The sound of his first name in the open air made something careful in his face go warm. "Isaiah," he agreed.
They went opposite ways under the same rain.
Priya demanded every detail the moment Claire walked in with wet hair and a puppy smelling like river grass.
Claire gave them: the lab mix, the boundary restated in civilian clothes, the rain check with a lock, the way Isaiah had said Especially then. Priya listened with the stillness of a friend who knew when not to joke first.
Then she said, "I'm proud of you for not turning it into a chase."
"I wanted to," Claire admitted. "A little. The old pattern. If I perform enough likability, the rule bends."
"And he didn't bend."
"He hinged. There's a difference." Claire toweled Nash's paws. "He left a door with a date on it. Not a door with a maybe forever."
Priya poured tea. "Your mother will ask if he's 'serious' the second you mention him."
"I'm not mentioning him to my mother. My mother still thinks Ethan was 'sensitive.'"
"Your mother thinks ghosts are sensitive if they send playlists."
Claire snorted, then quieted. "What if by the time the chart closes, the feeling closes too?"
"Then you got practice wanting something without collapsing," Priya said. "And Nash still needs vaccines either way."
That, somehow, was the most romantic sentence of the day.
Isaiah did not tell Gwen about the park.
He told Amina, because Amina could hold a secret without turning it into a campaign.
They sat on their mother's back steps Sunday evening after dinner, plates balanced on their knees, the salad Isaiah brought already half-raided by cousins who claimed they "didn't do greens" and then did. Inside, laughter rose and fell. Outside, the air smelled like wet brick and the neighbor's grill.
Amina nudged him with her elbow. "Bat boy got a crush."
"I have a rain check with ethical constraints."