It doesn't sting, for all Jake started the joke and Kira had meant to end it; but it's another drop of water on the duck's back, a hundred memories blurring together of clubs and apps, masc4masc and no asians under pictures of guys who blur just as easily into Jake. There's a sense of green in the apology, a single sliver of it in a sidewalk crack, opening leaves to the sun, telling Kira that isn't what this is, but he shrugs in a more subdued way than he's responded to anything else.

As if sensing the change, Aurora extricates herself from her new charges and wanders over to gently put the entire arch of his foot in her mouth, staring up with her dark eyes until Kira laughs softly and tugs himself free.

"I think I've had about five," he says, coming back to the conversation and refusing to sulk over a bunch of assholes he wouldn't have enjoyed anyway. He'd done just fine for himself over the years, confidence being a key. "And I did lose time," and more besides, in that setback. "It was almost spring, and I came here just before the blizzard snowed us in. In time to get one of those backpacks from you," he recalls, though he can't remember what, if anything, he'd given in turn.