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“Anyway,” Miriam said, “why do you think you’re not kind?”

Holly tried to explain, because something about this blue delft kitchen glowing in the middle of the night felt like a sacred space, where she shouldn’t lie. “When I was younger, I would get scared when anyone started to get close, or relationships started to get hard. I’d lash out with the meanest things I could think to say, and then run while people were bleeding. I don’t like that about myself, so eventually I stopped letting people get close as a way to stop doing it.”

She slid a cookie sheet into the oven and portioned out more dough, not meeting their eyes.

“Soooo…” Levi said, leaning on the counter next to her and crossing his feet, “instead of deciding that you didn’t like the way you interacted with people and changing your response, you decided you were going to just… not have friends? That seems like the hard way around. Even I have friends, and I’m the worst.”

Miriam nodded. “He is the worst. But couldn’t you not have friends, while being a baker? I’m confused about how the one is related to the other.”

“I want to see the world,” Holly said, as if this explained everything.

Levi blinked at her. “Yes. I’m familiar with the concept. I spent four years on a boat, seeing the world. And yet.”

“But when you have close relationships, they tie you to one place. To a suffocating, domestic life,” Holly argued, but saying this out loud, to a man who had a million close connections and, from what she could tell, the least stifling domestic life imaginable (he filmed his show around the world, after all), made it sound ridiculous.

She looked between Miriam and Levi. “It’s possible this is a me problem,” she said eventually.

“My bride-to-be likes to quote Mary Oliver—” Miriam began.

Levi interrupted. “You’re marrying such a nerd!”

She shot him a withering glance. “You wooed your wife with spreadsheets and a PowerPoint.”

He shrugged happily.

“Anyway, as I was saying, it might be time to listen to our great queer poets and ask yourself, Holly, what do I want to do with my one wild and precious life?”

Well. When you put it that way.

“I think I want to bake, and love people, and be kind.”

They nodded. When they moved in unison, it was clear they’d been close all their lives, and it made her aware that she didn’t have that with anyone, except maybe Caitlin.

It felt momentous that they easily folded her in, and she let herself relax, chatting easily until the oven timer dinged.

“Do you want some of this batch to take with you?” Levi asked, pulling out the first tray of correct cookies.

She walked back up the big curved Carrigan’s staircase in a daze, munching on perfect mandel bread and thinking about how she was going to bake for a living, but much more importantly, how she was going to learn to let her walls down, to love people. To be kind.

“Where going?” Tara mumbled as Holly walked into their room.

“Nowhere,” Holly whispered. “I’m coming back to bed with you.”

Yawning, Tara rolled back over. “Mmm-kay.”

God, she was cute. Holly leaned down to brush the hair off her forehead and place a kiss on her widow’s peak before shuffling off to the bathroom.

She kicked off Tara’s pajamas and slid back into bed in her underwear. Holly hissed as her bare legs brushed up against Tara’s, and suddenly, Tara was above her. In the dark, her eyes flashed hot.

“We fell asleep in the middle of a very maudlin conversation,” Tara said, brushing kisses down Holly’s collarbone. “And we never even got naked.”

Holly reached up behind Tara’s neck and brought their lips together. “Well, I’m not asleep now, and we can’t miss an opportunity to take advantage of this beautiful bed.”

Before she got completely carried away by Tara’s lips and hands, it registered that this slow, intense lovemaking in the middle of the night was going to be very hard to let go of once they were back in Charleston. Holly liked waking up in Tara’s bed more than she wanted to.

If only Tara would give up on this idea that she could only do her job the way she wanted to in South Carolina and would look at the broader picture. Thousands of people in the country needed a dedicated, progressive defense attorney who would represent them regardless of their ability to pay. There was no shortage of injustice in the U.S. justice system, and a lot of ways for Tara to show up for the work, without having to live for her family’s whims.

Last night, they’d had this incredible conversation, unlike any Holly had ever had with anyone but Ivy, and Tara had all but admitted that she was unhappy. But even then, she’d only said she wanted to widen her circle, not explode it. How could she get the arsonist inside Tara to burn down her own life, for her own good? And for theirs, if there was ever going to be a Them?