I watch him do the thing he does. The slow read of a space. He's cataloging. Not judging. Just learning the woman he flew across a country for.
I set my keys down. Take my jacket off. My feet are freezing from the sidewalk but I don't want to break the moment by finding socks.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Come here."
He comes.
I wrap my arms around his waist and put my cheek to his chest and let him hold me in my own kitchen for the first time. His hand finds the back of my neck. The other one settles low on my back.
"You flew for me."
"Yeah."
"In the middle of the night."
"Yeah."
"Nobody's done that for me."
"Well. Now somebody has."
I feel his heartbeat through his shirt.
"Stay."
"I'm staying."
"In Toronto."
"For however long you need."
"No. I mean. Tonight. Right now. Stay. Don't go to a hotel."
"I was never going to a hotel. I said that for you. I was always going to end up here."
"You're infuriating."
"Yeah."
"I love you."
"Keep saying that."
"I love you."
I feed him.
It's two thirty in the morning and I feed him because my grandmother raised me to feed a man who has traveled for you, and I'm not about to unlearn that on the night my life just changed.
I scramble eggs in the cast iron. Cut up a tomato I bought three days ago that somehow hasn't died. Toast bread. He sits at my tiny counter on a stool that looks too small for him and watches me cook and does not offer to help and does not ask questions. He has learned, in six days, that I feed people when my chest is too full for words.
I slide the plate in front of him.
He eats.
