Fuck it.
I kiss her.
It’s not smooth. It’s not romantic. I just lean forward and press my lips to hers, quick and clumsy, more collision than kiss. My glasses bump against her cheekbone. Her surprised exhale puffs against my skin.
I pull back immediately, heart hammering.
“Sorry,” I blurt. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—that was—I didn’t mean to just?—”
“Logan.”
“I should have asked first. I know I should have asked. I don’t know what I was thinking.”And there it is. Proof that I’m exactly as broken as I always suspected. Can’t even kiss someone without turning it into a disaster.“I wasn’t thinking.That’s the problem. I never think when it comes to you and I just?—”
“Logan.”
“—keep making everything worse and now I’ve probably ruined the sliver of closeness we had and?—”
“Logan.”
I stop talking. She’s smiling. Why is she smiling?
“I wanted you to,” she says.
“You did?”
I run the words through my brain twice, looking for the catch. The qualifier. Thebutthat has to be coming.
It doesn’t come.
“Yeah.” Her shoulders drop, tension releasing. “Would you like to do it again? Maybe with less panic this time?”
I stare at her. “We have a meeting.”
She laughs. “I don’t mind being a few minutes late if you don’t.”
A swarm of what-ifs crowds my brain, but all I say is, “I would really like that.” My voice comes out calm, which is a lie—my hands are shaking and my brain is pure blue-screen.
Taking my glasses off carefully, she sets them on the table and then closes the rest of the gap, one hand still flat on my chest, the other coming up to cup my jaw. Her thumb grazes the edge of my chin, slow and careful, and then her lips are on mine.
This kiss is nothing like the first.
No panic. No accidental collision of facial features. She’s patient with me, calibrating pressure and angle, as though she’s tuning a system for maximum stability. Guiding me. Showing me exactly what to do, how to lean, how to breathe into it.
I should be embarrassed. I’m a thirty-four-year-old man being taught how to kiss like a teenager at prom.
But I’m not. Because she’s not making me feel like a student or a project or a problem to be solved. She’s just showing me. Trusting me to follow.
It’s not scary at all. It’s easy.
I have a vivid memory of installing a processor in grad school. If you rush it, you’ll bend the pins and the whole motherboard is screwed. But if you line it up and let the weight do the work, everything clicks into place.
That’s what this is. Her lips soft, the rhythm cautious but electric, and the sudden, precise sense that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
It makes me think that I was never broken. I was just installed incorrectly.
When she finally pulls back, I’m dizzy but not out of breath. I want to ask her if it was good, if I did it right, if this means anything. But all I can see is her smile, wide and bright, and the soft flush that creeps across her cheeks.
“Well, then,” she says, voice a little rough. “Look who’s not a malfunctioning robot.”
