After waiting about a quarter of an hour in relative quiet and comfort while suited PRT officers marched around with high-tech looking, laser-shooting, big, boxy scanning devices, the scene of the incident was cleared, and I was given a ride back to downtown and the PRT HQ building.

  A place I used to work, and where I’d presumably spent a significant portion of my time. The group of vehicles pulled into an underground garage and passed through more scanners and security devices. The radio chatter in the SUV reminded me of cop shows and meant about as much to my layman's ear.

  The officer parked, and I was politely led to the elevators by a group of three officers who’d been riding in the vehicle with me. Two men and a woman. Only the first mirror-helmeted officer spoke at all, and remained polite. I picked up on an awkward tension that was present for the entire ride back.

  I was the outsider here, and they were probably in the middle of doing something before getting sent out to babysit.

  I’d probably be annoyed if I were in their position. Surely they have better things to be doing.

  The elevator took us to a floor filled with nondescript hallways and doors, identified by some Dewey decimal-looking system of number dot number. It was sort of dystopian.

  I wasn’t sure if the rest of the building was like this, or if it was just this floor, where they brought witnesses or suspects, maybe?

  I felt a little nervous as I was led to a door. I think it was the fact that the two other officers were tailing behind me more than anything. 215.11, according to the plaque. The lead officer tapped his phone one a familiar-looking black rectangle next to the door, and red status lights turned green, and a thunk sounded from the doorframe. One of the trailing officers opened the door, and the lead officer gestured me inside.

  Through the door was a fairly small room with a wide table with a number of chairs on each side.

  I glanced over at Officer tall, dark, and faceless.

  “Someone will be in to speak with you shortly.”

  Terribly informative, thanks.

  I nodded, stepped inside, and took a seat in one of the rolling chairs on the near side of the table. The room was fairly empty save for a large framed photograph of the Bay on one wall, a door on the far wall of the room, and mirrored domes in the corners of the room.

  I slipped my backpack off, took a seat, and waited.

  Time passed in silence. I wasn’t sure how long. It seemed like a long time, but it could have just been my perception of things. After what I guessed was about a quarter of an hour, I folded my arms on the table and rested my head facedown on my bruised forearms.

  They were sore. My shoulders moreso. My headache was back, but only as a low, pulsating throb at the back of my skull that ebbed and flowed with the beating of my heart.

  Taylor invited me to come here and see some familiar faces. I didn’t think this was how I was going to wind up visiting.

  My nerves were agitated, and I was fighting a losing battle against the cynical voice that liked to nag from the back seat of my mind.

  I’m not arrested, at least, I don’t think I am. Detained? I sort of got the impression that my presence here wasn’t optional. I wonder what they would have done if I’d just refused to comply?

  Would they have broken out the handcuffs?

  Would I have been riding in the back of the vehicle, behind the plasti-glass barrier instead of the big kid’s seat up front?

  They probably just want to collect information about the people I’d interacted with. Or who’d been stalking me, or whatever.

  A soft beep and a clunk sounded from the far wall, and I felt the cold air in the room shift as the door was opened. It clicked shut, and I heard a single set of footsteps approach.

  I didn’t raise my head or look up. The headache was telling me it would cost me if I did, and I was more inclined to listen to the sensations of my body than anything else at the moment.

  A chair was moved, and something was set on the table.

  “Good evening, Ms. Rivera. I’m sorry about the wait. We can go ahead and get started as soon as you’re ready.” A male voice, gently spoken, with a Bostonian accent.

  I sighed and lifted my head slowly.

  A handsome man wearing a well-fitted jumpsuit was smiling at me. A black, polymer briefcase-looking-thing was set on its side on the table between the two of us.

  He was also made out of different-colored metals rather than flesh and blood.

  “Weld?”

  He blinked, and his smile grew wider. “Do you remember me?” he asked with a note of excitement in his voice.

  I dropped my gaze from his face down to the device between us and shook my head slowly. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. I just recognized you from the internet, and some of the media posted up around town.”

  He held his hand out, palm up. I glanced at it, then his smiling countenance once again, and took it. He gently shook my hand, his touch as light as a feather, despite the unyielding nature of his body.

  “Nice to meet you, then, Ms. Rivera. I’m Weld, a member of the local Protectorate team, and I wanted to give you a quick test, then ask you a couple of questions, if that’d be okay.”

