30 | Thanks to Slavic Gods
TESSA
My apartment was small and probably needed cleaning, but I’d learned to keep it tidy enough that surprise visitors wouldn’t be scandalized.
Theo followed me inside and stopped in the tiny living room, looking around with an attention that made me suddenly aware of every detail—the bookshelf crammed too full, the couch that was definitely secondhand but comfortable, the photos on the wall from college and vet school.
“This is very you,” he said.
“Is that good?”
“It’s perfect.” He set down my bag and turned to face me. “I like it here.”
“You’ve been here before.”
“Not really. I picked you up a few times, carried you here once—but I never—” He gestured vaguely. “I never really looked.”
“And now you’re looking?”
“Yeah.” His voice dropped lower. “Now I’m looking.”
We stood there for a moment with afternoon light coming through the windows, and I didn’t know how to say what I was feeling—that having him here in my space felt significant somehow, like crossing a threshold I hadn’t known existed.
He crossed to the bookshelf, scanning the spines with his hands in his pockets. “Have you read all of these?”
“Most. Some are aspirational.”
He pulled one out. Turned it over. “This one?”
“Yes.”
Another. “This?”
“Obviously.”
He pulled out a third—a paperback with a shirtless man on the cover and a font that left very little to the imagination.
He looked at it. Looked at me.
Heat crawled up the back of my neck.
“Research,” I said.
“Research.”
“Literary research. Into the human condition.”
He turned it over and read the back, and I watched his eyebrows do something complicated.
“There’s a Slavic god here,” he said. “And apparently—” He squinted at the text. “An ancient forbidden arrangement.”
“It’s a very common narrative structure.”
He looked up, trying very hard not to smile. “How many of these do you have?”
“That’s not relevant.”
He looked back at the shelf, and I watched him clock the pattern—the cluster of similar spines, the broken creases of books read more than once.
“Tessa.”
My face was fully hot now.
“They’re good books.”
“I’m not judging.”
“You’re absolutely judging.”
“I’m reassessing.” He slid the book back carefully, taking his time, like he was enjoying this. “I’m thinking about some of the things you told me last night and reassessing their origin point.”
“That is not—those books did not—”
“I’m not complaining.”
He laughed—real, unguarded, the kind I didn’t hear often enough—and something loosened in my chest even as my face burned.
He turned to face me, and the laughter was still in his eyes, warm and unhurried, and I was suddenly very aware that I was standing in my own living room with nowhere to retreat to.
He crossed the distance between us slowly. Gave me time to step back.
I didn’t.
He tipped my chin up with two fingers and kissed me—soft, brief, still smiling against my mouth, and I could feel it, the smile, which somehow made it worse and better at the same time.
“I’m grateful,” he said, pulling back just enough to look at me. “To the Slavic gods.”
“Oh my god.”
“Genuinely.” His thumb traced along my jaw, light and deliberate. “Very grateful.”
I grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at him. He caught it without looking.
“Hungry?” I said, because I needed to change the subject immediately.
“Starving.” His eyes moved over me—slow, deliberate. “Although food wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Heat shot through me, low and immediate.
“Food,” I said. “We’re getting food.”
“Fine.” He smiled, easy, unbothered.
“You’re impossible.”
“You asked.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
He sat, still smiling, and didn’t push it further.
It was infuriating.
It was also, quietly, everything I hadn’t known I needed.
“Thai?” I said, already reaching for my phone.
“Whatever you want.”
“You always say that.”
“I mean it every time.”
I ordered Thai food—my usual.
He changed in the bathroom while I changed in the bedroom, and there was something both completely ordinary and entirely surreal about the sound of him moving around on the other side of the wall.
His shoes by my door. His jacket over the back of my chair.
The way a space shifts when someone else is in it.
The door opened.
I looked up.
He was in a t-shirt and shorts, hair still slightly damp from the shower, and for a second I forgot completely what I’d been doing. The t-shirt was soft and worn and did very little to help the situation, and I was suddenly aware that we were in my bedroom and—
The intercom buzzed.
“That’s the food,” I said.
“I figured.”
