21. Stephanie #2
“You once called the hotel because the air conditioning was set to 72 instead of 70,” I reminded him.
“Two degrees makes a significant difference in sleep quality.”
“Two degrees makes you a diva.”
“I prefer ‘thermally sensitive.’”
I was laughing again. How did he keep making me laugh? I’d spent three years stacking up every reason I had to hate him, and he’d knocked half the pile over in an hour.
The conversation drifted to medical dramas, which Kevin despised on principle and I watched religiously. He ranted about the inaccuracies in their portrayal of emergency medicine. I defended them as entertainment, not education.
“No one actually yells ‘stat’ in real hospitals,” he said.
“But it’s dramatic.”
“It’s inaccurate.”
“Drama beats accuracy,” I said around a mouthful of turkey.
“Not in medicine.”
“In television, Kevin. We’re talking about television.”
He sighed and set his plate on the floor. “My therapist says I need to let go of my need to correct factual errors.”
“You’ve got a therapist?”
The question came out before I could stop it. He’d mentioned therapy before, but always in passing, folded into a sentence about work or weather. Never directly, never with his eyes on mine.
“Since about three weeks after you left.” He set down his sandwich for real this time, all of his attention swinging toward me. “I was spiraling. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without wanting to break it. My mother staged an intervention.”
“Tris?”
“She showed up at my apartment with a list of therapists and refused to leave until I called one.” He smiled slightly at the memory. “She sat on my couch for six hours. Brought her own lunch. I caved around dinner time.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She’s persistent.” He looked at me, and there was no shield up, nothing between his face and mine. “I’ve been going ever since. Twice a week at first. Now just once. It helps.”
“With what?”
“Everything. Understanding why I made the choices I made. Learning to be present instead of always planning the next thing. Practicing emotional expression.”
“Practicing?”
“You once accused me of having only two emotions. Working and asleep.”
I winced. I remembered saying it, and the kitchen it happened in, the granite countertop, the way he’d blinked at me and then checked his watch. “I said that during a fight. I didn’t mean-”
“You meant it. And you were right.” He shifted closer on the floor, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him.
“I spent so many years being the successful one, the focused one, the one who never let feelings interfere with goals. I didn’t know how to be anything else. My therapist is teaching me.”
“Teaching you what?”
“How to feel things without immediately trying to fix them. How to be present with someone without planning the next ten steps. How to say what I actually mean instead of what I think people want to hear.”
The lights came back on.
The sudden brightness was startling. I blinked against it, the whole room resolving into color and edges again, and found Kevin’s face inches from mine. His eyes were blue and intense and fixed on me with an expression that made my breath catch somewhere behind my ribs.
“Steph,” he said softly.
I should have pulled away. Should have made a joke, broken the tension, retreated to the safe ground I’d spent three years fortifying.
Instead, I leaned in.
I meant to kiss him. I really did. But at the last second, some stubborn part of me rebelled, the part that still remembered eleven unanswered calls, and instead of pressing my lips to his, I bit his lower lip.
He groaned. His forehead dropped against mine.
“Steph.”
“Mmm?”
“That wasn’t a kiss,” he said, his voice gone rough.
“I know.”
I licked the spot where I’d bitten him, tasting mustard and warmth, and felt him shudder against me. His hands came up to grip my waist, pulling me closer over the plates and the wine-stained rug.
“You’re killing me,” he breathed.
“Good.”
Neither of us moved. Foreheads touching. Breathing the same air.
It was so hard to control myself. Every cell in my body was begging me to close the distance, to taste him properly, to let this become what it so desperately wanted to become. His thumb moved once against my hip, slow, and I felt it everywhere.
But I wasn’t ready. Not yet. Wanting him had never been my problem. Trusting him was.
“You should go,” I whispered.
He pulled back. His eyes searched my face, reading it the way he used to read charts, looking for the thing I wasn’t saying.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
He stood. Gathered his things, his phone, his keys, the plate he insisted on carrying to the sink. I walked him to the door, still wearing his hoodie over his shirt, the sleeves swallowing my hands.
“Are you planning to return that?” he asked, nodding at the Johns Hopkins logo peeking out from beneath the hoodie’s collar.
I closed the door in his face.
Through the wood, I heard him laugh. A real laugh, warm and surprised, the kind I hadn’t heard from him in years.
Then his voice, quieter now, right up against the other side of the door. “Whatever you need, Steph. Anything. Just call me. Don’t hang up next time.”
I heard him lean against the door. The soft thump of his forehead against the wood, matching mine.
“That line,” he said. “It’s just for you. I changed numbers for everything else, so that phone only rings for you, gorgeous. I’m sorry it took me too long to do it.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks, hot and sudden. I pressed my hand flat against the door, right where I imagined his head would be, and I could almost feel the weight of him through it.
“Good night,” he whispered.
I heard his footsteps cross the porch. His car door open and close. The engine start and fade away down the wet street until the night was silent again.
I slid down the door and sat on the floor, his hoodie wrapped around me, his words echoing in the dark.
That phone only rings for you.
He’d reached into my chest and closed his hand around my heart, and I already knew he wasn’t going to let go. What terrified me was that I no longer wanted him to.