  “It’s just…” I sighed. “It’s just Morgan. I know this is weird for you. My life is weird.”

  “The general consensus among people I’ve talked to is that the strangeness is perfectly normal for parahumans. I’d tell you that it gets better, but it seems to be pretty consistently strange. Although it does get to be a new kind of normal for those of us living the life, at some point!”

  He released my hand, and I nodded along to what he was saying. It made a certain sense to me. This was strange for me, because I was an amnesiac who didn’t remember this being a regular state of affairs: context, and all of that.

  I spread my palms on the top of the table. It was a nice lacquered wood, although I wasn’t sure if it was real or not. I suspected not. A thought occurred to me.

  “Are we being recorded?”

  “We are, although it’s more for recordskeeping purposes than anything else. You can speak freely.”

  “So I’m not being interrogated?” I glanced up at him. It was minute, but his smile faltered. He leaned back a little in his chair.

  “That’s not really the term I would use,” he said after a beat. “Questioned, sure, but it’s entirely voluntary.”

  My eyes drifted over the briefcase-thing. “So I can just say no if I want, and leave whenever? Including declining this test…thing?”

  His chest rose and fell, although I didn’t know if he even breathed or not, or if it was just an expression he affected for the benefit of others.

  I detected a note of melancholy in his voice when he answered. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, it’s our first time meeting in your experience, and I’m a stranger. I wouldn’t plead with you to trust me because I’m a hero, or team good guys, but just as one person with an admittedly strange life talking to another. I’m being totally honest and forthcoming with you here. The test I’d like to administer is something for your benefit more than anything. It’s quick, easy, and non-invasive.” He brought his hands to rest on the briefcase and tapped his thumbs on the edge of it.

  “What is it for?” I looked back up at his metal irises. His body was, in effect, sculpted precisely like a human statue, and intimately detailed down to the finest point. I could see what were supposed to look like striations in his eyes from across the table. He smiled, just a bit, before answering.

  “I can’t tell you that without potentially contaminating the results. Sort of like an observer effect. Sorry.”

  I sighed loudly. I wasn’t… annoyed, exactly. More frustrated with the inability to get answers for anything in my life, and how consistent, pervasive, and persistent that seemed to be.

  “Let’s just get this over with, please,” I muttered.

  I saw him nod in my peripheral vision, and he went about pressing a series of buttons on the briefcase.

  It wasn’t a briefcase at all, but some kind of complex device that popped open with a number of sensors, only some of which I recognized as cameras and other optical sensors, all of which came alive and trained themselves on me. He pulled out something I recognized as a pulse oximeter from a port on the side facing him and handed it over to me.

  “Please clip this on a finger tip, middle or index finger is best, just the same way you would at a doctor’s office.”

  “I’m going to be pissed if this is the world’s most expensive pregnancy test,” I snarked.

  Weld chuckled, but didn’t otherwise respond until I’d clipped the finger sensor on. A green status light lit up on the top of the tiny device, and Weld tapped a few buttons on the case.

  “I’m going to ask you a few questions. Please look at the green blinking light when you answer.” He pointed at a camera on an articulated arm extending up from the device. “This won’t take but a few moments of your time.”

  I nodded.

  “Please state your name, address, and date of birth.”

  I looked at the camera he’d indicated.

  “Morgan Rivera. I don’t have one. A couple of weeks ago, I don’t have the exact date.”

  Weld winced. “Sorry, these are standardized questions and… probably a bit insensitive, given your unique situation.”

  I shrugged loosely.

  “You said you had an interaction with some people you didn’t know earlier when walking home. How many people was it?”

  “Two.”

  “Were they travelling together, or did they seem otherwise affiliated with one another?”

  I shook my head.

  “Please speak your answers out loud while looking at the camera,” he said, sounding like it was something he’d said many, many times before.

  Rote memorization. Or reading off a script.

  “No, not as far as I could tell. The robot-person seemed to know who the girl in the black was, but not the other way around, or at least, I didn’t get that impression.”

  “Did you catch any names or identification for either of them?”

  “The robot called the girl Damsel.”

  “What’s your favorite food?”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I frowned and glanced away from the camera to look at Weld. He just smiled apologetically.

  “French Toast.”

  “When was the last time you checked your email?”

  I blinked slowly. “Uhh. This morning, when I was eating breakfast. Lunch. Brunch.”

  “What was the weather like this afternoon?”

