"I know."
"Your neighbor's door is ten feet away."
"She's eighty-two and goes to bed at seven."
He laughed. It was low, strained. She kissed him again, and this time she took his hand from her hip and moved it. Down.Over the front of her jeans, pressing his palm flat against the seam, and his whole body went rigid.
"Charlie." Her name in his mouth, rough and undone.
His fingers found the button of her jeans. The zipper. His hand slid inside — warm, deliberate — and when his fingers found her center she dropped her head back against the door and bit down on her lip to keep from making a sound that would wake Mrs. Papadopoulos and her four cats.
He watched her face. That was what undid her, how hewatchedher. Reading every shift in her expression, adjusting when her breath hitched, staying when her hips pressed forward. He was paying attention. The way he paid attention to everything now. The way he'd learned to.
She grabbed the front of his shirt. Her other hand braced against the doorframe, knuckles white, her body tightening around his fingers. He kissed her neck, her jaw, the hollow beneath her ear, and whispered, "I've got you," and the words and his mouth and his hand all converged. She came with a shudder that buckled her knees.
He caught her. Held her upright, his arm around her waist, his hand still inside her jeans, gentling now. She pressed her face into his chest and breathed: ragged, aftershock breaths that she felt all the way down to her feet.
Dominic withdrew his hand slowly. Buttoned her jeans. Kissed her forehead. The tenderness of the gesture after what had just happened — the contrast between his mouth on her brow and where his fingers had been ten seconds ago — made her laugh. Breathless, disbelieving, drunk on him.
"Good night, Charlie," he said. Voice wrecked. Eyes dark. He stepped back.
"You're still leaving?"
"I'm still leaving." He was halfway down the stairs before she could respond. He turned at the landing, looked up at her. Shewas flushed, leaning against her door in a hallway that now felt like a crime scene. The expression on his face was equal parts agony and satisfaction. "Friday. Same booth."
"You're an evil man."
"I'm a patient man. There's a difference."
He disappeared down the stairs. She stood in the hallway for a long time, heart pounding. Aching with desire. With love that was ferociously crawling back to the surface.
His discipline drove her crazy. It also made her trust him in a way she hadn't trusted anyone since the altar.
The diner dates expanded. Coffee on Wednesday mornings at a place near the school. It wasn’t the fancy espresso bar she'd expected him to suggest, but the bodega on the corner that sold coffee in paper cups and pastries wrapped in cellophane. He'd show up at seven, buy her a coffee and a cheese danish, and sit with her on the bench outside P.S. 34 for twenty minutes before the buses arrived. Then he'd leave. No fanfare. No lingering. Just coffee, conversation, and the quiet work of being present.
Then lunch. He started bringing food to the Thursday meetings — not catered, not delivered by some service. He'd cook. The first time he showed up with a container of pasta and two forks, she'd stared at him.
"You cook?"
"I'm learning. I watched a YouTube video."
"You watched a YouTube video."
"Several YouTube videos.”
She picked up a fork. The pasta was slightly overcooked and the sauce was too garlicky, and it was the most thoughtful thing anyone had ever brought her.
Eric had been a brief knot to untangle. The first few weeks after Charlotte and Dominic's diner dates became public knowledge — which took approximately forty-eight hours, because P.S. 34's faculty grapevine was faster than broadband— there'd been an awkwardness. Dominic was stiff around Eric, and Eric was cautiously casual. The two of them orbited Charlotte's classroom like planets that couldn't share a gravitational field.
Charlotte had expected jealousy from Dominic. She'd gotten it: a tightness in his jaw when Eric leaned against her doorframe, a clipped politeness when they crossed paths in the hallway. But he didn't say anything. He didn't stake a claim, didn't make it weird, didn't do any of the possessive things she'd braced herself for.
The tension dissolved when Eric started dating Regina Walsh, the second-grade teacher with an infectious laugh. Charlotte spotted them in the faculty lounge one morning, Eric pouring Regina's coffee, Regina touching his arm while she laughed at something he'd said.
"Eric's smitten,” Kate observed, watching them. “He brought her a periodic table mug. With both their elements highlighted. Cute or cringe?"
"Both. Definitely both."
The next time Dominic encountered Eric, the tension was gone. Eric shook his hand. “Good to see you, man.”
