15. Millie
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MILLIE
His mouth finds mine, and the kitchen disappears.
It's soft at first. Careful. Like he's giving me room to change my mind. But I don't.
I kiss him back, and the moment he realizes I'm not pulling away, his hands tighten on my waist and he draws me closer, turning me to face him. The kiss deepens, the last of his restraint giving out.
His hands are warm through my top. One slides up my back, the other stays at my hip, pulling me into him. He's against me, the whole solid weight of him, and everything in my body answers.
My fingers curl into the front of his shirt, and I'm on my toes because he's taller than me, and the stretch opens my ribs slightly, but I don't care.
I don't care about my ribs. I don't care about anything except his mouth and his hands and the way he kisses me like I'm something he's been thinking about for weeks and he's done being patient about it.
Then his arm tightens around my waist, and the pressure hits my left side. A sharp flash of pain cuts through everything. I tap his shoulder. Once. Twice.
He lets go immediately. Steps back. His hands come up like he's surrendering.
"Sorry. I'm sorry. Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"
I mouth too tight and point at my side. He looks stricken. I shake my head. I reach for him and pat his arm. It's okay. It's fine. The pain is already fading, but he looks like he just kicked a puppy, and I need him to stop looking like that.
I take a breath. And then I remember.
The crush.
The warmth drains. I look away from him. My hand drops from his arm.
He catches the shift in me. He always does. "What? What's wrong? Does it still hurt?"
I shake my head. I reach for the whiteboard. I write: What about your crush?
He reads it, and then he laughs—head tipped back, the whole helpless thing, like I just said the funniest thing he's heard all day.
He steps forward. He puts both hands on either side of my face, tilting it up so I have to look at him.
He kisses my forehead softly. His lips stay there for a second. Then he pulls back just enough to look me in the eyes.
"You're my crush, Millie. I thought that was pretty obvious. But in case it wasn't, I like you. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. An embarrassing amount."
I stare at him. My brain is doing something it wasn't built for.
"And honestly, if you hadn't left that morning after our first date, I was going to ask you out again. I had the whole thing planned. Breakfast. A walk. Very romantic. But then you were gone, and I figured you leaving meant you didn't want to. Or maybe I was that bad in bed, and you had to escape."
I shake my head fast and step forward. My hands land flat on his chest, and the look on my face must say everything because he's smiling down at me in a way that makes my knees feel unreliable.
I write the real reason I left and show him.
How I panicked. How I'd never done anything like that before.
How I thought we'd never see each other again.
He reads it and smiles. "Good thing it's not my bed skills then."
We both laugh. We're standing in his kitchen laughing. We're two people who skipped ten steps and are only now going back to fill them in.
His eyes drop to my lips. I feel it everywhere. I want him to kiss me again. The way he's looking at me, the way his thumb is tracing my cheekbone, I think he's about to.
But then his hands drop and he steps back. Not far. Just enough.
"So. How are you doing? Ribs. Baby. Everything."
I blink. My brain takes a second to switch gears because it was very much still in the kissing gear. I type: Ribs are better. Only hurt when I do something dumb. I had my first round of morning sickness yesterday. And sleeping has been rough. I kept tossing and turning last night.
He thinks about this. "Take my room."
I shake my head.
"I'm serious. My mattress is better. I invested in it years ago because I used to have terrible insomnia. It's memory foam, cooling gel, the whole thing. No hotel can beat it. I'll move to the guest room."
I write: Jo, I'm not taking your bed.
"Too late. I've already decided."
You can't just decide things about my sleeping arrangements.
"I just did. It's done. I'm moving my stuff tomorrow."
I'm not agreeing to this.
"You don't have to agree. You just have to sleep in a bed that doesn't make your ribs worse. Doctor's orders."
You're not my doctor.
"We've been through this. Everything with bones is my jurisdiction."
I give him a look. He gives me one back. We stare at each other across the kitchen counter like we're in a standoff. Tofu watches from the windowsill like a referee.
I type: Fine. But I'm keeping the guest room pillows. They're softer.
"Deal."
That night I sleep in his bed. In his room, surrounded by his things.
