Nobody said anything for four full seconds. Chloe knew it was four because she counted them, the way she counted things in meetings when somebody important had just said something catastrophic and the entire room was waiting to see who would speak first.

Steve: Do you listen to girl in red?

Brittney leaned over Chloe’s shoulder to read the message and made a strangled noise. Liz glanced up from the bakery box. “What happened?” Chloe tried turning the screen toward her, but Maddie had already folded sideways into the sofa, laughing into her blanket. She got as far as “Steve” before losing it again.

Nat set her coffee on the counter. “He didn't.” Sofia held up her own screen from the rug. “Oh, he did.” Nat read it again, as though the words might arrange themselves into something less astonishing, and slid down the cabinet to sit on the floor. She was still laughing when Tori stood and smoothed her sweater.

“Everyone, please. We can be reasonable about this.” Tori couldn't quite look at Maddie, who was waving her blanket like a surrender flag. “HE ASKED IF WE LISTEN TO GIRL IN RED,” Maddie shouted. That finished Sofia, who had been trying to get upright. Tori sat back down, folded her hands in her lap, and lasted perhaps two seconds before hiding her face.

“Temporary procedural failure?” Nat called from the floor. “Precisely,” Tori said into her palms. Liz came around the sofa and held out her hand for Chloe's phone. Once she'd read it, she looked to Brittney. “Does he have any idea what he just said?”

“He knows.” Brittney was trying not to smile. “I promise you, he knows.” Nat raised a finger as if she had a serious question, though she could barely get it out. “Did he just out-lesbian us?” Tori's laugh escaped so suddenly that she looked offended by it.

Steve was rather pleased with himself. Nat had called his afternoon’s reading cultural enrichment, and he’d followed it all the way into an argument thread about the phrase’s meaning. He knew what he’d asked. Now he wished he could see their faces. He put his phone beside Dennis, reached for his water, and nearly knocked the glass over when the phone began to vibrate across the table.

Three typing indicators appeared, vanished, and appeared again. Then the messages arrived in a rush.

Maddie: STEVE

Maddie: STEVE STEVE STEVE

Nat: I need a minute.

Sofia: I can’t breathe

Maddie: WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT

Nat: I need several minutes.

Tori: Please hold.

Steve scrolled back to his own message. There it was, looking considerably bolder than it had when he typed it.

Steve: Do you listen to girl in red?

He'd meant to show them he'd been listening. Looking at the message now, he wondered whether he'd deployed it straight into production without testing it. He turned Dennis toward the phone. The little horse, stern and briefcase-ready, offered no assistance.

“Helpful as always,” Steve told Dennis. Then his phone buzzed again.

Maddie: DID YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WERE ASKING

He considered pretending he had only wanted a music recommendation. That would probably insult all five women, who were more than capable of reading a Wikipedia page themselves. Besides, he was laughing. He picked up the phone.

Steve: I did research.

Steve: There was a Wikipedia article.

Steve: And several Reddit threads.

Nat: SEVERAL

Sofia: He cited his sources

Maddie: HE CITED HIS SOURCES

Steve: Dennis has declined to comment.

Maddie: DENNIS KNEW

Tori: Dennis is a napkin.

Maddie: DENNIS IS A WITNESS

Steve laughed aloud. They were teasing him; he could handle that. He decided to make things a little worse.

Steve: For the record, I also listen to Hayley Kiyoko.

Steve: In case that’s the follow-up question.

For a moment, the chat stopped. Then Nat answered:

Nat: I’m lying on the floor.

Sofia: She is. I can confirm.

Maddie: HE KNOWS ABOUT THE FOLLOW-UP QUESTION

Tori: There is no official follow-up question.

Nat: There absolutely is.

Tori: There is no governing body.

Maddie: THERE IS NOW AND IT IS DENNIS

Steve grinned, then scrolled up to the messages he’d sent before the joke. He’d told them about the song, and about crying. Now the caps-lock replies looked different. Had anyone noticed that part? His thumb hovered over the keyboard.

Steve: Should I not have asked?

Steve: Can I unask?

“Can he unask?” Nat read aloud from the floor. Sofia had managed to sit up, and Tori was repairing her eye makeup with one knuckle. Maddie was still laughing, but Chloe saw her scroll back through the chat instead of answering. Something on the screen had caught her attention. She read it again, and the laughter gradually left her face.

She stopped at two earlier messages and held the screen where Sofia could see.

Steve: I think it was the feeling of wanting a place where you belong.

