"You have to stop carrying me."

Last Tuesday. 8:47 AM. Outside the chapel, arms crossed, chin doing that specific lift that means she's already decided something and is now informing me of it like I had any input in the decision at all.

"It's embarrassing," she said.

"For who."

"For me."

"You seemed fine last week when I carried you away from the Elias thing."

"That was an emergency extraction."

"And the time before that?"

"Tactical retreat."

"And before—"

"Will."

The look. The one that's supposed to be intimidating and kind of is, not because I'm scared of her but because arguing past it costs me more than it's worth.

"One month," she said. "You don't carry me anywhere. You treat me like a normal person who has legs and uses them."

I looked at her. "You do have legs."

"Thank you."

"You just never use them."

"One month," she said, and walked away.

That was apparently that.

So here I am. Day nine.

I don't even know when it started, the carrying thing. There had to have been a first time — it didn't just materialize out of nowhere as a personality trait, Will Thorn, carries his dramatic best friend places, known fact — but when I try to trace it back it just dissolves into the general chaos of knowing her.

It happened the way most things with her happen. Gradually and then completely. No warning. Just suddenly it's a thing that exists and always has and I can't remember before it.

Now it's just reflex.

She's listing sideways, I catch her. She's in heels on cobblestones, I pick her up. Someone makes her cry, she gets hoisted over my shoulder and removed before she can say something she'll regret. Forty-seven times. She counted. Told me the number like it was a statistic she was proud of.

And now apparently it's embarrassing and we're retiring it.

Fine. Great.

Days one and two were easy. Day three she wobbled on the wet cobblestones outside the library and I had my arm out before I processed it and she grabbed it and we both just stood there for a second. She straightened up. I pulled back. Neither of us said anything.

Day six she nearly took out a freshman with her swinging bag. I said nothing. Looked at the sky. Breathed. Kept walking.

Day nine is today.

I'm two stairs above her on the chapel steps and she's talking — full broadcast, continuous, doesn't matter if I'm fully present, the content just keeps going — about something Elias-adjacent. Two week processing cycle. Four versions of this monologue. I could deliver it myself at this point.

She's got her bag on one shoulder, coffee in the other hand, gesturing with the coffee, which is always a liability, and she's wearing those shoes again. The Louboutin ones. The ones she insists are walkable and are not walkable — beautiful, completely non-functional — and she's not looking at her feet.

She never looks at her feet.

Why would she look at her feet when there's a monologue happening.

She trips.

Not dramatic. Not even really a fall. Just a little stumble — one foot catching the edge of the step wrong, she lurches forward, grabs the railing, catches herself totally fine.

She looks up at me.

She's grinning.

Not the oh-that-was-embarrassing smile. Not the I'm-fine-don't-worry smile.

The other one.

Corners of her mouth doing that thing. Eyes doing that thing. The specific expression that lives on her face when she's gotten exactly what she wanted and she knows I know it.

I look at her.

I look at the railing.

I look at the shoes.

Back at her face.

She raises her eyebrows. Innocent. Angelic. A perfect disaster in a blazer.

I close my eyes for one full second.

Open them.

Step down two stairs.

Pick her up.

She makes a noise — small, involuntary, triumphant — that she will deny making if I ever bring it up. Wraps an arm around my shoulders like she's settling in. Like she's been waiting.

Because she has been waiting.

Nine days she inconvenienced herself just to get here and she's not even pretending otherwise.

"Nine days," I say.

"Hm?" Pure innocence.

"You lasted nine days."