His books on the nightstand, spines cracked, pages dog-eared.
His watch on the dresser. A hoodie draped over the chair.
The sheets smell like him—clean laundry, and under it, the warm salt-and-cedar that's just him—and being surrounded by it in the dark is like being held.
I press my face into the pillow and think about how I'm sleeping in the bed of the man who just told me I was his crush and kissed me in a kitchen and gave up his room without a second thought.
The mattress is incredible. He wasn't lying about that. My ribs don't ache when I turn over. My back doesn't protest when I shift. I sink into it and my body just relaxes. Fully. Completely. Like it's been clenching since the fall, and it just now remembered how to let go.
I sleep better than I have since before the accident. I dream in two halves—music in one, his hands in the other—and I wake up warm and rested and a little embarrassed about which half I'd rather go back to.
Tofu is asleep at the foot of the bed. She's already claimed this room. The betrayal continues.
The next day is his day off. He makes breakfast, and I sit at the counter in one of my oversized sweaters. We eat together, and he asks if I slept well, and I give him a thumbs up. He looks so pleased with himself that I want to kiss him again.
I don't. But I want to.
He suggests we get out of the apartment.
Nothing intense. Just a walk. Maybe lunch somewhere.
I agree because the apartment has been my whole world for weeks, and fresh air sounds like medicine.
I get dressed and catch myself spending longer on my outfit than I normally would, which is saying something because I always care about what I wear.
But today I care a little more. I put on a long skirt and a blouse with embroidered flowers. I look in the mirror, think about the way he said you look really beautiful on the date night, and adjust my hair clips twice.
This is what he does to me. This is my life now.
We find a cafe with outdoor seating, and he pulls my chair out, which I give him a look for, and he says, "Let me have this".
We order. The sun is warm. The street is busy with people passing by, and for the first time in a while I feel like I'm part of the city again, not just someone recovering inside a quiet apartment.
The conversation goes somewhere new. Deeper than the cooking shows and the pigeon wars and the daily routines of sharing a space. We've been orbiting the personal stuff for weeks, skimming the surface, keeping it light. Today, we let it get heavy.
He asks about my family. And I tell him the full story.
I tell him about my parents. How they love me, but they raised me like I was made of glass.
How growing up mute didn't mean growing up limited by my disability.
It meant growing up limited by their fear of it.
They made decisions for me. Small ones at first. What school I went to.
What activities were "appropriate." Then bigger ones.
What careers were "realistic." What kind of life a girl like me should expect.
A girl like me. They never said it that way, but it lived underneath everything. Be careful. Be small. Don't reach for things that will only disappoint you.
I type some more. Joseph waits. He always waits. Never rushes me, never fills the silence while my thumbs are moving. Just sits there with his coffee and his full attention, like he has nowhere else to be.
He's good at that.
The only person who never treated me like I was different was my grandfather.
My mom's father. Everyone else walked on eggshells.
My parents, my teachers, kids at school.
They all handled me like I might break. But my grandfather just talked to me like I was any other kid.
He'd argue with me about what to have for lunch.
He'd tell me my posture was terrible when I practiced.
He'd make me carry his music stand even though it was almost as tall as I was because he said building character was more important than being comfortable.
Joseph smiles. "He sounds like a character."
I nod. I type more.
He was a violinist. Not professional, not famous.
He played at city events, weddings, street corners sometimes.
He'd set up a chair and a music stand and play for anyone who walked by.
People would stop and listen. Sometimes they'd clap.
Sometimes they'd just stand there quiet.
He said the quiet ones were better because it meant the music got inside them.
Joseph is leaning forward now. Elbows on the table.
He's one of the reasons I play. The first was a concert he took me to when I was five. A woman walked on stage with a violin and didn't say a word. She just lifted her bow and played, and everyone in that room felt it. I knew then that music could say things a voice never could.
I stop typing. I look down at my hands for a second. When I glance back up, Joseph hasn't looked away once. He's just there, steady, letting me take whatever time I need.
My grandfather saw it on my face that night. The next week he put a quarter-size violin in my hands and taught me my first scale. He told me the instrument would say everything I couldn't.