I grabbed my wallet off the nightstand and went to the door, and by the time I came back with the bag he was sitting on the bed with his back against the headboard, completely at ease, like he’d always been there.
Maybe that was the most disorienting part. Not the wanting—I was getting used to the wanting. But the ease of it. The way he fit into my space without trying, without asking, without leaving gaps that needed filling.
I set the bag between us and didn’t say any of that.
“Chopsticks or fork?” I asked.
“Chopsticks.”
“Obviously.”
“The book,” he said, pointing his chopsticks at me. “The forbidden arrangement. Is that a common theme?”
“Extremely common.”
“Why forbidden?”
“Because it’s better when you’re not supposed to want it.”
He considered that. “Hm.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me with my book choices.”
“I’m not psychoanalyzing. I’m gathering data.”
“You and your data.”
“It’s useful.” He stole a dumpling from my container. “What else? Besides forbidden arrangements.”
“Slow burn.”
“Obviously.”
“Enemies to lovers.”
“Also obvious.”
I threw a napkin at him. “Fake dating,” I said, and then we both went quiet for a second, and then we both laughed at the same time—surprised, a little helpless.
“Very niche,” he said.
“Extremely popular, actually.”
“Is it.”
“Huge market.” I looked at him. “Apparently people find it very compelling. Two people pretending to be in love and then realizing they actually are.”
He held my gaze. “Wonder why.”
“Complete mystery.”
“What about a second chance romance?” he asked.
I looked at him. “That’s also very good.”
“Is it.”
“Top five, easily.”
“Top one in my scale."
Something in his eyes shifted—quiet. He set down his chopsticks, leaned across the containers, and kissed me properly this time. Warm and unhurried, his hand cupping my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek.
When he pulled back, I’d forgotten what we were talking about.
He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
We finished the food without talking much. When the containers were empty I stacked them by the door and looked at the state of myself—wine country, the terrace, the garden, all of it still somewhere on my skin.
“I need a shower,” I said. “I feel like I’m still in Napa.”
“Go. I’ll find something to do.”
He nodded, already reaching for his phone, already making himself at home in the way he did everything—quietly, without asking for permission, like he’d simply decided this was where he was supposed to be.
I stood under the hot water longer than necessary and tried to make sense of the timeline. Few weeks ago he was someone I ran into at barbecues. Few weeks ago we had a deal. Last night we were in Napa and now he was in my apartment.
I didn’t know how to hold all of that at once.
It didn’t feel bad. That was the thing. It just felt—fast, and real, and like something I hadn’t quite caught up to yet.
When I came out in clean pajamas, hair loose, face washed, he was reading—legs stretched out on the bed like he’d done it a hundred times.
The book in his hands was not one I would have chosen to leave visible.
“That’s—” I started.
“I’m on chapter three.” He didn’t look up. “The Slavic god sounds fun.”
“Theo.”
“He’s very conflicted about his feelings.” He turned a page. “But sex in the woods sounds good.”
“Give me that.”
“I’m reading.”
“You’re doing this on purpose.”
“I’m broadening my literary horizons.” He looked up then, his expression completely serious except for his eyes. “Also the forbidden arrangement makes a lot more sense in context. I’m starting to understand the appeal.”
I grabbed the book out of his hands. He let me, still smiling, and I shoved it under my pillow and refused to look at him.
His hand found my wrist. Gentle. Not pulling—just there.
Then he drew me down onto the bed beside him, one arm wrapping around my shoulders, his lips pressing against my temple. I meant to say something. Didn’t get the chance. He tucked me against his side and pulled the blanket over us both and I stopped trying.
“Theo.”
“Yeah?”
“When did this get easy?”
A pause. His hand moved slowly through my hair.
“I don’t think it was ever hard between us,” he said. “Except for that one time.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
I thought about that. About six weekends that had somehow become this—him in my apartment, his shoes by my door.
“Go to sleep, Tessa.”
He pulled me closer, and I felt him exhale slowly against my hair, and the last thing I was aware of before sleep was the weight of his arm across my waist and how completely, unreasonably right it felt.