Nina asked for no physical touch while jealousy tightened painfully inside her stomach. I stayed across the garden café table, keeping my hands around water instead of reaching toward a pain my date had helped create. Her tears required care without granting me permission to erase them physically.
"What do you need from the emotional part?" I asked, separating her choice from the action report already finished.
"Tell me whether the date changed your intention," she replied, wiping beneath one eye, "do not describe private words unless Thea authorized them."
I said the date strengthened my desire toward another date plus a possible romantic relationship. It also made Thea's independence clearer, reducing the fantasy that she would simply enter rules built by Nina plus me.
"Did she ask you to leave me?" Nina asked, then stopped herself before I answered, "that affects my choice if yes."
