He cleared his throat. “Can I walk you to the door?”
I looked at him. He was gripping the steering wheel, jaw tight, the tendons in his forearms taut under his rolled sleeves. That was his version of asking to come in, wrapped in enough plausible deniability that I could say no without it being awkward. Giving me the out while his whole body was clearly fighting to stay in that seat.
That restraint was somehow hotter than everything he did in the elevator, and I hated that about him.
“You already know where everything is anyway,” I said.
He turned his head. I watched him process whether I meant it, whether this was an invitation or a joke.
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t make me say it twice.”
I got out and walked to the door, fumbling with my keys because my hands were still shaking. He was behind me before I finished turning the lock, close enough that his breath moved my hair.
Inside, my house felt smaller with him in it. Too tall for the space, too broad, his shoulders taking up the doorway before he stepped through. He looked around, taking in the couch, the bookshelves, the kitchen counter, and I watched him catalog the space I’d been living in for two years with the expression of a man who wasn’t sure if he was allowed to sit down.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, because one of us needed to act normal. “I have leftover pasta. Or I could make eggs. I’m good at eggs.”
“You don’t have to feed me, Andrea.”
“I’m not feeding you, I’m feeding myself and offering you some because I have manners. Unlike some people who stop elevators without warning.”
His mouth twitched. “Eggs sound good.”
So I made eggs. Scrambled, because that was the extent of my culinary ambition at 10 pm on a weeknight, and he sat at my tiny kitchen counter on a stool that was comically small for him, watching me cook. His knees were practically at his chest on that stool and I almost laughed but I was too aware of how close the kitchen was, how every time I turned from the stove I could feel the warmth of him two feet away.
“Your stove has a broken burner,” he said.
“I know. The left one’s been dead for six months. I keep meaning to call someone about it.”
“I could fix it.”
“You can fix a stove?”
“I can fix most things.”
“Big talk from a man who needed me to find a file on his own computer last week.”
He gave me a look that should have been annoyed but his eyes were warm and I turned back to the eggs before my face gave me away.
We ate on the couch because I didn’t have a dining table, plates on our laps, and the domesticity of it hit me somewhere unexpected. Finneas Kingsley eating scrambled eggs on my secondhand couch with his sleeves rolled up and his knees bumping mine every time he shifted. He ate everything, scraped the plate, and when I reached to take it from him our fingers touched on the edge and neither of us pulled away.
“Thanks,” he said. “For the eggs.”
“Don’t get used to it. My menu is limited. Eggs, pasta, toast, and cereal. That’s the full rotation.”
“I’ll take it.”
I set the plates on the coffee table and sat back. A foot of cushion between us. The couch that Fin used to curl up on, his head in my lap while I read, now occupied by the human version in a dark shirt and I really needed to stop staring at his goddamn forearms.
“So,” I said.
“So.”
“This is weird.”
“A little.”
