Not knowing felt easier. Even if it didn’t feel better.
So I didn’t text him.
I just let the days settle back into their usual shape and tried to fit myself into them again, even though something about it didn’t sit quite right anymore.
“Seriously,” Janine said one afternoon, snapping me out of it as I wiped down the counter longer than necessary. “It’s been over a week. How was the wedding?”
I glanced up at her, already knowing where this was heading.
“I’ve given you time,” she added, leaning her elbows on the counter. “That was generous of me, by the way. So. Talk.”
“I’m working,” I said automatically, reaching for the stack of cups beside the sink.
“Uh-huh,” she replied. “And I’m not distracting you at all right now.”
I shot her a look, but she didn’t even pretend to be affected by it.
The door chimed, the sound cutting cleanly through the café, and I knew before I even looked up that it was him. Dane.
He looked different. His hair was less styled than it had been at the wedding, and there was a hint of stubble that had grown into a neatly trimmed beard, changing the line of his jaw just enough to make me stare longer than I should have.
His eyes looked sharper too, more defined under the café light as they settled on me.
Everything else seemed to fade into the background: the noise, the movement, Janine behind me, even the counter between us. There was only him standing there, and the sudden, inconvenient memory of what it had felt like to be close to him.
I had the ridiculous urge to step around the counter, pull him by the collar, and forget for a moment that we were supposed to be acting normal.
And judging by the way his gaze held mine just a second too long before shifter briefly to Janine, I wasn’t entirely convinced I was the only one thinking it.
Janine, of course, noticed immediately. A slow, knowing grin followed, and I already knew she had decided she wasn’t going to let that go.
I straightened instinctively and reached for the nearest stack of cups, slipping into my barista voice before she could say whatever she was clearly about to say.
“Do you want the usual?” I asked Dane, keeping my tone light.
His gaze was still on me, like he hadn’t fully decided whether to follow the shift I’d just made or ignore it altogether. Then his attention flicked briefly to Janine, and something in the moment seemed to click.
“Uh, yeah. Sure,” he said.
Janine leaned forward on the counter.
“So,” she said brightly, far too brightly. “How was the wedding?”
My head turned sharply toward her.Janine, no.
Dane blinked, clearly caught off guard for half a second, but instead of picking up on the warning I was silently trying to send him, he leaned casually on the counter, mimicking her.
“It was fine,” he said easily. “They believed us. I think we really sold it.”
Janine hummed. “And the food?”
“Good. Though if it were mine, I’d probably go with something more comfort-focused. Less formal.” He glanced briefly toward me. “Right?”
If it were mine.
The way he said it made something shift in me. If it were him. If it were us. As if there was already a version of this that was real and not something carefully constructed around pretending.
It was easy to imagine, easy in a way I hadn’t let myself consider too often, even though it had been there in the background more than I cared to admit over the past week, maybe longer if I was honest with myself.
