25. Buzz #2
I moved into the kitchen, partly because I needed something to do and partly because if I stayed still any longer, every feeling I had would start showing on my face.
The kitchen lights were low, just the under-cabinet strip along the backsplash and the faint glow over the island.
Charcoal cabinets. Steel appliances. Clean counters except for the mail pile I had shoved beside the fruit bowl three days ago and not dealt with.
Lucy followed at a slower pace.
I opened the cabinet above the bar nook and took down two low glasses.
Then the bottle from the shelf. Not the showy one Marco had given me after he declared my bar “emotionally underdeveloped.” The better one.
The one my dad liked. The one I drank rarely because good bourbon tasted like it expected you to sit with yourself, and I usually preferred avoiding that.
Lucy leaned one hip lightly against the island, watching my hands.
“Still one cube?” I asked.
Her eyes lifted to my face.
I had meant it casually. Or as casually as a man could mean anything while making a drink from memory for the woman whose coffee order, burger toppings, favorite winter gloves, and old handwriting still lived in his head like facts carved into stone.
“One cube,” she confirmed.
I nodded and opened the freezer. My hand shook once around the ice tray.
I put one large cube in each glass and poured hers first. Lighter than mine.
Not weak. Just how she used to take it when we were too young to be drinking anything and old enough to believe stealing one inch of adulthood meant we owned the whole road.
I slid the glass across the island. She took it, her fingers brushing the side rather than mine.
“To one drink,” I said, lifting my glass.
Her eyebrows rose. “That sounds like you’re reminding yourself.”
“I am.”
She touched her glass to mine. The sound was quiet. Clean. It moved through the kitchen and settled somewhere behind my ribs.
“To one drink,” she echoed.
We carried them to the living room.
Dottie had taken the center of the couch and left no room for subtlety. Lucy paused. I looked at the dog, then at the open space on either side of her.
Dottie opened one eye.
“Move,” I told her.
She did not.
Lucy folded her arms loosely, amused despite herself. “Strong command presence.”
“I’m usually more intimidating.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m very intimidating. Ask rookies.”
“Rookies are young. Their brains aren’t fully developed.”
Dottie finally heaved herself up with a sigh so offended it deserved legal representation, stepped over the nearest throw pillow, and resettled on the far end of the sectional with her back to us.
I sat near the middle. Lucy sat beside me.
Not across the room. Not on the separate chair angled toward the fireplace. Beside me, close enough that I could feel the couch shift beneath her weight. Close enough that if either of us moved wrong, our knees would touch.
For a while, we drank in quiet. Not silence exactly. The fire made soft sounds. The house ticked with cold outside and heat inside. Dottie’s breathing deepened into the beginning of sleep, then tipped into a tiny snore that made Lucy glance over with fond embarrassment.
“She’s had a demanding evening,” I said.
“She slept under my desk for six hours.”
“Emotional support is labor.”
Lucy looked down into her glass. “She’s better at it than most people.” She laughed under her breath.
God, I missed that. The little sound. The way it escaped before she could inspect it. I missed being the person who could get to that part of her without a map.
The firelight moved over her face. Outside, the lake sat frozen and dark, a wide quiet thing pressing against the windows.
I had sat on the dock in August with teammates shouting behind me.
Had stood at that glass during storms. Had eaten takeout at the island after games, sweat still drying in my hair, film paused on the TV while I pretended studying a defensive breakdown was the same as having plans.
Lucy shifted slightly, tucking one foot beneath her on the couch.
Not fully curled up. Not comfortable enough to forget herself.
But softer than she had been at the office.
Her shoulder angled toward mine. Her hair fell across one side of her face, and before I could stop myself, I remembered her at seventeen, sitting beside me on the frozen lake with skates unlaced and cheeks pink from cold.
I looked at my drink. “Do you remember the lake skate?”
Lucy stilled. “Which one?” she asked.
“Junior year. Behind the Kellers’ place because Mase swore the ice was fine.”
“Oh my God.” Lucy’s mouth opened slightly. Then she laughed. “I remember you saying, ‘It’s definitely safe,’ while standing beside a hand-painted sign that said Thin Ice.”
“In my defense, the sign was old.”
“In your defense, you were an idiot.”
“Also true.”
