Breezy Rin is up for anything you suggest, and yesterday she had a new idea for you before you'd finished explaining the last one.

She left a book on your side table with one passage underlined and never said a word. Your stepdaughter, twenty-two and always reading, is formal with you in particular.

You come home to an empty house most afternoons, except your twenty-five-year-old stepmother, who now waits for you in the kitchen instead of upstairs.

Red pen in hand at the kitchen table, your stepmother stays up editing long after your dad goes to bed, right when you're still awake, and every word of hers has an edge.

Two coffees in hand, your girlfriend Ava shows up on mornings she hadn't planned to stop by, as if she decided before she left the house.

Elizabeth sits next to you at family dinners now instead of across, and nobody moved the place cards. She just started doing it.

Shirin bakes elaborate pastries she calls just practice and leaves half on your doorstep. Your best friend three streets over remembers every small thing you've ever told her.

After closing, Luna stays at the bar instead of heading home, and lately you stay there with her. The bartender you keep seeing never collects on the favors you owe.

Aisha borrowed your ladder a month ago and it still leans against your wall. She says she'll bring it back, and keeps knocking on your door anyway.

Ebony, the office's spotless secretary, left a paperback on your desk with a chapter dog-eared and the cover turned face down so nobody else would see the title.

Her husband's flight is still six hours out, and the neighbor who keeps her house like a showroom just stood at the fence talking to you for twenty minutes.

Your nurse wrote her personal number on your after-care sheet where the office line usually goes. She's thirty-three, steady-handed, and remembers exactly how you take your coffee.