  I looked away from the camera again to check to see if I was being pranked or something.

  “Sunny and warm? Light breeze?”

  Weld pressed a button, and the device emitted a beep. The light I was supposed to look at went out, then the case folded back into its closed state with a quiet whir and a series of clicks as things secured back into place.

  “All set!” He said, his voice bright. “I’ll take the finger sensor back now, please.”

  I pulled it off and slid it across the table to him, and he plugged it back wherever it had come from.

  “Did I pass? Is it a boy or a girl?”

  He grinned and chuckled at me. “Now that we’re done, I can tell you what all of that was about. We have these field testing devices now that are capable of testing for Master or Stranger effects with a high degree of accuracy.”

  I blinked rapidly and parsed through that.

  “I… Wait, why would you think that I’d been mastered?”

  “We didn’t have any evidence that you had been, but thought it was wise to test you just out of an abundance of caution. As I said, it’s really for your own benefit, not ours.”

  You’d think… Well. I suppose I probably wouldn’t know if I had been mastered, or if there was someone with a Stranger rating that had messed with my head.

  “...Huh. What if I had refused to take the test?”

  “Someone from the PRT would have had to make a decision whether or not they thought it was worthwhile to keep you for monitoring for Master/Stranger protocols. I don’t want to speculate on how that might have gone; it’s really not something we make decisions on.”

  I guess that makes sense.

  “If you’re going to ask me more questions, can I ask for something first?”

  Weld perked up with my query and smiled. “Yeah, of course!”

  “I have a bit of a migraine going on. Is there any chance I could get something to drink and some painkillers?”

  “Absolutely! Any preference on what you want to drink? We’ve got most of the usual sorts of stuff, coffee, tea, flavored waters, soft drinks…”

  It’s a bit late, but I don’t know how long this is going to take. Isn’t caffeine supposed to be good for headaches, anyway?

  “A coffee, please.”

  “Sure, sure. How do you take it?” He stood up and picked up the testing device, carrying it in one hand with the handle on the side. It really did look like a briefcase.

  “Black is fine, and the stronger the better,” I replied.

  “Hey! That makes two of us! I’ll be right back with something.”

  He stepped up to the far door and let himself out, and I went back to resting my head on the table.

  It only took a couple of minutes before Weld returned with a drink carrier with a pair of paper cups and the typical coffee accoutrements, along with an XL bottle of generic painkillers.

  I scanned the label quickly for the dosage, then popped two tablets in my mouth and washed it down with a slurp of too-hot coffee.

  I went back over everything that happened, from the time I’d left the museum up until the arrival of the PRT officers and my trip over here. He asked a handful of questions and follow-ups here and there, but for the most part, seemed content to let me drop my version of events more or less uninterrupted.

  We wrapped up, and he asked me if I had any questions for him before we parted ways.

  I toyed with my coffee cup, slowly tilting and rotating the empty cup around the rim of the base on top of the table. My attention was on my distraction, which was helping me concentrate. The headache hadn’t been impacted by the medication, or at least, not by an appreciable amount, and it was making me feel a bit scatterbrained.

  “More than I can think of at the moment, but I don’t want to take up any more of your time.” I looked up from my activity. “No offense, this isn’t my idea of a good time at the moment, with my headache.”

  He smiled. “Of course. Would you like to get out of here? Someone’s waiting for you outside.”

  I had a pretty good idea of who someone was. Pursing my lips, I gave him a slight dip of my head and stood up. My butt was partially asleep, and a day’s worth of overexertion was catching up with me. Caffeine or not, I felt like I was on the road to crashing out in the near future, and it’d probably be best for everyone if I was in a more comfortable setting before I wound up getting really cranky.

  Slipping one backpack strap over a shoulder, I held the strap in both hands and followed along behind Weld towards the door that he’d been using. He used his phone to open the door, the screen lighting up and flashing the PRT logo when the device performed whatever digital handshake it did when providing access codes.

  He held the door open, and I stepped out into the hallway. When it clicked shut behind us, he turned his head to the side and looked down at me. He certainly had an appreciable physical presence from where I was standing next to him.

  A gentle giant, though. Maybe not a literal giant, I think he’s maybe a bit over average height for a guy, but he feels larger in close proximity like this.

  “It’s really good to see you again, Morgan. You’re probably sick of hearing that by now, but still. There are a lot of people here who are excited to get back in touch with you.”