She took another small sip of bourbon, eyes on the fire now. “Naomi refused to skate past the dock.”
“Naomi was the smartest person there.” I leaned back against the couch, letting the memory find its shape without forcing it. “You had those green mittens.”
Lucy glanced over. “You remember my mittens?”
I shrugged, trying to look like the question did not expose me down to bone. “They were hard to miss. You kept hitting me with them.”
“Because you kept pulling me.”
“You were slow.”
“I was cautious.” She laughed again, brighter this time, and Dottie snorted in her sleep at the far end of the couch. Lucy looked over at the dog. “Even she disagrees with you.”
Lucy’s smile lingered. She looked younger for half a second. Not eighteen. Not untouched by everything. Just less armored. Like the adult version of her and the girl from the lake had briefly occupied the same breath.
I wanted to touch her so badly my hand ached around the glass. Instead, I set the bourbon on the low table and leaned back again, keeping my hands where they could not do anything stupid. “You fell,” I said.
Her head snapped toward me. “I did not fall.”
“You absolutely fell.”
“I was testing the ice.”
“With your entire body?”
She narrowed her eyes, but there was laughter there. Real warmth. “You were the one who tried to hockey stop in figure skates.”
A full-body cringe moved through me. “I was experimenting.”
“You nearly took out a twelve-year-old.”
“He came out of nowhere.”
“He was stationary.”
“He was lurking.”
“He was tying his skate.” Lucy shook her head, smiling into her glass.
The room settled around the memory. The frozen lake outside this house.
The old lake behind someone else’s dock.
Two teenagers with numb fingers and bad judgment.
Naomi standing by the shore calling us both reckless.
Me trying to impress Lucy and nearly destroying a child.
Lucy laughing so hard she had to hold on to my arm.
Then, because memory never knew when to stop, I remembered warming her hands afterward. Her mittens soaked from snow, my palms around her fingers, her nose pink, her smile tucked into the collar of my hoodie.
I remembered wanting to kiss her then.
I remembered doing it.
Lucy’s smile faded slowly.
She remembered too.
I saw the moment her body caught up to the same place mine had gone. Her breathing changed first. A little shallower. Her eyes lowered to the glass in her hand. One curl slipped forward, and she did not push it back.
“Sorry,” I said quietly.
Her gaze came back to mine. “For what?”
I did not know how to answer without breaking every rule the night needed.
For the memory.
For what happened after the memories.
For having this house and this couch and this fire and still not knowing how to make any of it safe enough for you.
She set her glass down beside mine. Still half full. One drink, barely touched.
The small mercy of that almost ruined me.
She had not come here for bourbon.
She had come here because some part of her wanted to sit beside me in the quiet and remember that we had once known how to be easy.
I turned toward her more fully.
Lucy did not move away.
My pulse shifted.
The firelight caught in her glasses. Behind the lenses, her eyes were softer than they had any right to be. Sadder too. Tired and bright and cautious in a way that made me want to put my hands over every sharp edge in the world before it could reach her.
I sat there like I had finally learned one thing. “Lucy.”
Her name came out low.
She looked at me, and the air between us thinned.
I could have made a joke. Could have stepped sideways. Could have given both of us a way out that looked like humor and felt like cowardice. I was so tired of being a coward around the only thing that mattered. “Can I kiss you?” I asked.
For one suspended second, nothing moved.
Not the fire. Not the lake. Not Dottie sleeping at the far end of the couch. Not Lucy’s hand resting open against the cushion between us.
Her eyes searched mine like she was looking for the catch. The trick. The boy who used to fill silence before it could ask him for honesty.
I stayed still.
I let her have the whole space.
Her breath shook once on the way in.
Then she moved.
Not much. Just enough.
She leaned across the narrow distance between us and kissed me.
The first touch of her mouth was careful, almost questioning, and it still hit me harder than any check I had ever taken.
My whole body went quiet at once. Not calm.
Never calm. But quiet in the deepest place, the place that had been loud for eight years and suddenly recognized something it had almost forgotten it was allowed to want.
Home.
That was the word.
Not house. Not memory. Not wanting. Not even love, though that was there too, brutal and obvious and everywhere.
Home.
Lucy’s mouth opened softly under mine, and the last careful part of me nearly came apart.