Chapter Thirteen Small Hours, Small Kindnesses #3
He considered that, leaning against the railing with his tea, and for a while neither of them said much — just watched the storm together, close enough that their elbows nearly touched across the gap, comfortable in a way that had become entirely ordinary between them.
Then lightning cracked, sudden and bright, followed almost instantly by a deep roll of thunder.
Jennie startled hard enough that her tea sloshed dangerously close to the rim of her cup.
Lin Xing was instantly alert. “Are you all right?” “I’m fine — I just wasn’t expecting that.
” She laughed a little, embarrassed. “I love rain. Thunder, I could do without.” “So.” A small smile tugged at his mouth.
“Dr. Jennie likes rain. Not thunder.” “That’s a very specific weather profile you’re building.
” “I’ll remember it.” “...That was either very sweet or mildly threatening.” “It can be both.”
The storm rolled through in waves, softening and building again, and somewhere in the middle of it Jennie found herself telling him about her grandmother’s house in Kerala — the tin roof that turned every monsoon into a symphony, her cousins racing paper boats down the flooded street outside, her mother scolding all of them for getting soaked and then joining in anyway.
He listened the way he always did — fully, without interrupting, the way he probably listened to a patient’s history, except she was starting to understand it wasn’t clinical at all.
It was just him. Paying attention like it mattered.
“You never talk about missing home,” he said eventually. “Not really. Not the way most people who’ve moved this far would.” “I miss it constantly,” Jennie admitted.
“I’ve just gotten good at not saying it out loud. If I start, I don’t always stop.” “You can say it out loud here.” She looked over at him — steady, quiet, rain misting faintly against his sharp profile — and felt something in her chest loosen that she hadn’t realized was tight.
“I miss my mother’s cooking,” she said softly. “I miss church bells that everyone in the neighborhood can hear at once. I miss not needing three layers just to walk to a bus stop.” A small laugh.
“I miss being somewhere I don’t have to explain myself.” “You don’t have to explain yourself here either,” he said. “Not to me.”
Something about the way he said it — quiet, certain, without a trace of performance — made her chest go tight in an entirely different way.
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it more than the two small words could carry.
He nodded once, the conversation settling into a comfortable silence again, rain drumming steady against both their balconies.
After a while, he glanced over, something almost hesitant in his expression — rare, for him.
“Jennie.” “Hm?” “You’ve had enough rain for one evening.
” His tone was gentle, but there was real concern underneath it.
“You’re shivering.” “I hadn’t noticed.” “I noticed.” A pause.
“Doctor’s advice.” “Or,” she said, teasing, “friend’s advice?
” Something flickered across his face — warm, a little caught, like she’d said something he hadn’t expected to hear back. “Friend’s advice,” he agreed, quiet.
She gave the storm one last look before heading toward her balcony door, and paused at the threshold, glancing back at him.
“Good night, Lin.” “Good night, Jennie.” She stepped inside — and then, on impulse, poked her head back out.
“For the record,” she said, “I like this. Talking to you like this. Not as colleagues. Not even really as friends, exactly.” He went very still.
“Then what?” Jennie’s nerve, which had carried her precisely this far and not one inch further, promptly abandoned her.
“I haven’t decided the word yet either,” she said, echoing his own words from weeks earlier — deliberately, and she watched him catch the reference instantly, watched something warm and startled cross his face.
“But I don’t think ‘colleague’ has been accurate for a while.
” She closed the door before he could answer, heart hammering, and stood just inside it, listening.
A moment later, faintly through the glass, she heard him laugh — really laugh, short and surprised and completely unguarded, a sound she’d never once heard from him in two months of careful, rationed almost-smiles.
She pressed her hand to her mouth, grinning so hard it hurt, and thought: there it is.
That’s the sound I’ve been trying to find this whole time.
She was still standing there, grinning at her own front door, when her phone buzzed.
Lin Xing: For the record — I decided on the word this evening.
Three dots appeared, vanished, appeared again.
J am simply not ready to say it through a wall.
Jennie read it four times, heart hammering, and typed back the only honest thing she had left: Then I’ll wait.
I’m very patient. Ask anyone. His reply arrived instantly, and she could hear his dry delivery straight through the screen: You are the least patient person I have ever met.
And yet, she wrote back, here I am. Waiting.
She fell asleep smiling, phone still in her hand, to the small ordinary sounds of him moving on the other side of the wall — both of them, for the first time, entirely certain of a thing neither had quite said.