  I nodded a little while looking up at him.

  “Can I be candid with you?” He asked me in a quieter tone.

  “Um. Sure?” I wasn’t really sure where he was going with this.

  “Some of your friends and former teammates, they’re…” He glanced up at the ceiling briefly. “I think they’re very happy to hear you’re back, but also, maybe a bit sensitive? Does that make sense?”

  Hmm. Oh. Oh.

  I bobbed my head. “Yeah, I think I get it. I haven’t really been in a good state to visit with people up until the past couple of days, you know, medically speaking. And then, it’s like I have a thousand people to try and see and talk to. I’m trying to figure out how to divide my time between figuring out my own life and keeping others happy.”

  “I can only imagine that it’s challenging. Being a noctis cape helps me manage my time, but admittedly, it’s basically cheating,” he offered.

  “Powers are bullshit,” I replied.

  He chuckled and nodded. “Yes, powers are bullshit, precisely. Alright, follow me, please.”

  I fell in behind him, and he led me down several hallways and through an open doorway into what was very clearly an employee breakroom or lounge of some sort.

  Someone waiting for me turned out to be who I thought it’d be. Taylor looked up from the tablet she’d been working on and waved when we stepped into the room. The screen shut off with a click, and she stood up and worked one shoulder as she came over to the two of us. There were only a few other people present, but they all seemed to be rank-and-file office workers from what I could tell.

  “Hey,” she said to me, then looked over at Weld.

  He responded to her gaze, saying, “All set here. Are you two taking off?”

  She took one glance at me and nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s probably for the best, unless Morgan wants to stick around.”

  I looked down at my feet. I knew that it probably wouldn’t hurt to stop in and say hello to a few people, but I really didn’t feel up to it at the moment. Plus, it was getting pretty late.

  “Maybe tomorrow? Or–” I frowned.

  No plans for tomorrow, I think, but maybe I should hold off to see how I feel before committing to anything. I get the impression I’m going to be sore as heck by the morning.

  “Soon. I have some important stuff I’m doing this weekend, but yeah. Soon.” I nodded to myself more than anything.

  Weld’s voice was warm and supportive when he said, “There’s no rush, swing by when you’re back at a hundred percent!”

  I looked up and gave him a smile, but it probably looked about as forced as it felt.

  I don’t know if I know what a hundred percent even is anymore, let alone if I’m capable of it.

  “Shall we head back, then?” I clung to the out that Taylor was offering me and nodded in response.

  “Catch you later, Weld. I’m going to head out with Morgan,” Taylor told him, then offered me a hand.

  Shifting my grip off my backpack strap, I took it, feeling a touch guilty at how clammy my hand was.

  She didn’t seem to mind.

  “Goodnight, Weld. It was nice meeting you again,” I said over my shoulder as Taylor led me out of the lounge.

  He just smiled and waved.

  The two of us were quiet on the ride down the elevator and until we’d climbed into Taylor’s SUV. She did the thing where she turned on the privacy filter after starting the vehicle, then let out a long sigh.

  Looking over at me, she seemed fairly stressed out, and maybe more than a little concerned. “Are you okay?” Her eyes were searching my face while the vehicle idled.

  I swallowed. I didn’t want to lie to her, even though that was my first instinct. “No, I don’t think so. All of that, between what happened, then everything after that was… a lot.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Can I…” I hesitated, then decided to ask anyway. “Can I ask why you weren’t there?”

  She turned to look out the windshield and rested her head back against the headrest. “I wanted to be.” She screwed her face up, then let out another sigh. “Things are a little complicated since you’re technically a civilian at the moment. If you’d still been employed by the PRT, I could have been, but with you being a civilian, there was a conflict of interest present if I got involved in any of the procedural stuff.”

  I thought about it for a moment, then nodded and pulled on my seatbelt.

  She followed suit and got us underway. “I’m sorry, really. I could have pulled strings if I wanted to; I don’t think anyone upstairs would have really cared.”

  I looked out the window at the streetlights as they passed. “No, it’s okay. I think it’s better that you do things the way they’re supposed to be done. Probably better for me, and certainly better for you.”

  “How do you figure?” She asked in a soft tone.

  “I’m realizing that…” I trailed off for a moment and thought back to what the stranger in the suit had said.

  Your ignorance is not a shield.