Steve: And finding out maybe that place exists.

“Guys, look.” Maddie turned her phone toward Sofia, pointing to the messages above the joke. “He cried because he thought he might have found somewhere to belong. And then he asked *us* that question.”

Sofia read the messages, then handed the phone back without a joke. Nat pushed herself up from the kitchen floor. “I thought he was flirting,” she said, joining them by the sofa. “Maybe he is,” Maddie answered. Her nail rested beside the earlier message. “That’s a hell of a thing to tell someone before you make a joke.”

Tori leaned forward. “We could ask him.” Chloe nodded, glad somebody had said it aloud. Maddie had already opened the keyboard.

Maddie: STEVE. IMPORTANT QUESTION.

Steve: Should I get Dennis?

Maddie: DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU JUST ASKED US?

Steve: Yes. I looked it up.

Nat read the answer over Maddie’s shoulder. “Oh my God,” she said, and sent the same words.

Nat: Oh my God.

Steve: I understand it’s a way of asking whether someone is a lesbian.

Steve: I also understand why that might be a surprising question coming from me.

Another pause. Longer this time. A typing indicator appeared, stopped, and started again.

Steve: But I liked the music. And I meant what I said about belonging.

Chloe read Steve's answer twice. Beside her, Tori began composing a reply, then angled her phone toward Maddie for a second opinion. Maddie read it and shook her head. “Give him a minute,” she said, and Tori erased the draft without arguing. Chloe's own keyboard was open, but every answer she tried sounded like a promise she couldn't make for the others. She was still staring at the empty field when Steve wrote again.

Steve: I’ll take the silence as a no on unasking.

Maddie snorted, dropped the blanket, and started typing.

Maddie: NO UNASKING

Sofia: We’re not upset, Steve. We’re delighted.

Nat: We’re mostly on the floor.

Tori: It was a very good question.

Chloe waited until everyone else had answered. She wrote a reply, erased it, and tried again.

Chloe: I’m really glad you asked us.

Maddie sent a picture of Nat sitting on the kitchen floor. Nat demanded that it be deleted. Maddie said it belonged in the historical record and refused. A few minutes later Sofia asked which girl in red song had made Steve cry. When he told her, she answered, *Yeah. That one gets everybody.* Chloe let the conversation go on without trying to steer it anywhere.

Eventually the chat settled. Steve set his phone beside Dennis, opened his browser again, and followed a reference he’d noticed earlier. The question about girl in red, it turned out, had predecessors.

A page about violets kept him longer than he expected. He followed the flowers from Sappho's poetry to a play in the 1920s, stopping at the account of women wearing violets in public after performances. He opened a second tab, wanting to know whether the detail was true, and lost another ten minutes to competing explanations. Whatever the precise history, the idea bothered him: a small gift could say something that would be dangerous to say outright.

From there he found lavender and the old phrase “friends of Dorothy.” He remembered somebody making a joke about Melissa Etheridge years ago, and only now understood what he'd missed. A softball reference made him laugh, partly because he'd heard that one enough times to think he knew it. He hadn't.

Steve went back to the violets. If you gave somebody flowers, you could pretend they were only flowers. He imagined sending a message and waiting to find out whether the other person had understood. For a moment he was back at the coffee table, looking at the question he'd sent the women without much thought for the risk they might once have taken in answering it.

“Huh,” Steve said. He straightened Dennis’s crooked necktie, then started another song.

Back at Nat’s, Brittney put down her coffee. She’d been holding the cup so long it had gone cold. “Can I say something?” Liz came away from the window and stood behind her. The room quieted.

“Steve can talk for an hour about a bug at work,” Brittney said. “He'll tell you about the terrible thing he tried to cook, and he'll show up at two in the morning if you need him. But if he's lonely, he won't call to tell you.” Her thumb worked at a paper seam on her coffee cup. “I found out he cried from a group chat with people he met yesterday. I didn't even know he was having that kind of day.” She looked surprised to have said it aloud.

Tori slid a chair closer, but Brittney stayed standing. “I’m glad he told someone,” she said, looking at Chloe. She rubbed the paper seam on her cup until it began to lift. “I just wish he’d told me.” Liz rested a hand on her shoulder. “You could tell him that.” Brittney gave a small laugh. “He’d probably ask why I didn’t say so in the first place.”

Across town, Steve had started collecting things to send them. The first search was Maddie's emotional-support possum, which apparently played dead by involuntary reflex. Steve grinned at the unfairness of that; the poor animal was even less equipped for difficult conversations than he was. An argument online about possums and ticks kept him occupied until the idea of a winged horse's passport took over.

