"I see you," he said. "I see you now."
"I know," she said. And meant it.
They closed the diner. The waitress refilled their coffee twice and then stopped refilling it, but started wiping down tables around them pointedly. Dominic left a tip that made the woman's eyes go wide. They walked out into the warm night, and Charlotte expected — wanted, if she was honest, which she was trying to be — him to kiss her.
He didn't.
He walked her to her building, close enough that their arms brushed twice. He matched her pace, which was slow, because she was stretching the walk, willing it to last.
At her door, he stopped and put his hands in his pockets.
"I had a good time," he said. Like a teenager. Like a man who'd never ended a date before, which was absurd. He'd ended hundreds of dates, probably, in the years before her. But he said it like he meant it in a way he'd never meant it before.
"Me too," she said.
A beat. She waited. He looked at her mouth: she saw him look, saw the effort it cost him to drag his eyes back up, and then he took a half-step back.
"Good night, Charlie."
"You're not going to kiss me?"
The question escaped before she could catch it. She watched his expression shift. Surprise, then want, then a control so deliberate she could almost hear it click into place.
"Not tonight," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I rushed everything the first time. I'm not rushing this."
She stood on her stoop, watching him walk to his car. Frustrated, charmed and something else she didn't have a name for. A feeling that sat warm in her chest. He was courting her. For real, this time.
The Friday dates at Nick's became a rhythm.
Every week, same booth, same waitress. Her name was Gloria. She'd started calling them "the regulars" and saving them extra pickles without being asked. Charlotte ordered the grilled cheese. Dominic ordered the burger. They talked for hours, and every Friday he walked her home and didn't kiss her, and every Friday the not-kissing drove her a little more insane.
Until the third Friday, when she grabbed his jacket on her stoop and kissed him herself. He immediately kissed her back with a hunger that contradicted every gentlemanly exit of the past two weeks. She pulled back, breathing hard, and said, "If you were waiting for me to make the first move, congratulations, it worked."
"It wasn't a move."
"It was absolutely a move. It was a good one, and I hate you a little for it."
He grinned. God, he was handsome. She kissed him again.
After that, the kissing became part of the rhythm too. At her door, in the diner parking lot, once in the school hallway after a Thursday meeting when she'd been sure no one was watching.
But he didn't press for more. He didn't invite her to his apartment, didn't suggest they go somewhere private, didn't let his hands wander past her waist or her hair or her shoulders. He was drawing a line and holding it, and she understood why. The last time they'd been together, he'd moved her into his apartment within weeks, absorbed her into his life like a current taking a swimmer, and this time he was letting her stand on her own shore.
Until the Friday he walked her home after two hours at Nick's and she kissed him on the stoop and didn't stop.
The kiss deepened. His hand found the back of her neck, her fingers twisted in the front of his henley, and the sound she made against his mouth was loud enough that he pulled back and glanced down the hallway. Empty. The fluorescent bulb on the landing below was out, the stairwell dim and quiet. Just the two of them and the muffled bass of someone's television through a closed door.
"Charlie," he said. A warning. Or a question.
She pulled him closer. Kissed the corner of his jaw, the spot below his ear, felt his breath catch. "Don't leave yet."
His forehead dropped against hers. She could feel the fight in him: the line he'd drawn, the discipline he'd been holding for weeks. His hand was on her hip, his thumb tracing the strip of bare skin between her jeans and the hem of her blouse, and even that — just his thumb, just that inch of contact — was making her dizzy.
"We're in a hallway," he said.
