Chapter 16 #2
I picked up dinner from the Ethiopian place on Baltimore because she always reached for the extra cabbage before she reached for anything else, and because the first time we had gone there together she had spent fifteen minutes explaining to me why too many people underestimated quiet food.
I added the sambusas because she liked to pretend she didn’t want one and then eat half of mine if I didn’t order enough.
The overnight bag sat on the chair by the door while I put my shoes on. I looked at it once, then I picked it up.
I had slept beside her once on a school night and spent the next morning, going to work with the ache of leaving her still in my body, the memory of it catching on me in stupid places like while starting the car, standing in the faculty bathroom washing my hands, or when I swept the Archive floor at the end of the night.
I had also spent the day thinking about the exact shape of her curled against me on the sofa the first night we made love, and the way she had mumbled something into my chest before she fully woke.
I wasn’t interested in peeling myself away from that again in the middle of the night if I didn’t have to.
Her porch light was on when I got there.
I buzzed twice and let myself in. The house held that evening stillness I had come to know that wasn’t emptiness so much as settled into itself.
I set the food on the kitchen counter and the bag by the wall near the door, then started unpacking containers before she came downstairs, because it gave me something to do with my hands while I listened for her.
She came down with her sleeves pushed up and her hair caught back in a way that told me she had been working on something and hadn’t bothered to reset for me. I liked her best that way, traces of the day still on her and no effort wasted on making anything look arranged.
In true Nova fashion, her eyes went to the food first, then to the bag, and then back to me.
“What’s that?” she asked, though from the way her mouth was already moving, I could tell she knew.
I opened one of the containers and let the steam out. “Dinner.”
She walked closer, slow enough to make it clear she wasn’t in a hurry to ask the second question.
“And the other thing?”
I followed her gaze and looked at the overnight bag like I had only just remembered it was there.
“That,” I said, “is me planning ahead.”
She folded her arms and leaned one shoulder against the doorway to the kitchen, amusement already settling into her face. “Planning ahead for what?”
I set plates on the counter before I answered, because I knew her and because I knew myself well enough to want something between my hands when I said it.
“For staying.”
Her eyebrows lifted just slightly. “Sounding mighty sure of yourself, Mr. Hill.”
I looked at her then.
“Your point?” I said. “I don’t want the ache of peeling myself away from you in the middle of the night just so we can wake in separate beds and do this all over again with less sleep than we need.”
She was quiet for exactly one beat. Then she laughed softly.
“That was smooth,” she said.
“It’s true.”
“Those things are not always the same.”
“They are when I’m talking to you.”
That earned me the full smile.
Nova crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell whatever she had on her skin, something clean and soft with the last trace of her shampoo still in it.
“You brought a bag,” she said again, quieter this time, like she was trying it on.
“I did.”
“You packed in advance.”
“I did.”
“And you fully expected this to go your way.”
I set the plate down and put my hands at her waist, pulling her so she was pressed close to me.
“I was hopeful.”
She looked at me a second longer, the smile still there, but softer now.
“That sounds more like you.”
I let my thumbs move once against her sides. “Is it all right? Just for the night? I’m not trying to move in or anything.”
She slid her hands up my chest and around my neck with an ease that still caught me off guard no matter how many times she did it.
“You bought sambusas,” she said. “I’d be unreasonable to say no.”
I laughed then, and she smiled into it, and the space between us changed again, not in some sudden, dramatic way, just enough to remind me that this was still new and already beginning to feel familiar.
We ate in the kitchen, leaning more than sitting, talking through the day in the way people do when they already know each other’s habits and only need the details.
I told her about Terrell, about the meeting, about the paper and the smile at the end of it.
She listened with that particular stillness, not interrupting or reaching too quickly for commentary.
When I finished, she looked down at her plate for a second, then back at me.
“He’s going to remember that,” she said.
“What part?”
“The moment someone finally called it the right thing.”
I thought about Terrell’s face when I told him he wasn’t behind. About the way his body had eased before his words did.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think he will.”
She reached over and took the plate from my hand before I could set it in the sink myself. “You always come in here acting like you’re just dropping something off,” she said, rinsing both of them. “And then I turn around and realize you’ve rearranged the whole room.”
I leaned against the counter and watched her. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” she said. “You’re subtle. That’s how you get away with it.”
I smiled and let her have that.
Later, when we turned off the lights downstairs and went up, she walked ahead of me on the stairs with one hand trailing lightly along the wall, and I followed with the overnight bag in one hand and the full knowledge that I had been right to bring it.
The third floor was quiet when we stepped into it, the sofa waiting, the records still carrying the small signs of whatever she had been working through before I got there.
She turned back toward me before I had fully set the bag down, and there was something in her face that made the whole day a good one.
I went to her, and this time, and when I kissed her, there was no clock in the back of my head telling me I would have to leave soon.