She came in and stayed Amber.

She'd been shifting to true form within minutes of arriving for the past week. Tonight she sat on my couch looking like the woman from the gym — platinum blonde, blue eyes, the body that turned heads in every room she walked into — and she was watching the television, and I was watching her.

Her hands were still. She normally talked with her hands.

I went back to the television.

---

An hour, maybe more. She'd loosened a little. Still hadn't shifted. Shoes off, legs tucked under her on the couch. The light from the kitchen reached just past the rug. The radiator clicked when it wanted to.

"How was your day," I said.

Not really a question, and she knew it. She knew the difference between me asking about the gym and me asking about the thing under the gym.

"Fine." The gym was quiet. She told me about a client who couldn't remember which day she'd booked. She'd checked the system twice and neither time matched, so she'd put the woman on the four o'clock and given her the apology smile. It was the kind of story that had actually happened and also the kind she'd pick because it was easy to tell.

"The scheduling thing work out?"

"Worked out."

She said something else about it. I listened, and I watched her hands.

---

She'd picked the show and then stopped watching it. I'd stopped when she stopped.

"Is it the kind of thing you need to handle," I said, "or the kind you already handled."

There was a beat before she answered. Not a long one. But I'd been watching her for six weeks now, and this beat had a decision in it.

"Already handled."

That wasn't already handled. That was *decided not to handle yet*, dressed up as the first one. She wasn't trying to fool me. She was trying to close a door without having the words for why.

"Okay," I said.

She looked at me. Checking if I meant it.

I meant it. She'd done something she wasn't ready to name. I could see that much from the couch. That was enough.

She went back to the television.

---

She shifted at some point in the next hour. No moment — same as always. She was Amber and then she wasn't, and the couch had a different shape on it. Crimson skin, white hair, wings folded, tail already finding the cushion. She was saying something about the choreography on screen being wrong, and I was agreeing because she was usually right.

Normal evening. Whatever had been tight in her earlier had mostly loosened. Not all the way. But she was here.

The tail came around my ankle. Warm, the usual place. She was mid-sentence when it happened and she didn't break the sentence. She never did.

I wasn't going to say anything about it.

She was talking about the blocking now, gesturing with both hands, and her tail was on my ankle, and the knives in the kitchen were still wrong, and I was going to do something about that eventually.

---

She stayed.

We both knew she was going to stay before either of us said anything. She shifted her weight into the couch in a way that meant she wasn't going anywhere.

Through the window I could see the parking structure. The light on the third level had been flickering for weeks. Still flickering.

I thought about what she'd said. *Already handled.* The pause before it. The stillness in her hands when she walked in. The form held for an hour. The way she'd checked my face after I said okay.

She'd done something. She'd done it without telling me. Then she'd sat on my couch and watched television, and let her tail find my ankle the way it always did.

I wasn't going to name it. The right move was the same one it had been for weeks.

I stayed very still.

The show's second act was failing, and she was about to tell me why. I leaned a little into the wing without deciding to. She let me.

I was going to listen.