately the smartest thing you've ever done."
I laughed, and she laughed with me. The coffee steamed between us, and the kitchen felt small and warm, a pocket outside the rest of the world. She talked about Ellis for the next hour, about the way he'd looked at her across the fire pit, about the coffee date they'd planned for Saturday. I listened, and offered a word where it was needed, and somewhere between the second slice of cake and the bottom of the coffee pot, I realized I wasn't Justin anymore. I wasn't even Sabrina, the woman the program had made. I was just someone's friend, sitting in a kitchen at two in the morning, watching hope bloom in another person's eyes.
The kitchen was warm, the coffee long gone cold in our mugs, the last crumbs of cake scattered across the plates. Dana had talked through the first hour with a kind of breathless energy, and the second hour had mellowed into the comfortable rhythm of two women who had nowhere else to be. She leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms above her head, and then a thought seemed to strike her.
"Hey," she said, "you want to watch a movie? I'm too wired to sleep, and I've got a ridiculous romcom in my head I've been meaning to watch."
"At two in the morning?"
"The best time."
I smiled and pushed back from the table. "Sure. Come on."
The living room was dim, the porch light casting a soft glow through the windows. I flipped on the lamp by the couch and settled into the cushions while Dana found the remote and scrolled through the streaming menu. She picked something with a bright pink poster and a title I didn't recognize, and I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly stuck.
"Don't judge," she said. "It's got a happy ending. That's all I need tonight."
I laughed and tugged the blanket from the back of the couch over my legs as she pressed play. The opening credits rolled over soft piano music, and then the movie began. A young woman sat in a sterile office, a federal marshal across from her, explaining her new identity. She was going into witness protection. She was moving to a small town. She would be given a new name, a new life, a new place to call home.
I went very still. My hand paused halfway to the mug I'd left on the side table. The woman on screen looked nothing like me, her story nothing like mine, and yet it was also entirely mine. She moved to a quiet town in the mountains. She bought a little house. She fell into the rhythm of a place where everyone knew everyone. And then the deputy showed up, handsome and steady in his pressed uniform, and she tried to keep her distance.
On the couch beside me, Dana was already smiling at the screen, her knees pulled up to her chest. She had no reaction to the plot, no sudden sharp glance my way. For her it was just a movie, a cozy comfort watch to wind down a long night.
I kept my face still, my breathing even. The woman on screen was falling for the deputy, and the deputy was falling back. I knew the plot by heart. I was living it.
I kept my eyes on the screen, feeling the strange weight of the coincidence settle in my chest. The woman on screen was sitting on a porch swing now, the deputy's arm around her, and they were talking about the kind of future I'd somehow stumbled into myself. Beside me, Dana laughed softly at something the deputy said, and I let myself breathe.
The movie carried on. The woman went to a town festival. The deputy bought her a lemonade. Small, ordinary moments that felt like a mirror held up to my own life. I watched, half-fascinated, half-unsettled, until the weight against my shoulder grew heavier.
I turned my head. Dana's eyes were closed, her breathing slow and even, her cheek pressed against the curve of my shoulder. She had conked out somewhere between the festival scene and the first kiss, the blanket slipping from her lap.
A laugh rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down. She looked peaceful, younger somehow, the worry lines smoothed from her face. I shifted carefully, easing my arm around her so she wouldn't slump sideways, and pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head.
"Goodnight, Dana," I murmured, and turned my attention back to the movie. The deputy was leaning in, the music swelling, and somewhere in the dark outside the farmhouse, the crickets sang on.
The movie wound its way to its inevitable happy ending. The deputy got the girl, the girl got her small-town life, and the credits rolled over a shot of the two of them walking hand in hand down a sunlit main street. The music swelled and faded, and the screen went dark, leaving only the soft blue glow of the menu screen hovering in the quiet room.
I didn't move. Dana's breathing had evened out into the slow, deep rhythm of true sleep, her cheek still pressed against my shoulder, a damp spot forming where her mouth had relaxed open. My arm had gone numb somewhere around the third act, but the feeling had settled into a dull, distant tingle that was almost comfortable in its way.
The TV cycled through its screensaver, abstract shapes drifting across the dark. The porch light had burned out sometime in the night, leaving the room lit only by the faint glow from the kitchen and the pale wash of moonlight through the windows. The house had gone quiet around us, settling into that deep stillness that comes in the hours before dawn.
I was tired. Bone-deep tired, the kind that settled into your joints and made your eyelids heavy. The party, the fire pit, the barn conversation, the long hours of coffee and cake and confession, it all pressed down on me like a warm weight. I should get up. I should wake Dana, lead her to the guest room, crawl into my own bed.
But she was warm against me, and her breathing was steady, and the thought of moving felt like it would require more effort than I had left in me.
My hand moved on its own, rubbing slow circles on her arm through the sleeve of her sweater. The fabric was soft, worn from years of use, and I could feel the warmth of her skin underneath. She made a small, contented sound in her sleep, something between a sigh and a hum, and settled deeper against me.
I smiled, just a little, in the dark.
The television screen went black, the screensaver cycling down into standby. The room went dim, lit only by the faint silver of moonlight through the curtains. Outside, the crickets had gone quiet, and the night had settled into that deep, pre-dawn hush that felt like the whole world had paused to catch its breath.
I rested my head on top of hers, her hair soft against my cheek, and closed my eyes.
The weight of her was grounding, a reminder that this life, this strange and impossible life I had somehow stumbled into, was real. That I was real. That the woman I had become was not just a mask I wore, but a person who could be trusted with another person's secrets, another person's hopes.
Dana shifted in her sleep, mumbling something unintelligible, and her hand found mine in the dark. Her fingers curled around my palm, loose and trusting, and she settled again.
I let out a slow breath, feeling the tension drain from my shoulders. The exhaustion was a warm tide now, pulling me under, and I didn't have the strength or the will to fight it.
The last thing I was aware of, before sleep took me, was the steady rhythm of her breathing, and the soft weight of her head against mine, and the quiet knowledge that somewhere in this town, a man I loved was sleeping in his own bed, dreaming of a future we were building together.
I let myself drift.