Page 32 of The Heat of Us

“We’re not even dating!” I protested. “Hazel, tell her we’re not dating!”

Instead, her eyes filled with some incredibly realistic tears. “He won’t even define the relationship!”

The waitress eyed me like she was memorising my features for a police sketch later before rattling off the names of our dishes.

“I hope you’re happy,” I muttered.

“Ecstatic,” Hazel gloated.

We had opted for a chef’s choice sharing menu and had very different reactions as we stared at the spread in front of us.

“How is this for two people?” I said incredulously.

“I am going to eat…everything.” Her eyes shone like a goddamn cartoon character.

There was something about eating with Hazel that felt different. She was so enthusiastic. Asking what I thought of her favourites, offering me bites off her plate even though we were eating the same thing.

When she casually spooned the last of the aloo baingan on my plate because I’d told her I could eat a swimming pool’s worth of the stuff, it struck me.

It was care.

She was considering me in every little thing she did.

“Are you ok?” Hazel’s question cut through the buzzing static in my head. We both stared down at my plate. “Sorry, habit. Juno and I do it to each other all the time, we’re like a pair of pushy Asian grandmothers feeding each other. You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want it.”

“No, I don’t mind. Thanks,” I replied, pushing it around on my plate.

I wanted to eat it, but I also didn’t.

I needed a way to remind myself that this feeling in my chest was real.

The chill of my home instantly bit into my flesh as soon as I crossed the threshold. I could sense my father inside. Off his leash and starving for a fight.

“Where were you?”

His robust form was fused with “his” recliner that my grandma and I were not allowed to touch. Empty beer cans littered the carpet around him.

“Having dinner with a friend.” I quickened my steps past the living room, trying to end the conversation before it could even begin.

“Stop.”

I wasn’t an omega.

His bark should’ve had no bite.

But I obeyed anyway.

Well-trained.

Dad heaved himself out of the recliner, leaving behind a discoloured imprint on the sunken cushions. He belched on his third step towards me.

“Do you think because your babulya isn’t here, you don’t have to be home?”

He said it like she was on a leisurely trip. Instead of in a lonely ward with not enough darkness and not enough light and the constant murmur of sound.

“There was leftover plov in the fr—”

His hand closed around my throat.

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