The door to the hallway creaked open, and we both froze as two girls from my floor, Rachel and Hannah, stuck their heads in, looking wildly confused. Tino went back to waving the magazine as fast as possible as if he wanted to prove to them that he was actually doing something to fix the situation while I smiled like everything was normal and we didn’t both look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
“Uh… everything okay in here?” Hannah asked.
“Fine,” I said, too quickly. “Totally fine. Just… experimental crepes.”
They clearly weren’t convinced and I couldn’t exactly blame them, all things considered. So I did what I was best at and diverted: “Hey, Hannah, I meant to tell you—I got more of Jude’s clothes when he came to visit me last week. I already gave away some of them yesterday but you could come by my room later tonight to see if you wanted any of what I have left.”
Hannah was one of the biggest fans of Take Five that I knew, so I wasn’t surprised at all that she took the bait hook, line, and sinker. Her face immediately brightened and she said, “Thanks, Lilah!” and walked out like everything had been resolved. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d completely tuned out the fire alarm as she mentally pictured wearing Jude Turner’s shirt. Rachel looked a little more hesitant but she followed her friend out, letting the door shut softly behind her and leaving us in the shrieking chaos.
As soon as they were out of sight, I let my smile drop off and buried my face in my hands. “I want to die.”
“It’s still not turning off!” Tino yelled.
“Well, keep fanning.”
“My arm’s getting tired.”
“Use the other one.”
“They’re both tired!”
The beeping seemed like it was getting louder and louder with every passing beat. I looked around, desperate to do something else to help but not sure what it should be, until I spotted the window. I shoved the window open as far as it would go. The cold night air hit my face, carrying the faint smell of winter and pine—or maybe I was imagining that because a moment later, all I could smell again was smoke.
I spun back around to face Tino, who was now using the magazine in one hand and the dishtowel in the other like that was going to help anything. His shirt had ridden up just slightly as he reached, exposing a sliver of skin above his waistband, and I immediately pretended to find something fascinating in the sink.
The alarm finally sputtered into silence and the quiet that followed was almost deafening. We both stood there, breathing hard, surrounded by the wreckage: flour on the counters, batter dripping off the edge of the stove, a trail of footprints leading to the window. Tino dropped his arms, letting the battered magazine and dish towel fall to the ground and fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it), his shirt fell back into place, blocking that strip of skin from view.
“Told you we could handle it,” Tino said proudly as if the room wasn’t on par with a natural disaster.
I laughed—a helpless, exhausted laugh. “We didn’t handle it. The smoke alarm gave up out of pity.”
He grinned wider. “Still counts.”
I leaned back against the counter, the adrenaline finally fading into something warm and fuzzy under my skin. “We’re never cooking again.”
“Agreed.”
I looked at him then—really looked—and for one dizzy, dangerous second, all I could think was how easy it felt. How natural. How stupidly good it felt to laugh with him, to have flour in my hair and chaos in the air and him right there in the middle of it all. Then he wiped a streak of flour off my cheek with his thumb, gentle and casual, and my brain stopped working entirely.
“You had an eyelash,” he murmured. Like that was something notable when I was completely doused in flour.
Maybe he just wanted an excuse to touch you.
“Oh,” I said, like an idiot. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
His hand lingered just long enough that I forgot how to breathe. For a second, the kitchen was still—the kind of stillness that makes you aware of every tiny thing: the faint buzz of the fridge, the hum of the yellow light, the sound of my own heartbeat tripping over itself.
Tino’s hand was still on my cheek, thumb dusted with flour, eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. His grin had faded into something quieter. I could smell the faint scent of his soap under the smoke—clean, sharp, something like cedar. It made my head swim.
And just like that, the air between us shifted. The laughter drained out, replaced by something softer and unspoken, the kind of tension that made it hard to tell if the room had actually gone warmer or if it was just me.
He swallowed, eyes flicking down for half a second before coming back to mine. “Lilah…”
My pulse stuttered. “Yeah?”
He smiled—barely—like he couldn’t help it. “You’ve got, uh—” he gestured vaguely toward my hair, “—flour. Everywhere.”
