And that was enough.
She dropped her bag by the couch, pulled her laptop and notebook out, and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table.
Like this was her place.
I stood there for a second, hands in my pockets, not sure if I should stay or vanish. Then I turned toward the kitchen, giving her space, pretending to be busy, pretending not to be hyperaware of every tiny sound she made.
The soft thud of paper. The click of her pen. The quiet rhythm of pages turning.
She didn’t say anything, didn’t even glance up.
But then—her hand lifted.
No words, no text, just a small movement, fingers curling once, a silent come here.
So I went.
I sat down next to her. She didn’t look at me, just tapped her pen against a few pages of handwritten notes, then pointed to the laptop.
“You want me to type this out?” I asked quietly.
She nodded, eyes still fixed on her notes.
“All of it?”
This time, she turned slowly and gave me this look. A look that saidyou owe me. Not out of cruelty. Not even anger.
Just quiet truth.
I sighed, rolled my shoulders, and nodded back. “Yeah, okay.”
She slid the laptop toward me and went back to her notes, scribbling with her left hand, neat even though it wasn’t her dominant hand.
And I started typing. Each word she’d written, I copied. Didn’t change a single sentence. Didn’t dare.
And as the room filled with the sound of my typing and her steady writing, I realised how easy it was to fall into rhythm with her. Like this, working side by side, no yelling, no tension, was how it should’ve been from the start.
For once, it didn’t feel like I was trying to fix anything.
I was just… here. With her.
She’d been quiet for a while, just the scratch of her pen and the soft clicking of the keyboard between us. And honestly? I was proud of myself. I hadn’t messed anything up yet.
Or so I thought.
Because then she suddenly turned toward me, frown deep, her lips parting just slightly before she stumbled out,
“Y-you—”
I froze, blinking at her. “Me… what?”
She huffed, flipping a few pages of her notebook with her cast arm, then jabbed her finger at the screen.
The page number.
Shit.
“I—what?” I looked down at what I’d typed, then back at the notebook, then back at her. “You gave me the book open likethat,” I said, half-defensive, half-panicking. “I thought I was supposed to start there.”
