Unmarked Postscript

Roshni, arriving behind us with her clipboard, stopped so abruptly that another team had to navigate around her.

“Since you met?” she asked.

“It was a client crisis,” Holland said. “A restaurant menu, a bad serif, three emails marked urgent.”

“That was one email,” I said.

“It contained three kinds of urgency.”

Roshni studied us with the delighted suspicion of someone who had discovered extra footage after the credits. “You two have a whole history.”

“We have a professional overlap.”

“You have the rhythm of people who have disagreed about a couch.”

Holland held out their hand. “May I?”

“Handholding?”

“For the next clue. We must look like a pair of people with no fear of decorative punctuation.”

“Yes.”

Their palm closed around mine, familiar enough to surprise me. We crossed the studio without releasing each other, stopping at an ink-stained worktable where the next answer waited beneath a sheet of cream paper. When we found it, our hands remained joined.

Roshni made a soft, appalled sound. “I hate this. It’s convincing.”

At the boot-fitting appointment, Holland tried on pairs in black, oxblood, and a green so dark it looked borrowed from a forest at midnight. The boutique had mirrors from floor to ceiling, which meant every small choice acquired an audience.

“Which ones?” they asked, raising one booted foot from the fitting stool.

“The black,” I said. “The green ones make you look like you own a vineyard you refuse to discuss.”

“They do have mystery.”

“They have tax complications.”

Holland laughed and chose the black pair.

A pale thread had caught on their jacket shoulder. I pointed at it. “May I?”

“Please.”

I removed it with two careful fingers. The act took less than a second. Roshni watched as if I had just adjusted a crown.

“There,” I said.

“There what?” Holland asked.

“Now you look like a person who can be trusted near a champagne tower.”

Roshni pressed both hands to her clipboard. “That is not a fake-couple sentence. That is a sentence from year four.”

“Holland and I have known each other for years,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said. “You have the first apartment, the shared cold, the terrible chair neither of you will admit is terrible. I can see all of it.”

The alarming part was that I could, too. Not as fact. As possibility. It arrived fully furnished.

By the time the bus collected us after dinner, Nashville had turned itself into a jewelry box: marquees blinking, traffic sliding along wet pavement, windows full of people making plans they would later revise. Roshni had softened into the back seat with her shoes off and her phone still ready for evidence.

“One final couple picture,” she announced. “Something natural.”

“Those are mutually exclusive instructions,” I said.

Holland turned toward me. “May I kiss you? On the mouth, for the camera. I’ll stop after one.”

“Yes,” I said. “One.”

“May I hold your face?”

“Yes.”

Their hand settled against my cheek. The first kiss was exactly what we had agreed to: brief, camera-ready, neat enough for a publicity deck. Then I said, “May I hold you closer?”

Holland’s eyes changed, not dramatically, but enough.

“Please,” they said.

I took hold of their lapel and kissed them again.

That second kiss had no useful angle. It had none of the tidy geometry of a performance. Holland met me with an answering certainty that made every practiced touch from the last day feel like rehearsal for a song neither of us had admitted we knew. Citrus soda lingered on their mouth. My hand stayed at their jacket. Their thumb rested beneath my ear.

When we finally separated, Roshni’s phone was lowered.

Outside, across the street, a camera shutter snapped.

Holland’s phone began vibrating before the bus reached the next light. An entertainment site had posted the photograph within minutes: Holland and me framed in the bus window, kissing like we had forgotten the rest of Nashville existed.

Then their studio called.

The offer arrived in polished language: extend the relationship narrative through the premiere, attend selected events, provide nothing intimate beyond appearances. A clean, profitable story.

Holland turned the screen toward me. “I haven’t agreed.”

Our weekend had possessed a simple exit until then: Sunday, luggage, separate doors. Now a studio had placed its hand on the handle.

Card Three failed before either of us decided whether that was frightening or welcome.

Continua.

