22. Esperr #2
As I move down the hall, I can see that he moved the cushions back onto the couch and shoved the furniture back where it belongs. His bag sits next to the chair, with his jacket draped over the arm.
Following the smell, I walk into the kitchen to find him at the stove with his back to me. One hand is braced on the counter, the other stirring around in the pot, with a dish towel thrown over his shoulder.
Something about that is extremely hot.
And also deeply irritating.
Zyran doesn’t turn when I appear in the doorway, doesn’t even say hello, or make a fuss at me for finally coming out after an hour of hiding. He just reaches over and turns the heat off before saying, “Sit down.”
I lean against the doorframe instead, crossing my arms. “You cooked.”
“I did.”
“In my kitchen.”
A little huff slips out of him before he finally turns, raising a brow, sort of like, well duh, it’s your apartment. But while I’m trying to focus on that, the only thing that keeps popping into my head is the fact that he looks at home there.
I feel like I’m going crazy—he’s only been here an hour, so he should not look like he belongs here.
I open my mouth and then close it.
There are approximately seven things I want to say right now, and every single one of them is wrong.
You can’t just cook in my kitchen; you can’t just stand there looking like that, like a whole fucking snack, while I’m trying to be annoyed at you—but what comes out instead is: “I don’t like onions. ”
He pauses as he reaches into the cabinet that holds only a few plates and possibly a bowl. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I cooked a meal and used anything in there.
“There’s no onions in it.”
“Good,” I push off the doorframe and cross to the table, pulling out the chair a little too hard. A hiss escapes my lips, and I rush to say something to try and cover it up. “Just so you know, for future references, not that there’s going to be a future to reference or anything.”
I drop down into the chair, thinking that I should’ve just stayed in my room.
Thankfully Zyran doesn’t say anything, just sets down a plate in front of me without commenting, and takes the seat across from me. The already small table suddenly felt even smaller with him on the other side. His knees are close to mine, and I have to shift back so I don’t touch him.
The food smells incredible, and I hate it.
Or I hate that I don’t.
When I glance down and see the spaghetti with meatballs, I want to shove it into my mouth, but I also want to cry.
“Thank you,” I mutter, mainly because my mother raised me with manners even if she raised me with other things too.
Zyran smiles, nodding at me.
The silence for the first minute is the specific kind of awful that makes you hyperaware of every sound—the scrape of a fork, the storm pressing against the windows, and the flicker of that damn lamp in the corner.
I keep my eyes on my plate, and he seems perfectly comfortable, which is deeply unfair.
“How long have you lived here?” Zyran asks suddenly.
I look up, spaghetti hanging from between my lips. “Huh—why?”
“Just making conversation.”
I frown and swallow the pasta whole. It burns going down, and I have the violent urge to throw it back up.
“Is that what we’re doing?”
The corner of his mouth moves, almost to a smirk. “Trying to, that is.”
Something about that—the almost, the trying—it takes the edge off just enough.
I sit back slightly, rolling my shoulders, and actually look at him across my tiny kitchen table, thinking about the fact that this has got to be the strangest situation I have ever willingly stayed in.
“A little over… uh,” I start, gnawing on my bottom lip. “Two years, probably closer to three.”
“You like it.”
I frown at his words, mostly because no one has ever said that to me before. Not like that, not like it’s just a fact and not a question.
And for a moment I tear my gaze away from his and look around the kitchen to the living room. To the window on the far wall that always sends in a cold draft, to the small crack running along the corner of the ceiling that was there when I moved in and will probably be there long after I leave.
I think back to the last two and a half years before this.
I didn’t stop, not once. That was the rule I gave myself in the beginning—don’t stop, don’t settle, don’t give anyone enough time to find you or know you or need you.
It was one month somewhere and then gone, sometimes even less.
A town in Florida that smelled like salty ocean air and a mix of rotten eggs from the swamps.
A city in Tennessee where I worked nights at a diner and slept all day.
Then it was a place in Kentucky, a motel with a vending machine outside the door that only took exact change.
I kept moving because moving felt like breathing, and staying felt like dying.
And then I ended up here.
I don’t remember making the decision, and I think that’s the strange part.
I pulled into this town because I needed gas and something to eat, and then somehow a week passed and then a month.
I had a job and a lease on this apartment, and the woman at the bakery knew my order.
But I still couldn’t tell you why I stayed.
I just did.
And I’ve never let myself look at that too closely—the why of it. Because looking at it means admitting that some part of me chose this place on purpose, and if I did that, then I’d have to figure out what I was choosing it for. I’m not ready to sit with that, not yet.
“I guess I do,” I finally say when I realize I haven’t said anything for a while.
“You didn’t leave when you could have.”
I pick up my fork, shoving a mouthful of spaghetti into my mouth to stop myself from smiling. “Don’t read into it,” I mumble.
He nods like it’s enough for him, and I’m not quite sure how to take it.
“Where do you live?” I ask, wanting to take some of the light off me. But the moment the words leave me, I want to immediately take it all back. Because asking him questions feels dangerous, feels like opening a door I’m not sure I want to walk through.
“Outside of town, family property.”
“You live with family?”
“Yeah… brothers actually.”
I nod slowly, taking in the fact that he has family, brothers, and property outside of town. A whole life existing somewhere just beyond the edges of what I know about him, which if I’m being honest with myself is almost nothing.
That sits wrong suddenly.
I set my fork down, swallowing around the lump forming in my throat.
“How many?" I ask. Because it’s dawning on me that he knows everything, my apartment, and my schedule; he knows what was left in my damn fridge.
And I’m sitting across from him like we’re on a first date and I don’t even know his last name.
“Four brothers,” he mutters around a bite.
“Four brothers,” I repeat, leaning back in my chair.
“And a family property, and presumably a whole entire life that I know absolutely nothing about.” Even to my ears, I can hear the edge creeping into my voice, and honestly, I’m not even trying to stop it.
“You’ve clearly done your homework on me.
I mean, you know where I live, where I work, hell, what I keep inside my fridge—” I gesture vaguely around us.
“And yet, I’m sitting here across from a complete stranger. ”
The entire time I’m ranting, Zyran has kept my gaze.
“I don’t like it; I don’t like it at all.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and then he’s setting his fork down, matching my energy in a way that should irritate me and somehow doesn’t.
“I’m an open book; ask me anything.”
His words are simple and easy—clean. No defensiveness behind them, no performance or trying to pretend to be someone he’s not. It’s like he means it, like there’s nothing on the other side of the question he isn’t willing to hand over.
I look at him and try to think of the million questions that are flitting through my head.
What do you do for work? Why me? How long were you watching me before I ever felt it? What have you seen? Do you do this often, or am I something different? And if I’m something different, then what does that mean, and why does it matter to me?
They all pile up behind my tongue, too many, too heavy, and sounding a little too much like caring.
And caring is the door I don’t open.
“What is your favorite color?” I hear myself asking.
He blinks, barely, almost like a flicker of surprise crosses over his face. But then he’s smiling, not missing a beat. “My favorite color?"
“Well, you said anything.”
His head tilts to the side, and for a moment that steady, unhurried look that I’m starting to think is just his face, just the way he exists in the world, like nothing surprises him enough to show it.
“Blue.”
I open my mouth and then close it. I hadn’t expected him to actually give me an answer and now that he has… “Okay, that’s… that’s good to know.”
Zyran picks up his fork and continues eating. For a moment I just watch him, waiting for the other ball to drop, and when it doesn’t, I find myself letting out a breath. One that I hadn’t realized I was holding.
And somehow that’s the most normal I’ve felt, longer than I know what to do with.
I hate that too.