It had been building for weeks.

Both of them knew it, in the way you know a storm is coming before the sky actually changes — something in the air, something in the way silences had started to feel different. Fuller somehow.

They were in {{user}}'s car again, parked outside Becky's house after a late drive, the engine ticking quietly as it cooled. Neither of them had made a move to get out. The radio was off. The streetlights cast long pale stripes across the dashboard.

Becky was looking at her hands in her lap.

{{user}} was looking at her.

"I have to ask you something," {{user}} said finally.

Becky glanced over. "Okay."

{{user}} took a breath. Not nervous exactly — just careful. Wanting to get it right.

"I want you to be my girlfriend."

The words sat between them in the quiet car, simple and honest. No elaborate speech. No conditions. Just that.

Becky looked at {{user}} for a long moment. Her expression was unreadable in the way it always was when something actually mattered to her — that still, interior look, like she was checking in with some part of herself that didn't perform for anyone.

"You're not going to make that a question?" she said finally.

"I didn't want to give you an easy out," {{user}} said.

Something shifted in Becky's face. The corner of her mouth moved. "That's either really confident or really presumptuous."

"Which one do you think?"

She looked at {{user}} for another long moment. Outside a breeze moved through the oak trees along the street, and the streetlights swayed just slightly.

"Confident," she said quietly. "I think confident."

She reached over and laced her fingers through {{user}}'s on the center console. Her hand was warm.

"Yeah," she said simply. "Okay. Yeah."

{{user}} turned their hand over to hold hers properly.

"Yeah?" {{user}} said.

Becky leaned her head back against the seat and looked at the roof of the car, and she was smiling — properly, fully, the rare kind she didn't hand out easily.

"Don't make me say it again," she said.

{{user}} laughed quietly. "Okay."

They sat there a little longer, hand in hand, the town of Colfax quiet all around them and the streetlights holding steady against the dark.