The import regulations were thorough. They specified health certificates and quarantine stations at designated ports. They did not mention wings. Steve bookmarked that omission, then wandered through breakup-by-calendar-invitation stories, including one spectacularly mean shared spreadsheet. He skimmed an article about getting rid of an unwanted sofa before returning to the photo of Maddie's bus stop.

A search for street photographers led him through umbrellas behind wet windows and pedestrians crossing snowy streets. He stopped at a photograph of someone walking toward a yellow-lit doorway through the snow. Maddie’s bus stop picture had that same lonely patch of light. He kept the tab open.

At Nat's apartment, Brittney's phone vibrated against her saucer. She picked it up with a frown that dissolved into a reluctant smile. “Steve wants to know whether anybody has written import rules for horses with wings.” She turned the screen toward Liz. “He sent me the government page and everything.”

Tori leaned in before Liz could respond. “Let me see.” Brittney passed the phone over, and Tori studied the regulations with an attention nobody had expected her to give a fictional animal. “Technically,” she said, “he's identified a gap.” Maddie laughed so sharply that Brittney jumped, then started laughing with her. When Brittney wiped at one eye, Chloe gave her the dignity of looking toward the window.

“He does this,” Brittney said. “Finds out what you’re interested in, then sends you a link six months later when you’ve forgotten you ever mentioned it.” She looked down at the horse regulations. “Please be careful with him.”

Liz gave her shoulder a squeeze. “And he needs to be careful with them,” she said. Brittney looked up. “I know.”

Chloe had only known Steve since yesterday. Brittney had grown up with him, and now she was hearing about his loneliness in a room full of new friends. Chloe started to apologize, although she couldn't have said what for, and stopped herself. “I'm glad he told us,” she said instead. Brittney waited, so Chloe added, “I'd like him to feel he can do that again.”

“Me too,” Brittney admitted. She retrieved her bag and checked the time. “We should go. I promised Mom I'd call before dinner.” Liz picked up the bakery box, then put it back when Nat said they could keep the pastries. At the door, Brittney paused beside Maddie and gave her a quick hug. “Thank you for making him laugh.”

“He did most of the work,” Maddie said, and Brittney laughed at that too. Liz held the door for her wife. She gave Chloe a quick look on her way out, but said nothing.

After Liz and Brittney left, Nat carried the mugs to the kitchen. The apartment sounded different with two fewer people in it. Maddie was still tucked into the blanket, and Sofia had moved to the sofa. Chloe stayed by the coffee table, listening to Nat run water over the dishes. She'd brought Steve into their lives yesterday and hadn't expected to have to explain why.

Nat returned with a damp cloth and found Maddie trying to steal the last pastry from the bakery box. “You said we could keep them,” Maddie protested. “I said Brittney could leave them,” Nat answered, which sounded like the same thing to Chloe. Ordinarily she would have joined the argument. Instead she waited until Maddie had won the pastry and Nat was sitting down before she spoke.

“This morning I called him our friend,” Chloe said. “I meant that. I still do.” She put the mug down, a little too hard, and Nat stopped wiping. “But I was looking forward to his messages before we even got home. I kept checking my phone when I knew he hadn't written anything.” Her face was getting hot. “I think I have a crush on him.”

Nat folded the dishcloth in half. “Is this you telling us, or asking whether it’s okay?” Chloe glanced at the other women. “Telling you,” she said. Then, after a moment: “I was afraid you’d hear it as a request.”

Sofia reached for Chloe's hand, and Chloe took it gratefully. Nat looked down at the cloth she'd brought from the kitchen. She folded it, unfolded it, then placed it on the table. “I'm surprised,” she said. “I'm not angry. I just need to catch up to where you are.” Chloe nodded and let her have the silence. It felt longer than it was.

Maddie pushed her blanket down. “He asked about my photographs,” she said, looking at the rim of Chloe's abandoned mug. “People usually ask what camera I use. Steve asked what I wanted them to see.” She gave a little shrug, embarrassed by the importance of it. “He spotted the two cities in that picture. Nobody ever gets that without me pointing it out.” Chloe turned to her. “So you like him too?” Maddie gave her a look. “I'm sitting here making a speech about a photograph, Chloe.” That got a laugh from Chloe, though not an entirely steady one.

