Chapter Thirteen - Nora
Her first thought, stupidly, was: *that explains the couch.*
The second came in fast behind it, less stupid, harder to sit with. *That explains me, too.*
Three weeks of telling herself the shoes were practical. The propped foot was an accident of posture. The barefoot walks across the office, the ten minutes she'd left her feet an inch from his and hadn't moved it — all of it filed under *tired* or *comfortable* or *not thinking about it.*
A whole architecture of not-thinking. She'd built it without once admitting she was building anything.
Red pen forgotten in her hand, she got it all at once and a little late. She'd known. Some part of her had known for two weeks and kept doing it anyway. Had liked doing it. Had liked being watched and not minding, liked it enough to keep inventing small reasons to give him something to watch.
"I owe you something back," she said. "For that."
"You don't owe me anything."
"I do, actually. I think I've been messing with you."
She said it plain. Dressing it up now would have been the worse dishonesty.
"The shoes off every night. That wasn't just tired. Not all of it." Her face went warm and she couldn't blame the hour this time. "The foot on the chair, during the brainstorm. That was on purpose. I wanted to see what you'd — "
She made herself finish it.
"Under the table. That one night. I put my foot there on purpose too. I told myself I didn't. I did."
He didn't answer right away. Something moved through his face, quick, gone before she could name it. Surprise. Or something under the surprise that looked almost like relief.
"You knew," he said. Not quite a question. Working it out loud.
"I didn't *know* know. I didn't have the word for it.
I knew I liked whatever was happening when I did it, and I kept doing it, and I didn't look too hard at why.
" She laughed, short, disbelieving of her own honesty.
"Looking too hard felt like it would end the part I liked.
That's a very *me* way to handle something, for the record. Avoid it until it becomes unavoidable."
"I noticed. Not the — " He stopped. "I noticed you're a person who does that. Generally. Not about this."
"Great. Wonderful. You've been quietly diagnosing me for weeks."
"Only a little."
That got a real laugh out of her, and the room let go of some of what it had been holding since he said the word out loud.
She looked at him properly for the first time since.
Underneath the nerves she hadn't known she was carrying until they started to loosen, there was something that felt a lot like wanting to know more.
"Can I ask why now. You've had weeks. Why tonight."
He took long enough answering that she understood it was going to cost him.
"Because I stood about four feet from you while you were asleep on that couch," he said, "and thought about it, and didn't do it, and then spent the rest of the night working out how close I'd come to being someone who would have."
She sat with that.
The morning after the all-nighter rearranged itself in front of her. The tightness in him. The careful inch of clearance over the jacket. The ghost he'd claimed to have seen.
"That's more honest than you had to be."
"It's the whole reason I said anything. I wasn't going to keep standing that close to something I hadn't told you about and call it restraint."
He said it plainly, nothing braced in it, no attempt to make it sound better than it was. She believed him the way she'd believed most things he told her.
"So. What happens now."
"Whatever you want to happen. That's genuinely it. I'm not going to push past wherever you want the line to sit."
"I don't know where I want the line to sit yet."
"Then we don't put one anywhere yet." He said it like the not-knowing didn't scare him, which it was faintly doing to her. "We've got time."
She thought about the ten minutes under the table, her foot an inch from his, neither of them moving. About the couch, and an inch of air she'd slept straight through, and a man who'd stayed up until sunrise rather than close it.
She thought she might want the line a lot closer than she was ready to say tonight.
"Okay," she said. "Time. I can work with time."
Except she didn't want to wait on it. Something loose-limbed had come up in her the second the truth was all the way out, like admitting it had used up whatever nerve had been holding her still.
She toed her flats off. Right there. No hesitation, no pretending it was about exhaustion. Swung her feet onto the empty chair beside her — the same chair from the brainstorm — deliberate in a way that needed no explaining now.
"That a test too," he asked, "or are we past testing."
"Little bit of both." She wiggled her toes and watched his eyes go there and stay. No flinching away this time. No discipline pulling it back after half a second. "You can look. I'd prefer it, at this point."
"I've been looking for three weeks."
"I know. I'm giving you permission retroactively."
He laughed, a real one, low, surprised out of him, and the last of the stiffness went out of his shoulders.
He didn't move toward her. Didn't need to yet. He just let himself look, taking his time now that he had permission to. The arch. The ankle. The chip in the polish he'd apparently been noticing for weeks and never once mentioned.
She felt every second of it land somewhere warm and low.
"You're doing the thing," she said, and her voice wasn't entirely steady, "where you look like you're concentrating on something very important."
She laughed, and it came out breathier than she meant. His eyes hadn't moved. Three weeks of attention she'd spent half-imagining was sitting right there in front of her now, plain and unhidden and all of it for her.
She flexed her foot once, slow, and watched him track it like staying where he was cost him something.
Under the one overhead that never went dark with the rest of the floor, something finally sat down between them that had been circling for three weeks without a name.