No reason to pretend this is just friendship if it isn’t.
At one point, I reach automatically for the butter, and so does he, our hands brushing.
We both pause.
It’s tiny.
Barely a touch.
Still, heat runs up my arm so fast it’s ridiculous.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
And then, with a calmness I absolutely do not possess internally, he slides the butter dish toward me first.
“Thanks,” I say, my voice coming out softer than I intended.
He nods once. “Sure.”
The groom’s aunt-or-aunt-adjacent person starts telling a story about a goat that escaped during someone’s rehearsal dinner ten years ago, and I try very hard to focus on that.
I really do.
But then Miller leans in a little to murmur a dry comment in my ear about how this family seems to have a surprising amount of livestock-related chaos, and his breath ghosts across the side of my neck, and suddenly my ability to follow a story about goats is permanently compromised.
I turn my head.
Too fast.
Too close.
For one suspended second, we are almost nose to nose.
My pulse trips.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Everything in me goes still.
The entire room seems to recede, all sound and light blurring around the edges.
This is it, I think wildly.
This isit.
He’s going to kiss me.
I know he’s going to kiss me.
Except—
“Hey, you made it!”
The moment shatters.
I jerk back so fast I nearly elbow my water glass.