Tori cleared her throat. “I did say this morning that I found him attractive.” Nat turned to her in disbelief. “Are you keeping score?” “Minutes,” Tori corrected. “I'm keeping minutes.” Maddie nearly dropped her pastry laughing, but Tori continued in the same precise tone. “Being attracted to someone is not the same as knowing what to do with it.”

Sofia squeezed Chloe's fingers. “I'd like to see him again,” she said. Nat moved closer to Sofia on the sofa without answering for her. Chloe had expected somebody to tease her, perhaps Maddie, and was surprised by how much she wanted the teasing now. It would have been easier than sitting with four people who loved her and hadn't decided what her confession meant.

“Are we actually talking about him being part of this someday?” Chloe asked. She gestured between them, disliked how it looked, and dropped her hand. Nat set the dishcloth aside. “We’re talking about a man we met yesterday,” she said. “I want him to come over again. I might want more than that someday, but I haven't even worked out whether he takes milk in his coffee.” Maddie started to answer, and Nat shook her head. “Please don't tell me his coffee order. That's not the point.”

Tori capped the pen she’d been tapping against her knee. “We can invite him over,” she said. “The rest isn’t ours to decide.” Chloe nearly objected. She hadn’t asked anyone to decide for Steve, had she? Nat was looking at her, waiting. “I want him to come over,” Chloe said. She could feel the unfinished part of the sentence sitting there, but she left it alone.

Across town, Steve opened Maddie's contact from the group chat without thinking. He found the snowy photograph again and began a private message. He typed, *This made me think of your bus stop picture*, but stopped with his thumb above Send. He stared at the recipient's name. He'd meant to share the picture with her alone, and the realization made him nervous. He cleared the draft for the moment, keeping the photo open. The browser had other tabs full of facts he could share with the group, but that wasn't what he'd wanted to do with this one.

A few minutes later he found a photograph of a little bird someone had named Wren. It stood on the edge of a nest, feathers puffed up, facing down a much larger bird on the porch rail. Steve laughed and saved it beside the snowy photograph. Maddie would appreciate that kind of attitude.

He opened Maddie's contact again. This time he sent the snowy photograph with a short note: *Thought you'd like the light in this one.* He left the phone on the table and went to the kitchen for water. By the time he came back, he had thought of four better things he could have written, none of which he could send now.

Maddie sat with the last bite of pastry in her hand, apparently having forgotten about it. “Can I say something awkward?” Nat glanced over the back of the sofa. “That's usually how you start talking.” Maddie didn't smile. “I've been thinking about breakfast. I talked about Steve's body as if that settled whether he could ever fit with us. I wish I hadn't said it that way.”

Tori was quiet a moment before answering. “We don't know how Steve thinks about his gender.” “I know,” Maddie said. “I'm not trying to tell him who he is.” She folded the pastry wrapper into a narrow strip. “I keep thinking about what *we* might want. And I haven't asked him what he wants.”

Chloe remembered the spectacularly clumsy argument over breakfast. “I'm glad you managed to get through that without mentioning detachable equipment.” Maddie made a face. “Oh, I had a follow-up.” Sofia laughed against Nat's shoulder, and for a minute they let that be funny. Maddie eventually put the wrapper down and looked at Nat. “Do you think there could be room for him?”

“Maybe.” Nat didn't reach for Chloe's hand or offer her a reassuring smile. “I haven't decided I want that. And we don't know whether he does.” Maddie glanced toward the phone she'd left on the sofa. “I know,” she said. This time she sounded as though she was allowing herself to mean it.

Maddie’s phone lit up. She glanced at it and smiled before she’d even finished reading. Then she pulled the blanket over her lap and brought the screen closer, keeping it to herself. Chloe knew she shouldn’t be watching. She watched anyway. She had been the one who brought Steve home, and somehow Maddie had a message from him that Chloe didn’t. The thought was petty, which didn’t stop it from hurting. Chloe turned toward the kitchen before anyone could see her face.

Across town, Steve noticed the group chat had gone quiet. He opened it once, found Chloe’s earlier message, and let himself read it again.

Chloe: I’m really glad you asked us.

He set the phone beside Dennis. Maddie hadn’t replied to the photograph. He wondered if the message had been too familiar, then resisted the urge to send an explanation.

He put the quiet song on again, the one that had caught him off guard earlier while he folded towels. This time he listened all the way through. When it ended, he picked up Dennis, whose tiny necktie was still sitting crooked.

“It’s been a pretty good Saturday,” Steve told him. Dennis did not disagree.

* * *

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