I could feel Benji’s pulse through the point of contact.
Or maybe that was mine.
The distinction seemed less important than the fact that I could feel it at all, and that my body’s response was not to flinch but to hold still.
Benji’s eyes met mine. They were dark in the stove light and very close.
He wasn’t performing. He wasn’t narrating. He was just looking at me, waiting, the way I waited with frightened animals, giving me room to come forward or retreat on my own terms.
“You fold it wrong,” I said quietly.
“There’s no wrong way to fold a blanket.”
“There are several wrong ways, and you’ve found most of them.”
His mouth quirked. “Your standards for blanket folding are unreasonable.”
“My standards are precise. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.”
We were still holding the blanket.
We were still touching.
My voice had dropped to something barely above a murmur, and the apartment was very quiet, and I was aware, with a clarity that felt almost clinical, that I was standing at the edge ofsomething. I knew that stepping forward would mean leaving a place where I’d lived for two years. I knew also that stepping back would mean staying in that lived-in space.
Both options were terrifying, but only one of them involved the warmth of Benji Kwon’s fingers on mine.
“Peter,” he said.
“Benj.”
“We’re still holding the blanket.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you going to let go?”
The question wasn’t about the blanket.
We both knew it wasn’t about the blanket.
It was about the half second, the space between wanting something and allowing yourself to reach for it, the flinch I’d been living inside like some prismatic snow globe since David died.
I looked at him.
His face in the stove light was open and patient and entirely without agenda.
He was giving me what he always gave me in the moments that mattered: time.
Time to assess, time to decide, time to arrive at whatever conclusion I was going to arrive at without pressure or performance.
“Not yet,” I said.
It was the most honest thing I’d said in two years.
