“Those things are not always the same.”
“They are when I’m talking to you.”
That earned me the full smile.
Nova crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell whatever she had on her skin, something clean and soft with the last trace of her shampoo still in it.
“You brought a bag,” she said again, quieter this time, like she was trying it on.
“I did.”
“You packed in advance.”
“I did.”
“And you fully expected this to go your way.”
I set the plate down and put my hands at her waist, pulling her so she was pressed close to me.
“I was hopeful.”
She looked at me a second longer, the smile still there, but softer now.
“That sounds more like you.”
I let my thumbs move once against her sides. “Is it all right? Just for the night? I’m not trying to move in or anything.”
She slid her hands up my chest and around my neck with an ease that still caught me off guard no matter how many times she did it.
“You bought sambusas,” she said. “I’d be unreasonable to say no.”
I laughed then, and she smiled into it, and the space between us changed again, not in some sudden, dramatic way, just enough to remind me that this was still new and already beginning to feel familiar.
We ate in the kitchen, leaning more than sitting, talking through the day in the way people do when they already know each other’s habits and only need the details. I told her about Terrell, about the meeting, about the paper and the smile at the end of it. She listened with that particular stillness, not interrupting or reaching too quickly for commentary.
When I finished, she looked down at her plate for a second, then back at me.
“He’s going to remember that,” she said.
“What part?”
“The moment someone finally called it the right thing.”
I thought about Terrell’s face when I told him he wasn’t behind. About the way his body had eased before his words did.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think he will.”
She reached over and took the plate from my hand before I could set it in the sink myself. “You always come in here acting like you’re just dropping something off,” she said, rinsing both of them. “And then I turn around and realize you’ve rearranged the whole room.”
I leaned against the counter and watched her. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” she said. “You’re subtle. That’s how you get away with it.”
I smiled and let her have that.
Later, when we turned off the lights downstairs and went up, she walked ahead of me on the stairs with one hand trailing lightly along the wall, and I followed with the overnight bag in one hand and the full knowledge that I had been right to bring it.
The third floor was quiet when we stepped into it, the sofa waiting, the records still carrying the small signs of whatever she had been working through before I got there. She turned back toward me before I had fully set the bag down, and there was something in her face that made the whole day a good one.
