"I had it," I say, taking the box from him. My voice comes out flatter than I intended, but I don't correct it.
"Of course. Sorry." He steps back, but only slightly. The space between us is still too small. He's in my aisle, in my space, holding a shopping basket with lightbulbs and duct tape and a padlock, and everything about him is precise—the way he stands, the way he tilts his head, the way he apologized. Too precise. Like a man who's practiced being casual and almost pulled it off.
Almost.
"You weld." He's looking at my hands. Not a question. He's clocked the burns, the calluses, the mark on my forearm. Reading me like a page, quickly and without permission.
"I'm a sculptor," I say, and immediately wish I hadn't, because the word feels too intimate for this moment. Too much of an offering to a man who already seems to be taking more than he's been given.
Something shifts behind his eyes when I say it. A sharpening. A hunger, almost, though that's a strange word for a hardware store aisle. Like I've confirmed something he already knew, or given him something he was waiting for.
"What kind of sculpture?" he asks.
"Steel, mostly. Mixed media."
"That sounds physical."
"It is."
The conversation is banal. The words are nothing. But underneath them, something is happening that I don't like and can't stop. He's watching me with an attention that feels practiced, calibrated—not the clumsy staring of a man who finds a woman attractive, but something more deliberate. More considered. Like he's already decided something about me that I haven't been consulted on.
"I've seen you before," I say. "At Hector's. The bodega."
"I've just moved to the area. I'm setting up a space nearby." He extends his hand. "Damien Cross."
I take it because not taking it would be strange. His grip is firm, warm, and he holds the handshake for exactly the right duration. Exactly right. The kind of social calibration that most people don't manage because most people aren't thinking about it. He is.
And then, in the second before he lets go, his thumb shifts. A fraction of an inch across the back of my hand. Subtle. Almost invisible.
Deliberate.
Something warm moves through my stomach, and I hate that it does, because this man is standing in my space with his too-perfect handshake and his too-focused eyes and his assumption that I needed help reaching a shelf, and I should be annoyed. I am annoyed.
I'm also aware of exactly where his thumb touched my skin.
"Jess Rowe," I say, pulling my hand back.
"What are you working on, Jess Rowe?" He says my full name like he's tasting it, and the intimacy of that—a stranger savoring your name—lands somewhere between flattering and presumptuous.
I tell him about the show. Briefly. The group exhibition, four weeks out. He asks where, and I tell him, and he nods with that filing-away quality that I've already noticed and already distrust.
"I'll look for it," he says.
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to. I'd like to."
There it is again. That certainty. The calm, absolute confidence of a man who's used to the world arranging itself around his preferences. I've known men like this—not many, because my world doesn't intersect with wealth and power very often, but enough. Men who enter a room and assume it belongs to them. Men who reach past you for things without asking.
"I should go," I say, gesturing toward the register.
"Of course." He steps back, giving me space, and the space feels like a concession he's choosing to make rather than something I'm entitled to.
I pay for my supplies and leave. He's still in the store—I can see him through the window, and I look for one second longer than I should before I turn away.
The evening air is cold on my face. I walk fast, the bag of welding supplies heavy in my hand, and I'm thinking about him in a way that irritates me.
Not the warmth. Not the way his thumb felt on my skin, though I'm aware of that too, annoyingly. I'm thinking about the control. The precision of him. The way every word, every gesture, every modulation of distance felt managed. Curated. Like a performance designed to look effortless.