  I huffed out a breath. “I realized too late that I was in a situation and scared shitless, and maybe being scared shitless wasn’t such a bad thing, in hindsight. I could stand to learn from it.”

  “Mm. Fear can be useful, up to a point. If it starts making you make bad decisions, or keeps you from doing what you need to do, then that’s where you start running into trouble.”

  I stole a glance over at her while she was driving. “Says the woman who swings it around like it’s, I don’t know, a katana, or something.”

  She snorted out a quick laugh at that. “I feel fear as much as anyone else, although, admittedly, I have had more than one talk with PRT Brand and Image regarding my ability and the Skitter identity.”

  “They have a cloud of plastic bugs dangling around you in the Undersiders exhibit in the Bay Museum.”

  She thumped her head back against the headrest and groaned out loud. “Ugh, please don’t remind me. It’s so campy, and thinking back about that time in my life, I’m always inwardly cringing.”

  She turned the vehicle off the street and down a parking ramp leading underneath her high-rise, and parked. I was a bit shocked to see that it was past midnight on the car’s fancy entertainment unit. After parking the car, she pulled out her phone and sent off a quick message, then offered to take my bag for me as we headed upstairs.

  As tempting as the offer was, I refused her with the explanation of it being part of ‘my training regimen.’

  When we were riding the elevator upstairs, she hip-checked me, and I glanced over and up at her.

  She’s so damn tall, it’s unreal.

  “Amy’s been waiting for us to get back. How do you feel about relaxing in bed and trying to de-stress?”

  I blinked up at her.

  “In a perfectly tame way, I promise, unless you had ideas for more.”

  I glanced at my ghostly, distorted reflection in the brushed metal elevator doors.

  Just the thought that I’d be wanted or desired was still something that was sort of odd to me, but I did have to admit that I felt a deep-seated craving for physical contact, romantic, intimate, or otherwise simply… platonic.

  “Um, okay,” I said, feeling lame while a blush crept up my neck.

  Moments later, we were stepping into Taylor’s apartment, and I took my bag filled with loot into the guest bedroom.

  A thought occurred to me, one that I probably should have realized at some point before this moment. “Oh, uh. I need to take a quick shower. I sort of accidentally dumped coffee all over myself earlier.”

  Taylor quirked an eyebrow and smirked a little, but held whatever comment it was that she was thinking of. “Same, although it’s more washing the work off, in my case. Come over to the master when you’re done?”

  I nodded, a bit too quickly for my throbbing head, but I’d live.

  I got cleaned up quickly enough and found myself wasting time stressing over PJs for no good reason other than pure procrastination and a touch of nerves.

  I pulled on a pair of super-soft, stretchy booty shorts and a spaghetti strap tank and padded my barefooted way towards the master bedroom with my heart located somewhere in the middle of my throat. Most of the lights in the apartment were turned down or off, and the door was open.

  I hesitated a moment outside, steeled my buzzing nerves, and rounded the door frame to step inside.

  It was a plush, comfortable affair, with an expansive view of the city along one wall, and a long row of low dressers along another. There was a door open to a big, luxurious bathroom, lit by a color-shifting light fixture on the counter that looked like a crystal.

  An enormous, modern-looking bed was clearly the centerpiece of the room. Topped with thick, dark-colored, fluffy covers, it looked… supremely comfortable. I didn’t want to think about how much it probably cost. Amy was mostly covered and partially propped up by several pillows on one side of the bed, a tablet on her lap, casting light up to the ceiling. She looked up from whatever she was working on and smiled at me, and I froze up. Taylor didn’t have a bunch of pillows propping her up, but wasn’t too far from Amy.

  She waggled her fingers at me, then patted the space between each of them, her hand sinking into the blankets.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she called out to me.

  “Um. You do?” I asked, maybe a little on the timid side of things.

  “It’s way more comfortable than it looks. Like, you won’t even believe how much more,” Taylor teased.

  Amy’s grin intensified, and she turned her tablet off and stuck it on the stand next to her side of the bed. “It’s true,” she said. “There are some things money can’t buy, but an absurdly comfortable bed ain’t one.”

  I saw her gold eyes looking me over, and I think they lingered on my bruised arms. The arms weren’t the only part that was bruised, either. Both of my shoulders were as well, where I’d been wearing the backpack, and to a much worse degree than my arms were.

  I suddenly regretted my choice to wear this tanktop.

