"Don't do the thing where you check on me. Where you read my face and ask the careful question and wait for the answer you already know."
"What do you want me to do instead?"
Her chin lifts.
"Stay here," she says. "Stay in the room."
"I'm in the room."
"I know."
She reaches for me and traces the ink on my forearm, her fingertip finding the compass rose on the inside of my wrist without searching. The cardinal points sit below the cuff of my shirt, and my pulse kicks hard under her touch.
When we were sixteen, she used to trace the same lines while I studied on my bed and pretended not to notice she was there instead of in her own room. Same compass. Same finger. My pulse giving me away.
"We can't," I say.
The words are automatic.
"We already did," she says. "Once."
Once. Summer. Her bedroom. The door locked. My mouth between her legs, the sounds she made, the way her hand gripped the sheets. I pulled back after. Two sentences shut it away:We can't do that again.And her, quiet:I know.Then the door, the hall, my room. We never mentioned it after that. We piled five years of distance on top of a foundation that was already cracked.
Her finger is on my wrist, on the compass, on the pulse point underneath. Her fingertip rests on the exact place where the needle meets the cardinal north, and I feel the pressure of it all the way up my arm.
"That was five years ago," I say.
"I know how long it's been."
"Maya—"
"Don't say step. Don't say complicated. Don't say any of the words you've been saying for five years to keep this in the drawer."
Her hand moves from my wrist to my chest, flat over my sternum. My heartbeat knocks hard against her palm.
"You've been taking care of me for a week," she says. "The pasta. The spare room. The key. The way you walk past my door at night loud enough that I can track you."
"I'm not asking you to take care of me right now."
"What are you asking?"
"I'm asking you to stop pretending you don't want this."
I kiss her slowly, carefully, with my hand on the side of her neck and my thumb along her jaw. I keep the pressure light enough for her to pull back.
She comes closer instead.
Her hands slide into my hair, the towel slipping from her shoulder to the floor between us, and the sound she makes is so quiet I feel it more than hear it.
I remember that sound from a locked bedroom five years ago.
I lift her onto the counter. Her legs wrap around me. The sweatshirt rides up, and her skin is warm underneath, at her waist, the curve of her hip, the ridge of her ribs where I can feel her breathing change.
"Cole." My name in her mouth.
"I've got you," I say.
The words are out before I can stop them.
