He leans back against the counter, tea towel over his shoulder. Fuck he looks like a domestic God.He’s studying me like he’s trying to solve something without making it obvious.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
I dry the same fork twice. “You don’t get to be perceptive now.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” I agree quietly. “It’s not.”
The air thickens. He shifts closer to grab another dish and the back of his hand skims the inside of my wrist. It’s barely anything, a whisper of contact but stomach drops anyway. He freezes and so do I.
“We’re good,” he says carefully, like he’s reminding himself more than me.
“Yeah,” I reply.
He overcorrects immediately, stepping back, increasing the space between us like proximity itself is dangerous. It shouldn’t sting but it absolutely does.
“You don’t have to act like I’m going to jump you,” I say before I can stop myself. Although every single part of me wants to jump him and climb him like a tree. But I can’t tell him that.
His eyebrows lift. “I don’t.”
“You are.”
“I’m trying not to make things complicated.”
“That’s very noble of you.”
He gives me a look with an almost smile. “You’re welcome.”
There’s tension in it. A spark we’re both pretending not to see.
“You know,” I add lightly, “most people manage to wash dishes without looking like they’re defusing a bomb.”
“Most people aren’t me,” he replies.
He’s right. Most people aren’t him. No other man is him and that’s what is killing me about this whole thing.
We fall into rhythm after that. Plates stacked, cutlery dried, occasional accidental touches.
When Maggie finally wanders in to inspect progress, she looks between us with far too much knowing in her eyes. “Everything all right?” she asks innocently.
“Perfect,” Rory and I answer in unison.
She smiles in a way that suggests she believes absolutely none of that.
I hang the tea towel back on its hook and step around Rory to reach the cupboard and put the last of the plates away. I find myself wondering why he’s pulling back so hard when it felt like we’d finally cracked something open. I thought we would just slip back into how we have always been. Able to accidentally touch and it not feel like electrocution. Able to be in a room together and not feel like we need to run the other way.
If this is friendship, it feels… wrong. It feels more like restraint. And I’m not entirely sure which of us is more afraid of what happens if we stop holding it.
Chapter thirty
Rory
The first school run back after Christmas always feels more chaotic than every other day in the school calendar. It’s that shock to the system when routine reclaims you and the fairy lights have been boxed away and suddenly everyone is meant to behave like normal humans again. Like they haven’t existed on cheese and chocolate for the last few weeks.
