Need anything?
He checks in without smothering.Shows up without hovering.Some evenings, I pull into the driveway after work and he’s there on the porch steps, boots planted wide, a takeout bag beside him and that dark, steady gaze lifting the second my car turns in.
Other nights he meets me at the diner or the ice cream shop after my shift and walks me to my car like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Once, he appears at the ice cream shop with a tool kit because my passenger-side back door has been sticking for two weeks and I made the mistake of mentioning it in passing.
“I said it was fine, Quinn and I made due.”I tell him as he leans into the door frame.
He doesn’t look up.“It wasn’t.”
“How do you know?”I challenge.
“It squeaks.And Quinn likes to be independent opening her own door not waiting on you.Needed to oil it.”
“That is not a medical diagnosis.”
“Didn’t say it was.”
And then, somehow, it stops squeaking and it doesn’t stick either.Because of course it does.Because apparently Tucker can fix things with the same competence he uses for everything else.
I get used to him in pieces.The way he always sits facing the door.The way he notices when I’m tired before I say it.The way he asks Quinn questions like her opinions matter.The way he never, ever pushes.That part matters most.
After the kiss in my kitchen, I expected him to lean harder.
Press more.
Assume.
Instead, he continues to show up giving me space and somehow makes that kiss feel more intimate than if he’d backed me against the wall and taken what was easy.
That should not make me want him more.It does.
I learn little things.He hates mayonnaise.Drinks coffee black.
Has traveled enough that he says things likethis place has the best shrimp on the Gulfwith the authority of a man who has actually tested the claim.
He sleeps lightly.He doesn’t talk about his childhood.He likes old trucks, clean engines, and Quinn’s weird knock-knock jokes even when they make no sense at all.
He laughs more than people would expect.Not often.
But enough.
And every time he does, it feels earned.The age gap still sits in the back of my mind.Twenty-five years doesn’t disappear just because he looks at me like I’m the only thing in the room.It doesn’t vanish because he’s gentle with Quinn or because he texts me good morning or because he kisses me like he means it.
Sometimes I catch us reflected in a diner window or in the shiny glass of the ice cream freezer and it hits me all over again.
He looks like certainty.
I still feel like I’m building myself and somehow he’s become a staple in that.
Quinn asks if Tucker is coming for dinner regularly now, or Marlaina gives me a sly smile during school pickup, or I get one of his short, impossible texts that somehow warms my entire chest, and the doubts quiet for a while.
They don’t disappear.Just he quiets the storm inside me.
And then the calls start.At first, I tell myself it’s spam.The first one comes on a Tuesday while I’m wiping down the diner counter before the lunch rush.
Unknown number.
