At the back of the staff room, the door to the facilities stands as warped as the rest of the wood in the bookshop, and as shut as the front door. Its plastic sign shows two overlapping stick figures. Small book shapes have been added between them in permanent marker.

Maz pushes through and leaves the door hanging half open. The strip lights overhead buzz louder and glow brighter when she steps in.

She reaches the sink. The mirror above holds the room’s white tiles at doubled angles. Maz’s reflection is split into twins who don’t agree on which one is real. She presses her hands to the sink’s edge. *One, two, three. Breathe.*

The breath she is asking for doesn’t arrive.

Her pinky jitters against porcelain while the lights keep time. They sputter with the tap of her finger. Cut out with the ting of her nail. She counts to five. *Come on, breathe.*

The fluorescent buzz swells.

She rinses her hands while feeling the cold of the water and hearing the brief rush of it. She turns the tap off. *Maybe now.*

A seven count is only a count.

She stands with wet hands under the tap. The paper towel box hangs on the wall beside the mirror that holds both versions of her. Neither of them moves.

The lights give up for the next count of three and return with a periodic seizure.

She looks down at her dry hands holding her phone. *What? When did you…? You don’t remember taking the phone out. How did you…? The unlock, the scroll?*

The screen is right there, a small cold sun in the flickering gloom, and her own words under the title ‘Bind.Breathe.Stay.’ waiting.

She stares at the phone while mouthing the title of the piece. *Fiction or confession. Either way, you do remember writing that, just not when.*

Her thumb slides the view up and down as she hunts for a timestamp. *No publish date. Well, no anything date at all. So even the app’s clueless on that bit.*

She reads.

***

Author: Mazmire

Bind.Breathe.Stay.

—

When did the counting game start?

Well, his thoughts wouldn’t stop running around trying to find the perfect order of, in, around, about everything.

Seven heartbeats to interrupt the spin. Seven breaths to reset. You’d made it into a silly little thing you could share, a routine to pull him back when his mind circled the same worry until it wore grooves.

Tonight, the ribbon was for you.

Or what was left of it. You weren’t going to tell him that it was the red strap of your lanyard.

He probably wouldn’t have guessed it since you’d taken the clip off. Hope was for him to never ask about it. You didn’t have an answer that wasn’t embarrassing.

A frenzied sort of smoothness in your hands teased that silk to loop from finger to finger. It fell into an unending orbit that felt like the only thing keeping your hands occupied.

The whispery friction rubbed against your fingertips. It collapsed in the tension. You started again like you could spool up your own scattered nerves and smooth them flat if you just kept it moving.

He didn’t help when he spoke. Whenever he said a word or two that were a little too honest while he kept his gaze on you, something (your knees, for starters) had to give in. He always did this.

You tossed your hair out of your eyes for the third time. Not like he wasn’t already watching. Not that he seemed to mind, since the only thing he did was sit there on the bed and keep his patience. You didn’t even start counting yet.

Your fingers worked the loop faster and faster until it began to burn a secret current.

His eyes followed your hands as if he’d already decided how this ended.

You stepped closer. “You sure you’re still up for it?”

He pushed his hands forward in a calm surrender that never became less disarming. “Always.”

Didn’t he just have the right thing to say and at the right moment? Completely unfair.

On the lucky side, the ribbon was a good accomplice. It was good at hiding the hesitation. It was also good at finding its path and circling his wrists. His breathing lost its symmetry as your forehead rested against his. Yours matched it. Heartbeat for heartbeat.

He watched the silk’s loose loop and walked his fingers up the veins on top of your hand, following a map that didn’t have perfect arrangements. “Still ‘Truth’?”

For a second, you thought about coming up with a poetic line. Anything said after that was either going to sound childish or fall short of what he’d offered.

So you just let yourself feel his pulse beneath your skin, counting. Three heartbeats for trust. Five for certainty. Seven for the promise you never needed to speak aloud. Each a beat you’d never want to lose.

A nod was the best thing you could come up with. “You know you can use it.”

Your own breathing only bothered to calm down when you leaned in and smiled against his cheek.

As your knee found the bed to rest beside his thigh, your lips found the place below his ear where his pulse misbehaved. That reminded you to keep counting. He was acutely aware of every point of contact, the jumps between the beats of both hearts and the skips, and the way your voice dipped lower with each count.

“You have to ask.” How you managed to sound bolder had nothing to do with how much your hands were trembling.

“Otherwise you’ll sit here all night and look at me with those eyes and…” You trailed off when you realised you didn’t actually mind if he did just that.

His grin suggested that he considered playing coy; your name left his mouth instead, stripped of anything clever.

It swept away any quip you had lined up as you smiled before you could even reach for a word. “Count for me.”

So he did. “Four. Five. Six.” His breaths were tiny rumbles against your skin. You stayed, let him feel how close you were, how little the silk mattered. “Seven.”

Whatever minuscule effort of control you’d been holding slipped from your face.

He looked up and laughed. It was a quiet one, yet still happened to be ragged. “You can’t ever keep a straight face.”

His red-ribboned hands were already lifting until his arms made a shape above you. An impending trap? “Looks like you’ve got a new name badge.” They descended over you to pull you closer.

It definitely must have been a trap since it made you fall into his lap with your head buried in his neck. The laughter had spread all over the room that time.

His hands pulled at your waist, demanding closer attention, if such a thing were even possible. “Stay.”

“Make me.”

You thought your hands could find a surface to hold on to. They found their way to him instead. Treacherous. Both of you did stop counting, and you can’t remember who started again first.

***

She stops reading.

The last line on the screen stares back at her. The memory arrives in pieces and out of order. Breath first, warmth drags behind. Nothing more. *Did that happen? Or did you just give a better version?*

Buzzing of the flat white lights scrapes into her ear. The cold of the tiles seeps through her boots.

The Maz in the mirror feels like the wrong reader for the words on her phone. *The woman in the piece knew where she was. As awkward as it may be. You, on the other hand. You’re gripping the sink. Like it’s about to either shatter or run away.*

“Stay.” Her whisper lands in the porcelain. *No ribbon in sight. No bed. No warmth. No heartbeat. Stop thinking. It wasn’t even a proper ribbon.*

Cold pushes up harsher from the tiles underfoot. She looks up into the mirror and tries for a smile.

Her twinned reflection returns the gesture, only half a second behind.