  I feel so stupid right now. I should have worn a shirt or something else instead. Nobody wants to see someone who looks like they lost a brawl with a grizzly bear.

  “Well?” Taylor’s teasing tone brought me out of my derailing thoughts.

  “Oh, uh. Sorry. Got lost in my head.”

  Taylor grabbed the blanket and tossed it like she was turning down the bed, and for the briefest moment, I was sure I was about to get flashed or something, but she had on shorts and a sports bra under the covers. Her lanky frame was stretched out on the bed, one ankle crossed over the other. She patted the now-exposed space between them once again.

  I gulped and made my way over, feeling awkward as I crawled up from the foot of the bed, over the pile of blanket, and into the narrow space between the two painfully attractive women.

  I was nearly as distracted by the bed as I was them, though. It was somehow soft and fluffy, while also having a firm, supportive layer underneath.

  When I had a pillow under my head, Taylor sat up and pulled the blankets back up, and it was like I was being swaddled in a nest of warmth and smooth, soft linens.

  “Oh. Oh wow,” was all I managed to get out.

  “Right?” Both of them said, nearly in unison.

  “This is… really nice,” I added.

  “Mhm,” Taylor supplied.

  Amy followed up with a “Sure is.”

  “It could be even better, though,” Taylor suggested, and she looked over me at Amy.

  The two of them seemed to have made up their mind about something, because before I had a chance to figure out what was what, each of them sidled up to me, with Taylor on my left side and Amy on my right. Taylor threw one leg over mine, and Amy squeezed her front into my side.

  I was pretty sure I was beet red at this point.

  “Better?” Amy asked.

  I nodded a bit too quickly for my own good.

  “You tell us if we’re being too much, please,” Taylor whispered to me.

  “Okay.”

  Amy’s fingertips traced over my forearm. “Did this happen during the thing?”

  “No, uh, I sort of did it to myself.” I added somewhat hastily, “On accident.”

  “Do you want me to fix it up for you?” Amy asked softly.

  “Okay, but only if you want to,” I stammered a little and was silenced when her index finger was pressed to my lips.

  I thought I was about to die, with the weird mix of emotions and hormones running around screaming inside my skull, along with the ever-present headache from the past few hours.

  “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to, silly,” Amy chided me with a tap on the tip of my nose, then moved her hand back down to my forearm. I felt a warming sensation on my arms and shoulders, and the headache eased up, bit by bit, until it was just a recent memory.

  “Better?” She asked me, seemingly done doing what she was doing. I still felt warm and tingly, but I wasn’t sure that was her power at work.

  I nodded, and this time, it didn’t feel like my brain was rattling around inside my skull like an understuffed pi?ata.

  I lay there for a moment, feeling awkward and silently chiding myself for it. Finally, I worked up the nerve to speak.

  “Would it be okay if you held me?” I asked the darkened room.

  Taylor spoke first, the teasing tone back in her voice again. “I think we could probably manage that.”

  Each of them shifted around me, and soon I was wrapped in a bundle of arms and legs. Taylor and Amy were essentially holding one another, with me wedged between them. I was toasty, maybe even a bit too warm, but it wasn’t something I was going to complain about. I was… extremely comfortable, and more importantly, slowly letting my nerves unwind from the bundle of stress that I’d been clinging to for hours now. I’d been breathing a touch fast, but as I rested there between them, I felt both it and my heart rate slowing.

  I was calming down, letting go, relaxing, but in doing so, letting things up to the surface of my attention and feelings I’d been keeping suppressed. I blinked out a few tears.

  Taylor leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, and I half-coughed, half-laughed.

  “Better?” Was all she asked.

  “Better,” I agreed. “But…”

  I mentally batted away the guilt at the back of my mind, swallowed, and asked, “Would it be okay if you two went a bit… harder?”

  Amy snickered from my side, and I felt her hair tickling my face when she nodded. I turned on my side to face her, and she wrapped her arms around the small of my back. I buried my face in her shoulder. Taylor squeezed in tighter behind me until I was positively squashed between both of them.

  We lay in silence like that while my heart did its best to try to escape my rib cage. The sensations of Taylor pressing against my back while squeezing me tightly, combined with Amy’s warmth and scent, of all things, were setting off tingly fireworks in my head. I was sniffling, partially because I was intermittently springing leaks, and partially because, for the first time in what felt like a very long time, I felt like I belonged.