33. Josh
Chapter thirty-three
Josh
Two mugs.
One is three-quarters full. Oat milk. It’s the mug with the thinner handle, because she can hold it and turn a page at the same time without tilting the whole thing into her lap.
I stand in my kitchen and look at it.
Then I look at my own mug beside it.
Apparently, I am still excellent at making coffee.
I made hers first.
I pick up Liv’s mug and carry it to the sink. For a second, I do nothing. Then coffee hits the drain. I rinse the mug and leave it on the counter.
Evans’s voice comes back without asking permission.
I make her coffee.
And that told her what?
She knows I’m trying.
Does she know what you’re trying to say?
No coffee. No dry cleaning. No errand. No useful thing to carry six steps and hide behind while Liv stands in her doorway trying to figure out why I came.
You know you can knock without bringing me something.
I press both hands to the edge of the counter.
She said that because she noticed.
Of course she noticed.
She had been waiting too.
Not for the coffee. Not for the suit.
For me to say why I was really there.
I leave the kitchen before I can clean anything else.
In the bedroom, I go straight to the shelf.
I know where Longitude is.
I take it down and carry it back to the couch.
The cushion gives under me, and for one second I am not alone on it.
Liv is beside me again, Iris tucked against her chest, one small hand trapped in the front of Liv’s sweater. My arm is around Liv’s shoulders. I can still feel where she leaned into me.
That is the part I miss.
Ten minutes before work. Coffee going cold. A phone that could ring. A life with no clean edges, because my schedule is still my schedule and Liv’s job is still Liv’s job and neither one of us gets to pretend love will make the hard parts convenient.
It was already good.
And I want it again.
Liv went home because Iris went home. That makes sense.
What did not make sense was everything after.
For me, the kisses were the start of something.
For Liv, they may have been one good morning after two hard weeks.
I do not know.
And I have been acting like not knowing is the same as giving her room.
It is not.
it's just another kind of waiting.
I need to tell her I want to figure out what we are now.
And I need to ask if she wants to figure it out with me.
I open my eyes.
The book is still in my lap.
We had more time.
Maybe not the kind we imagined.
All those small, messy minutes counted.
We were not waiting for life to start.
That was life.
That was us.
I close the book and stand, and put Longitude back on the shelf.
At the front door, I stop with nothing in my hands.
Liv’s line comes back again.
You know you can knock without bringing me something.
This time, the knock has to be about us.
I knock.