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Before I can lose my nerve, I close the distance between us. She turns from finishing up the brownies, and I hear her breath catch when she sees how close I am. I set the wine bottle I’m still clutching down on the table and move even closer, until we’re only an inch apart.

I watch the candlelight flicker in her dark eyes for a moment, and then I reach up to frame her face with my hands. Her cheeks are smooth and soft beneath my palms, the bones of her jaw so delicate as they shift when I press my lips to hers.

It’s a soft kiss, as gentle as the warm glow filling the room, and I pull away before any heat builds. She watches me through thick eyelashes, her lips parted, as I drop my hands to grab both of hers. I weave our fingers together and squeeze.

“Kenzie, you should know something.”

“Moira...”

There’s a note of warning in her voice, but I don’t heed it. I can’t dance around this anymore. We’ve spent our whole lives dancing around each other, and maybe it’s time to stop.

Maybe it’s time to dance together.

“There’s a reason I applied for the scholarship,” I begin, “and it wasn’t just to beat you, although I’ll admit that made me even more determined.”

We both let out a quiet chuckle before I go on.

“When I got back from South Africa, I...I was a mess. I’m still a bit of a mess, to be honest, but I’m pulling through. You’ve...you’ve helped with that.”

I feel my face flush, my heart racing at the thought of saying too much too fast, but she brushes her thumb along my knuckles, pulling me back into the moment. I squeeze her hands again.

“The truth is, I’ve never really felt like enough. I’ve always felt like the whole world is telling me to, like, be more, you know? To seize the day and take every opportunity I can because I’m supposed to want this huge and majestic life. I was never the girl who wanted to backpack the world or start a side hustle or move across the country for school. I was never even the girl who wanted to lose weight. I like who I am, and I’ve always felt like I have some...some piece of me missing, the piece that’s supposed to tell me to be more in the same way everybody else wants to.”

I wince as the memories start shifting around in my brain, smarting like old wounds that haven’t quite set.

“So I pretended to want things I didn’t want, thinking it would just magically feel right one day. I only went backpacking because it’s what Lydia wanted to do after high school. All I really knew I wanted was...this.” I crane my neck around to indicate the room we’re in, the little studio I love more than anywhere in the world. “When we made it to South Africa, I met this girl...Savannah. By then I knew I liked girls, but she was the first girl I really fell for. She was so cool. So adventurous. She was...everything I felt like I was supposed to be, and I guess maybe I thought if she liked me back, if I stayed and joined her volunteer program, some of that would, like, transfer to me? I don’t know. It all sounds so stupid when I finally say it out loud.”

I’ve never put it all into words like this, not even in my own head.

I thought I was falling in love with Savannah, but maybe all I really wanted was her approval.

“Moira,” Kenzie murmurs as I stare down at our hands, my face getting hotter by the second. “That’s not stupid. You are not stupid.”

I nod. “Thank you.”

She grips my hands tighter. “I mean it.”

I take a shaky breath and nod again. She does mean it. I can feel it in her touch, in the heavy air between us, and it gives me the courage to go on.

“It all backfired, of course. Savannah could tell I didn’t really want to be there, and everything fell apart. I caught her cheating on me, and I guess that means it should have been me dumping her and calling her names, but I got that end of the stick too. She said everything I’d always been afraid of: that I’m too boring to have dreams of my own. It...it fucking messed me up, Kenzie, to hear it from her like that, to know I didn’t have any answer except to go home, back to my same old life.”

Kenzie slides her hands out of my grip, and for a moment, I think she’s going to turn and leave, that she’s going to sneer at me and say the exact same things as Savannah. I brace for the blow.

Instead, she grips my shoulders and stares so deeply into my eyes everything else around us fades.

“Moira Murray,” she says, her voice strained with sincerity, “you are many, many things, but you are not boring.”

A silent moment passes, filled only by our heartbeats and heavy breaths. Then the corner of her mouth twitches, and suddenly, we’re both smiling. She lets go of my shoulders and drops into one of the folding chairs arranged by the bistro table, her eyes on me the whole time. I take the other seat and sigh as the mood lightens just a bit.

“So that’s why I signed up for the scholarship,” I conclude. “I mean, aside from the nine thousand dollars. I just thought...if I could, you know, achieve something, maybe I’d feel better about it all, but the truth is...I don’t think a scholarship can do that on its own. I don’t think anything can. You have to find it in yourself.”

I pause and then laugh for a moment at how cheesy I sound, but Kenzie doesn’t join in. She’s watching me with her head tilted to the side.

“I’m probably not making any sense, especially since you seem to have it all figured out, but...” I trail off as I scramble to find the words to tell her how I feel about her, how she’s changed more for me than a scholarship ever could.

A shift in her expression warns me not to go on. Even in the candlelight, some of that old Kenzie coldness has crept back into her features, bringing out the sharpness I’m so used to seeing there.

My blood runs cold, but before I can start backtracking on whatever has her guard up, she speaks.