Seth
The drive back to Pecan Pines was quieter than the drive out had been. We still spoke here and there when something along the road caught our attention.
Dane pointed out a ridiculous roadside billboard advertising homemade fudge shaped like oversized animals, and I commented on a pickup truck hauling an absurd number of garden ornaments that looked like they were seconds away from toppling into traffic.
We both laughed, but even that felt softer than it had the day before, like the sound didn’t quite carry the same ease it usually did between us.
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable exactly. People sat in silence together all the time. Not every quiet moment needed to mean something. I told myself that more than once as the miles slipped by outside the window.
Maybe Dane was tired. The wedding had been a long weekend for both of us. Or maybe I was only noticing the quiet because I was paying more attention than usual.
The explanation should have been enough, but I kept finding small things that didn't quite fit.
He still listened when I spoke, still smiled at the right moments, still reached over once to adjust the air conditioning when I mentioned I was getting too warm.
Nothing about him was distant in any obvious way. Even so, there was a restraint to him that hadn't been there before. It was as if he was thinking a little more carefully about every interaction.
We could have stayed longer in town. There had been enough time to find somewhere for lunch before heading back, and when I asked if he wanted to leave early instead, he'd agreed almost immediately.
At the time, I told myself it made sense. We both had work tomorrow, and there was no real reason to linger.
Now, watching familiar roads slip past the window as we crossed back into Pecan Pines, I wasn't quite as convinced.
The thought came and went before I could look at it too closely.
If something was bothering him, he would tell me. Wouldn't he?
I could have asked him too. Instead, I turned my attention back to the road ahead and let the question sit where it was.
Before I could fully register that we had arrived outside my apartment building, Dane had already unbuckled his seatbelt.
“I’ll grab your bags.”
“Okay.”
He was out of the car before I finished saying it.
I stayed where I was for a moment, staring through the windshield at the familiar brick building ahead of us. I should have felt relieved to be back home.
With a sigh, I pushed open the door and climbed out.
Dane was already unloading the trunk. By the time I reached him, he had stacked most of my bags neatly beside the entrance.
“Got everything?” I asked.
“Almost.”
He lifted out the last duffel and set it down with the others. My gaze drifted automatically toward the open car door.
I frowned. The garment bags were supposed to be with the rest of my things. Instead, they still hung in the back seat, and for some reason, that detail lingered in my mind longer than it should have.
Dane closed the trunk and straightened. “There you go.”
“Thanks.”
I pulled my keys from my pocket and turned them absently between my fingers. Neither of us moved.
It became uncomfortably clear that the trip had ended. That should have been it: a simple conclusion, something clean and easy to step away from.
Yet, I found myself glancing at my door, then back at him.
I should ask him to come up.
The thought surfaced easily enough. He had spent the entire weekend with me, helping me navigate something I had been quietly dreading for years.
My grip tightened slightly around the keys. The invitation should have come naturally, but instead the words stayed lodged somewhere in my throat.
He nodded toward his car. “I should probably get going.”
“Oh,” I said, before I could stop myself.
For a second, his gaze lingered on mine. I couldn’t tell if he was about to say something or if I was just hoping he would.
“I need to get the suits laundered,” he said.
I followed his gaze to the garment bags.
“Right.”
A quiet disappointment settled in my chest before I could make sense of it.
“You’ll have to send me the bill.”
Dane immediately shook his head. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I do,” I said, more firmly than I meant to.
A beat. Then he nodded. “Alright.”
I looked down at my keys again. It was easier than holding his gaze. Easier than standing there trying to understand why everything felt slightly off when nothing had actually changed.
“Seth.”
I looked up immediately.
Something shifted in his expression when our eyes met. Whatever distance had been there earlier seemed to fade away. He stepped closer and kissed me without hesitation.
It was brief, painfully familiar, and it threw me off more than it should have.
When he pulled back, his thumb brushed lightly along my cheek.
“I’ll see you around,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.” My voice came out tighter than I meant it to.
He held my gaze for a moment longer, then turned toward his car.
I stayed where I was as he left, the sound of the engine fading too quickly in the distance.
