I pick up my own slice and stare at it, the earlier conversation sitting unfinished between Grayson and me like a door left open. I can feel him still watching. Waiting.
I take a bite and say nothing.
He lets me have the silence, which is somehow the most unsettling thing he’s done all day.
The drive back is quiet.Ethan lasts approximately eight minutes before going completely limp in his car seat, mouth slightly open as he sleeps.
I look out the passenger window and try not to think about Grayson’s words or the kiss. I don’t understand this man. And I don’t want to. I especially want to forget that the kiss ever happened.
The problem is my body hasn’t gotten the memo that it was a mistake. My lips still feel the pressure of his. My hair still remembers his hand fisting in it. There was nothing tentative about the way he kissed me, and I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed like that.
The city lights slide past the window.
I press my knees together and stare very hard at a traffic light.
“You’re quiet,” Grayson says.
“I’m always quiet.”
“Not usually.” He changes lanes. “Usually you’re explaining to me in great detail why I’m wrong about something.”
“Maybe I’m tired.”
He doesn’t push it. We drive the rest of the way in silence, and it is somehow worse because the silence is comfortable. It shouldn’t be comfortable. Nothing about this should be comfortable.
We’re two blocks from my building when Ethan stirs.
“Dad.” His voice is small and urgent. “I have to pee.”
Grayson glances at me.
I look at the clock on the dashboard. Then I look at my building coming up on the right.
I know what I’m about to say, and I already regret it. “I live right there. He can use mine.”
My apartment looks worse at night.
The elevator is broken, so we take the stairs.
I’m acutely aware of every scuff on the walls as we climb. Every flickering bulb. The carpet on the second floor landing that’s worn so thin in the middle you can see the concrete underneath. I’ve stopped noticing these things. I walk past them every day without registering them. But right now, with Grayson Wolfe’s footsteps behind me, I notice every single one.
I get my key in the lock on the second try.
The first thing I see when I open the door is the gap where the bookshelf used to be. Then the indentations in the carpet where the dining table stood before I sold it. Then the single secondhand couch sitting in the center of a room that is clearly meant to hold more furniture than it does.
I don’t look at him.
I drop my keys on the hook by the door and keep moving because if I move, I don’t have to stand here and watch him take it all in.
“Bathroom?” Grayson asks.
“Down the hall. First door.”
He takes Ethan and disappears, and I let out a slow breath. Then I go to the kitchen because standing in my own living room feeling self-conscious about it is not something I’m willing to do.
I fill the kettle. I pull two mugs down from the cabinet. I focus on the familiar small motions of making coffee because they give my hands something to do and my brain something to track that isn’t the sound of Grayson’s footsteps coming back down the hall.
They stop at the kitchen doorway.
