I opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind me.
The apartment was dim.
The stove light was on, casting its warm amber glow across the kitchen and into the living room.
Hiro was asleep on his bed in the corner.
General Tso was on the refrigerator, one eye open, his tail motionless for once.
Potato snored softly from his secondary position on the dog bed beside Hiro, which meant someone had moved him off his primary position, the couch, which meant someone had wanted the couch cleared.
My eyes drifted from the dog bed to the couch.
Peter was on the couch.
But that wasn’t what stopped me.
What fixed me in place, what turned my legs to concrete and my brain to static and my breath tosomething that forgot how to complete its own cycle, was that Peter was stretched across the couch with exactly the amount of clothing he’d popped out of his mama wearing.
No pajamas. No T-shirt. No careful layers between himself and the world.
Just Peter, all of him, sprawled across the couch wearing nothing but stove light and a stillness that was not casual but chosen.
The stove light caught the planes of him, the long lines, the surgeon’s hands resting on his flat stomach, the rise and fall of his breathing, which was controlled but not calm. I could see the effort in that control, the discipline it was taking to lie there and wait and let me look and not reach for a blanket or a bathrobe or some kind of barrier to hide behind.
I stood in the doorway holding a stuffed manatee and forgot every word in every language I’d ever known.
“Hey,” Peter said.
His voice was low and steady and carried, underneath the steadiness, something electric.
“Hey,” I said, and my voice was not steady at all.
Chapter 26
Peter
The idea struck at 8:45 p.m., fully formed and completely insane. I was at my desk, working on my manuscript, when Benji’s text came through.
Benji: Finn sent me home. Bar’s dead. Boat show in Sarasota stole everyone. I’m on my way.
My brain, the one that had spent the entire afternoon replaying the zoo and the truck and the kiss and Benji’s face when he’d held a manatee’s head in his hands, produced a thought that bypassed every checkpoint and filter I’d built over thirty-two years of careful, deliberate living.
He’s coming home early. The apartment is empty.
You could be on the couch,I thought.But not on the couch reading.
Not on the couch with tea and the newspaper.
On the couch with nothing.
Wearing nothing.
You could be, for the first time in two years, a person who is available in a way that could not be misinterpreted or filed under roommate behavior or explained away as an accident of proximity and blanket-folding.
I sat at my desk and considered these thoughts with the clinical detachment I brought to complex decisions. I weighed the variables. I assessed the risks. I evaluated the probability of success against the probability of catastrophic embarrassment. I constructed a mental decision tree that branched into outcomes ranging from “transformative romantic moment” to “Benji walks in, sees me naked on the couch, and calls the authorities.”
The decision tree was not helpful.