Dane didn’t come by the café.
There wasn’t really a reason for him to. Whatever we’d been doing had already run its course, and it made sense that things would settle back into place again.
Except he didn’t come by at his usual times either.
There was no slow appearance in the afternoons, no casual stop-in that didn’t need an excuse. Just nothing.
The only sign of him came later: a photo of the laundry bill sent over text, followed by a thumbs-up emoji after I transferred the money.
It shouldn’t have mattered, but I found myself staring at the message longer than necessary, like there was something in it I was supposed to understand beyond what it said.
Something that suggested this wasn’t just an ending being handled neatly.
I told myself not to overthink it. That was becoming a familiar thought lately.
I should have texted him. Something casual and uncomplicated. But every time I started to type something, my mind stalled at the same point.
If I reached out and he didn’t respond the way I expected, then there would be no way to go back to pretending nothing had changed.
And if he did respond exactly the way I feared, then I would know for certain what I wasn’t ready to know.
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.
It made my chest tighten in a way that wasn’t at all uncomfortable. I couldn’t help it; I wanted to believe it.
“Yeah, for sure,” I said, a beat too late.
And somehow, while he was still talking, Janine had already slid another cup beside me and was wrapping sandwiches into a paper bag.
“Go on, take your break now,” Janine said suddenly.
I shot her a look.
Dane blinked, glancing between us. “I’ve got some free time right now.”
One moment we were outside the café, and the next we were at the park, walking through tree-lined paths as Dane led us to a quiet bench overlooking the town square.
Only then did he let go of my hand.
We sat down side by side. Dane set the brown paper bag Janine had prepared between us and began unpacking it.
He handed me the tuna melt, then took the BLT for himself, settling in like this was already a routine we had fallen into without noticing.
“I feel like I should be paying you for these,” he said lightly.
“I’m taking it out of her pay,” I said automatically, and that earned a proper laugh from him, more relaxed than anything I had heard since the morning after the wedding.
We ate in silence for a while. Eventually, Dane leaned back and turned his gaze toward the town square in the distance.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“Good,” I said, a little too quickly.
After that, the conversation drifted. Dane asked a few more questions about work, about the café, about nothing in particular.
I answered. He listened. But it didn’t feel as natural or easy as before. It felt like we were both going through the motions instead of really being fully present in the conversation
Every so often, he went quiet mid-thought, eyes shifting toward the square or the trees or somewhere just past me, like he was turning something over in his head that never quite made it into words.
And every time, I waited for him to say it. He never did.
That alone should have told me something.
This is what happens when it’s over, I told myself. Things just go back to how they were before.
That was easier. Cleaner.
If I called what I had with Dane real, then I didn’t have to question those moments that had felt different between us, or wonder if I had made them up. Because they had felt different. But feeling different didn’t mean anything was actually real.
Darryl had felt different once too. In the end, none of it had changed how things ended.
I kept my eyes on the path in front of us, letting the thought sit there without looking at it too closely.
Shifters chose shifters.
No one had said it out loud this time, but it was still there anyway. In the wedding speech. In the way people looked at Dane. In the way he moved through a world that made sense to him in a way mine never fully did.
It was only a matter of time before that difference mattered. Before he realised it, if he hadn’t already.
I didn’t ask. Even sitting here with him, even as he handed me the last bite of his sandwich and brushed crumbs from his hands, I didn’t bother asking what he was thinking.
Because I already knew I didn’t want the answer if it confirmed what I was starting to think.
We finished eating not long after that. The conversation slowed until it felt easier to stand than to keep talking. I dusted my hands off and checked the time on my phone, even though I already knew what it would say.
“I should get back to work,” I said.
Dane looked up like he had been pulled back from somewhere else. “Right.”
We walked back the same way we came, slower this time, like neither of us was in a rush to end it, but neither of us wanted to extend it either.
When we reached the edge of the park, I stopped.
“Thanks,” I said, because it felt like the only thing that made sense to say.
Dane nodded once. “I’ll see you around.”
It was the same words as before.
I gave a small nod back, even though something in my chest tightened at how final it sounded.
“Yeah,” I said. “See you.”