What We Left Untouched The parking lot at the Kroger smelled like wet asphalt and discount perfume. June Ellis crouched behind a shopping cart, talking to a stray cat that had one ear and an attitude to match. "You are right," she said. "The man in the yellow jacket is a bad influence. But he tipped in cash, so what am I supposed to do, judge him from a moral high ground he cannot even see from here?" The cat blinked slowly. It was the most understanding response June had received all day. A pickup truck pulled into the spot beside her. The driver's window rolled down. A man sat behind the wheel, thin, wearing a cardigan that had seen better decades. He looked at June. June looked at him. "You must be June," he said. "I am. And you are the guy my father married me to. Which is a weird thing to say to someone you have met exactly once, at a funeral." "I know." "Did you bring the car?" "I did." "Good. Because I have three pizza deliveries to make before midnight and if I am late again my boss is going to start charging me for his disappointment." He turned off the engine. "I will help." "You do not have to—" "I know what I do not have to do. I am choosing to help." June stood up. She was heavier than she used to be. Her knees hurt. She was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. She got into the truck and did not look at him the whole drive to the first address. They existed in the same house for two weeks without speaking much. June delivered pizzas from six to ten. Sebastian taught English at the high school from eight to three. They occupied the kitchen at different times, drinking from different mugs, pretending not to notice the other's existence. On the fourteenth day, June came home at midnight with two cold pizzas and a box of failed drawings. She spread them on the kitchen table: characters with no faces, landscapes with no horizon, a series of hands that all looked the same. Sebastian was already there. He looked at the drawings for a long time. "They are bad," he said. June set down the pizzas. "That is the most honest thing anyone has said to me in months." "They have no focus. Every character looks like you drew them while thinking about something else." "That is because I was." "Stop thinking about something else." June looked at him. "That is not helpful." "Try it anyway." He picked up one of the drawings. "This hand. Whose hand is it?" "Mine, I think. Or someone's. It is a hand." "Whose hand do you want it to be?" June felt something tighten behind her ribs. "I do not know." "Yes, you do. You just do not want to admit it." He put the drawing down. "Draw the hand you want it to be. Not the one you have." June sat at the table. Sebastian poured himself coffee from the pot and sat across from her. They worked in silence for two hours. When she finished, the hand on the paper was different. Better. Real. "Again," Sebastian said. June drew again. The email came on a Tuesday. June was at the kitchen table, eating cereal out of a bowl that said WORLD'S OKAYEST MOM despite the fact that June had never been a mother. Sebastian was grading essays in the living room, the glow of the desk lamp making him look like a man in a painting about scholarly melancholy. June read the email twice. Then a third time. "Well?" Sebastian asked without looking up from his papers. "A publisher. In New York. They want my comic. All of it. But I have to move there. For six months. To work with them." Sebastian stopped grading. He set down his pen. He looked at the wall. He looked at the floor. He looked at June. "That is good," he said. June waited for the rest of it. It did not come. "That is what you wanted, isn't it?" he asked. "I wanted to draw. I did not want to leave." "You can draw here." "Can I?" June set down her spoon. "Can I really draw here, Sebastian? In a town where nobody cares about my drawings except you, and even you care about them in that quiet, patient way that makes me feel like a project instead of a person?" "I care about you," he said. "Not the drawings." June stared at him. She had spent twenty-eight years being told she was too much and not enough. She had never been told she was a person. "What will you do if I go?" she asked. "I will keep teaching. I will keep living here. I will miss you." He paused. "But I will not stop you." June did not go to New York. She told Sebastian this over breakfast on a Saturday morning. He was reading the paper. The coffee was bad. The toast was burnt. It was the most honest morning either of them had experienced in a long time. "I am not going," June said. Sebastian lowered the paper. "Why?" "Because this town is not as bad as I thought. Because you graded my drawings instead of mocking them. Because the cat from the Kroger parking lot comes by every morning and I have started naming him after characters I am trying to draw." She paused. "And because going to New York felt like running. Staying feels like choosing." Sebastian set down the paper. He looked at her hands—thick, chapped, covered in pencil marks. He looked at her face—round, tired, determined. "You are choosing to stay," he repeated. "I am." "Are you sure?" June picked up her cereal bowl and examined it. "WORLD'S OKAYEST MOM. I feel like that applies to a lot of things." Sebastian almost smiled. "You are okay, June." "I know," she said. "I am more than okay." After breakfast, they sat in the kitchen together. No one was speaking. No one needed to. On the table between them sat two empty coffee mugs, a stack of drawings, and the quiet understanding that staying was sometimes the bravest thing a person could do.

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