Card Four said NO SLEEPING TOGETHER. I had written it with a marker borrowed from Nola, whose stationery supplies were as aggressively optimistic as her social policy. By then, the words looked less like protection than a low fence beside a cliff.

Roshni’s itinerary carried us from the bus to a rehearsal complex off Church Street, where a line-dance instructor was attempting to persuade twelve adults that coordinated heel work qualified as liberation. The front studio had lacquered floors, mirrors, and music loud enough to rearrange a person’s dental work. The smaller room behind it contained a barre, six folding chairs, and a coral sofa whose upholstery had witnessed several decades of artistic compromise.

Holland waited in its doorway, phone down at their side.

“I called my agent,” they said. “I declined the studio offer.”

“All of it?”

“No extended couple narrative. No premiere appearances as a product. No interviews that turn you into a useful accessory.” Their jaw shifted once. “No payment.”

I studied the floorboards because Holland’s face had become a place I could no longer inspect casually. “You could use the coverage.”

“I can survive a film opening without renting out the person I—” They stopped. “Without treating you like a solution.”

The unfinished grammar should have relieved me. Instead it made every sensible thought retreat under a desk.

“The kiss,” I said, “did not feel like work.”

Holland’s eyes closed for a moment, then opened. “No.”

“It felt like I had been standing in a familiar house for years and had suddenly noticed a door.”

“May I kiss you when nobody is keeping score?”

“Yes.”

Before they moved, Holland pointed toward the door. “May I close this?”

“Yes.”

They shut it, then placed the latch key in plain sight on the piano bench. It was a small gesture. It said there would be no confusion about leaving. We had made whole careers out of smaller signals.

“Are you sober enough to decide?” they asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Privacy,” I said, because I was still myself, unfortunately. “No photographs. No telling Roshni details. No agent, no studio executive, no future campaign disguised as a memory.”

“Agreed.” Holland unzipped a slim case from their jacket pocket. “Condoms and lube. If either of us wants anything inside our body, we say so first. We use protection. We can stop for any reason. We do not treat silence as permission.”

“You brought an emergency kit to a bachelorette weekend?”

“I brought a lint roller, two granola bars, and a portable charger. This is merely a broader definition of emergency.”

“No declarations?” I asked.

“Not unless they are true and wanted.”

It was the most dangerous answer I had ever received from someone carrying condoms.

“May I take off your shirt?” Holland asked.

“Yes.”

They did it slowly, waiting for me to lift my arms, as though even clothing required a signed release. Then I said, “Your shirt too.”

The mirrors multiplied us into a small, startled audience. Holland’s skin was cool from the hallway, their chest rising with a care they did not try to conceal. I set both palms there.

“May I touch you under your trousers?”

“Yes,” they said. “Over my underwear first.”

Their permission settled my nerves more effectively than any speech could have. I slid my hand over the firm shape beneath the fabric, watching Holland lean into my palm.

“Slower,” they said. “Stay there.”

“Like this?”

“Exactly.”

Holland put their hand at my waistband. “May I take these off?”

“Yes. My underwear too.” I exhaled a laugh that had no joke in it. “I want your mouth.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

They knelt before me without theater. “May I kiss you here?”

“Yes.”

Their mouth found my clitoris with patient attention, then firmer purpose when I asked for it. Each question arrived before the change: “More pressure?” “Do you want my finger?” “One or two?” I answered all of them. One first. Then two. Their fingers moved inside me while their thumb kept a steady circle where I needed it, and pleasure gathered with the punctuality of a train finally assigned the right platform.

I came with my hands on Holland’s shoulders and their name spilling out of me, too bright to disguise. They looked up at once.

“Still good?”

“Very.” My knees had become a committee with no useful recommendation. “Your turn.”

I guided them to the sofa. “May I take off your trousers?”

“Yes.”

“May I touch you with my hand?”

“Yes. Then my mouth, if I ask again.”