Chapter 23 #2
After dinner we migrated to the couch. We both reached for the remote at the same moment, our hands colliding. I pulled my hand back as Luke withdrew his, sending the remote falling to the floor, the battery cover popping open, the batteries dislodging themselves on impact.
“Foul!” Luke said with a chuckle, bending down to pick up the remote. After placing the batteries and the cover back, he passed the remote to me. “You pick.”
We landed on some overproduced and underwritten crime drama. Two episodes in, the protagonist made a bafflingly stupid decision and I began ranting.
“Come on. You’re a homicide detective, not a toddler with a death wish. You call for backup. You. Call. For. Backup. What is this, crime procedures for dummies? Jesus, even I know not to go into a suspected murderer’s house alone.”
I gestured at the screen like the fictional character might somehow know the shame of their idiocy through sheer force of my indignation.
I continued my rant, until I glanced sideways and saw Luke was no longer watching the screen, he was watching me, an amused smile playing at his mouth.
But more important was where his eyes were fixed.
Not on my hands or my gesticulating arms. Not even on my face. They were staring at my mouth.
The rest of my rant died. Chasing a sudden dryness that hadn’t been there a moment ago, I drew my tongue across my lower lip. Was it just me or did he track the movement? Tension. The air was thick with it. If it got any thicker it would become a smog through which I couldn’t breathe.
“What? Is there something on my face?” I attempted levity, too much of a coward to take the other route.
“No, not at all, I just . . . you have a very competent mouth.”
A competent mouth? “What?”
“Yeah, you know, you have a good mouth for saying things. Your lips make these interesting shapes when you get going.”
What in the alternate universe was happening? I was the awkward one. Luke was Mr. Cool. But right now, he seemed almost flustered.
“Luke, I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Yeah,” he said, running his hand through his hair, expression rueful. “Neither do I. I only meant I like when you’re comfortable with yourself like this. I like seeing you passionate. It’s a pleasure to be a part of.”
“Oh, um . . . thanks?”
This had to mean something. This wasn’t purely a case of me reading what I wanted to. Luke’s attention and comments had taken on a focus that looked and sounded a lot like curiosity and want that he might not know how to express.
Come to think of it, Luke was exactly the type of person who wouldn’t make the first move with someone like me. He would bury a confession if it meant keeping me safe inside the haven he’d built around me.
That meant it would have to be me who made the next move.
The thought scared the hell out of me. It meant surrendering the safety of ambiguity, exposing every fragile part of me that still feared rejection more than loneliness.
But I couldn’t go on like this. I had to know, one way or another.
If I was as brave as Luke always said, then I could lead us from the unknown into answers.
I wasn’t prepared to bleed my heart out, not when I carried so much uncertainty, but I could start with small things, recoverable things, and if he responded positively, I could advance from there.
I edged closer to him until our thighs touched, resting my head against his shoulder.
Luke regularly offered himself up as a pillow, but where he’d usually sling an easy, big-brother arm around me, tonight his fingertips found the inside of my forearm and began to trace a light, delicate line up and down.
It woke a thousand nerves at once, raising them to the surface until I wanted to wiggle right out of my skin.
We stayed like that for the length of another episode, before retiring to our rooms.
In the morning, when I descended the stairs, Luke stood at the coffee station with his back to me.
I didn’t give his backside nearly enough appreciation.
World class didn’t begin to cover it, every muscle cleanly defined, accentuated by distinct lines, the broad power of his upper back tapering into a taut waist.
Instead of sidling up behind him like I would on any other day, I approached from behind, reaching around him for my usual mug. My arm skimmed his side, and my other hand lingered, fingers hooking through the belt loop of his pants.
His breath hitched, a little soft intake as his hand stilled on the coffee grinder.
The small victory emboldened me to go further than my nerves would usually allow. Rising onto my toes, I whispered into the side of his neck, not quite able to get to his ear. “I can’t reach, can you pass me my mug?”
As I hoped, Luke didn’t challenge me, didn’t question why I didn’t just step around him as I did ever other morning. Grabbing the mug in question, he turned around and handed it to me. “There you go,” he whispered.
Well . . . that was anticlimactic. He hadn’t rejected my method, but he hadn’t met me with anything all that telling either.
Vastly losing gravitas, I stepped back, this time into a joke, where our communication remained safest. “One of these days I’m going to draw traffic lanes to better navigate this place with you around. ”
“Hey, I can’t help it if my design is structurally superior.”
“Functionally obstructive is more like it.”
“At least I’m still functional. I’ll take it.”
“If you’re going to take up ninety percent of the kitchen’s square footage, being functional is the bare minimum.”
“Bare minimum is better than barely enough, so I’m still winning.”
“Winning what, exactly? The award for most spatially inefficient resident?”
“Perhaps the award for best physical contrast to you. It’s what makes this arrangement work out so well. We’re size compatible.”
“I wouldn’t call bumping into each other and being in each other’s way on a weekly basis size compatible.”
“I dunno, it hasn’t bothered me so far. I wouldn’t even issue a traffic violation. I can handle being bumped into on occasion if you’re the one I’m bumping into.”
“Don’t get used to it. I’m thinking of installing a system. Lanes. Arrows. Yield signs, all the yield signs.” What is wrong with you! Why are you doubling down on teasing him? You’re squandering the moment! It would seem my audacity had limited funds to work with and I’d already overdrawn.
“If you want me to yield to you, all you have to do is ask,” he said in a hushed tone, stepping closer into me, pushing back a strand of hair from my face.
Everything came to a screeching halt. This had taken a turn into terrain I wasn’t equipped to navigate. Did he realize the double entendre? Or had it not occurred to him?
Probably the latter. Who was I kidding? Definitely the latter, a throwaway comment, tossed out in jest. Luke was playful, flirt adjacent even, but never consciously.
Therein lay the fatal flaw in my plan. I kept expecting his responses to match society’s flirting norms, but Luke didn’t move through the world that way.
If I wanted to know whether his actions toward me carried anything beyond friendship, I had to change my approach.
So far, I’d only managed to stack questions instead of obtain answers.
When I didn’t respond, he gave me one of his lopsided smiles, squeezing my shoulder, those damn eyes directing their softness at me, turning me into a melt-pile of feelings right there on the kitchen floor.
“I have to head out. I should be home by six. Have a good day.”
I stood there long after the door shut, hope blazing. When he came home tonight, I’d be ready with a new plan, one that wouldn’t have me chickening out the moment things got real.