One Thing That Is Only Hers

One Thing That Is Only Hers
Yara did not answer right away.

She stood on Lucia’s doorstep with the evening going gray around them and felt the tightness in her chest that came whenever something she loved asked to move further from where she could see it.

“Say something,” Lucia said.

“I am trying to find the version of this where I do not sound like I am trying to control your life,” Yara said.
“You could just say the true thing.”

Yara looked at her.

“The true thing is that I am frightened,” she said. “Not of the location. Of not being able to reach you in nine minutes instead of forty.”

“I know,” Lucia said. “That is why I have been sitting on this for eight months instead of telling you the first week I looked at the place.”

“Tell me about it,” Yara said. “Not the security concerns. The place.”

Lucia’s whole posture changed.

“It is a farmhouse,” she said. “Old, needs work, more land than I know what to do with. There is a barn that is falling down in a way I find charming and everyone who has looked at it with me finds alarming.” She paused. “There is a stream at the back of the property. I sat by it for an hour the first time I saw it and did not think about anything. Not the city, not work, not any of this. I just sat there.”

Yara had not heard Lucia talk about anything with that quality of voice in a long time.

“How long have you actually wanted this,” she said.

“Since before Rafael was shot,” Lucia said. “I found the listing two years ago and told myself it was not the right time, because it was never the right time, because there was always something happening that made leaving feel like abandonment.” She looked at Yara steadily. “I do not think that anymore. I think I have been waiting for permission I do not actually need.”

Yara thought about Sorina saying almost the same thing, weeks ago, about the university. About Rafael saying it about Kira and the standing. About herself, sitting across from Dr. Reyes, unable to answer a simple question about what all of this had cost.

Everyone around her had been quietly asking permission to want things.

She had been the one, without meaning to, positioned as the person who granted it.

“You do not need my permission,” she said. “I need you to hear me say that clearly, because I do not think I have said it clearly enough before now.”

Lucia’s eyes went bright.

“But I am going to ask for something in exchange,” Yara said. “Not a condition. A request.”

“Go ahead.”

“Let Vincent’s people do a security assessment on the property before you sign anything,” Yara said. “Not because I am controlling this. Because I would like to sleep at night, and that is a reasonable thing to ask of someone I love.” She paused. “And come back to the city one Thursday a month. Not because you have to. Because I would miss you unbearably otherwise and I am too tired to pretend I would not.”

Lucia laughed — a wet, surprised sound.

“That I can do,” she said.

“Then go and buy your falling-down barn,” Yara said.
Lucia hugged her, careful of the bandaged arm, and Yara held on a beat longer than she meant to.

“Thank you,” Lucia said into her shoulder.

“You do not need to thank me for letting you have your own life,” Yara said. “That should never have required thanks in the first place.”

——————————————————

She got home at nine.

Rafael was in the kitchen with Sofia on his hip, both of them covered in something that had once been dinner. He looked up when she came in.

“Long day,” he said.

“You have no idea,” she said, and told him about the car through the window, and Lucia’s four stitches, and the farmhouse, and the stream Lucia had sat beside for an hour without thinking about anything.

Rafael listened to all of it while Sofia gnawed thoughtfully on his shirt collar.

“You said yes,” he said, when she finished.

“I said yes.”

“That must have cost you something.”

Yara thought about it honestly.

“Less than I expected,” she said. “I think I have been carrying the idea that keeping everyone close was the same as keeping them safe. Lucia said something in the car that has been sitting with me since.” She took Sofia from him, settling her against her own shoulder. “She said I have not let myself be surprised by anything good in two years. Because I never let myself expect it in the first place.”

Rafael was quiet for a moment.

“Are you surprised by this,” he said. “Right now. Standing in this kitchen.”

Yara looked around. At the mess of dinner on the counter. At Sofia’s small weight against her chest, warm and solid and entirely uninterested in anything that had happened that day. At Rafael, watching her with the unguarded attention he gave almost nobody else.

“Yes,” she said, and found that it was true, and found that saying it out loud did not cost her anything at all.
He crossed the kitchen and kissed her forehead, and Sofia, unimpressed by sentiment, reached out and grabbed a fistful of his hair.

Yara’s phone buzzed on the counter.

She almost let it go.

Then she looked, out of habit, and saw the name on the screen, and felt the evening’s ease drain out of her in an instant.

It was Diego’s parole officer.

Six weeks early.