“It doesn’t have to be,” I replied. “It oddly enough feels like you.”
“Hmm. Impersonal and boring?” he asked, heating up milk in a saucepan.
“No. Practical with so much room for warmth. The only thing holding you back is a can of paint,” I said, propping my elbows onto the counter.
Oren glanced at me, mouth quirked in amusement. “Are you sure you’re in the right field? It sounds to me like you could’ve gone into interior decorating.”
“I might just do a career-pivot one day. You never know,” I said.
“That would be impossible. I don’t think you can even imagine doing anything else.”. He slid my mug across the table and I thanked him. “Wait, don’t just—”
I hissed in pain, my tongue immediately blistering with the burn. “Urgh, that was stupid.”
“Reckless maybe, not stupid. Here,” Oren said, retrieving a few ice chips from his freezer. I immediately popped them into my mouth, almost sighing at the relief as they began to melt. “Someone’s a little impatient.”
At the expression on my face, he just shrugged with a laugh. “I wasn’t judging you.”
“Are you sure about that?” I mumbled.
He led me to the living room where we sat down on a slate gray leather sofa, facing each other. Between the warmth and soft amber glow of the fireplace, and the easy banter that stampedout whatever awkwardness could’ve made things a bit more tense between us, I was feeling a lot better than I had been before. Even despite the burnt tongue.
“Truth be told, I was rather surprised when you reached out. I thought you’d be spending the holiday in a study hall,” he said thoughtfully.
“I’m trying new things.” I blew gently over the rim of the mug. “It’s actually kind of funny. Ever since I started being a little more reckless, I’ve been feeling like a different person. Even with Madison, I feel like I could finally be the type of person to pushherinto being braver instead of the other way around. It’s a nice change.”
Oren took a sip from his own mug, not so much as flinching against the heat. “Does she know? About our… arrangement.”
“Oh, no. Well, not about the fact that this is anongoingarrangement. She definitely would have something to say about that,” I said.
He asked more questions about our friendship and we spoke for a bit about how I met Mads. He laughed at some of the stories I shared about the ridiculous things we got up to over the years, quietly listened when I told him about how much her friendship had meant to me and how she helped shape the woman I ended up becoming.
And in exchange, he told me about his friends. Ronan and Lucas were two of the closest, especially Lucas, but he had a few others. He’d see them every now and then and when he did, it felt like no time had passed. I got the impression that he wasn’t the easiest person to get to know, but when that line was crossed, there was very little he wouldn’t do for those he cared about.
As he spoke, I couldn’t help but stare. I was reminded again just how beautiful he was. His intense features seemed to softenthe more he opened up, a picture of solid walls slowly coming down and the thought that he trusted me enough to let me see that made me feel proud.
He mentioned something in passing about his time as an intern and that’s when I saw it—a nearly imperceptible change in his mood. If I hadn’t been so focused on his face, I probably would’ve missed it altogether but it was there, the slight tightness of his mouth and a subtle shift to his eyes.
“Where did you intern?” I asked lightly, curious but not wanting to push beyond his boundaries.
Oren hesitated. He looked down at the empty cup in his hand, tightened his grip on the handle. It looked like he was struggling with something. I recognized that guarded expression on his face, not by sight but by feeling. I knew what it was like to want to expose more of yourself than your logic told you was acceptable.
But then he looked up at me again and I saw the nakedness. The trust. Whatever he was going to tell me now was something I was going to have to protect.
“I was a sophomore engineering intern for my uncle’s firm,” he said. His voice was lower than normal, a bit slower too. Like he was feeling out uneven ground. I put my mug on the table and gave him my full attention.
“I didn’t know you started out in engineering,” I said lightly.
“It was my first love,” he confessed. “I was pretty obsessed with precision, even at nineteen and nothing is quite as demanding of precision as engineering.”
“Why’d you change fields?” I asked softly.
He scratched the back of his neck, his eyes darting off to the side again.
“You don’t have to tell me if it makes you uncomfortable,” I said soothingly.
“I want to,” he answered. Then he took a deep breath, clearly recalling something he ordinarilydidn’tlike to share. “We were doing a final inspection of a small pedestrian bridge over Fletcher Creek. My uncle left me in charge of the final torque-check on the suspension bolts. He was even more meticulous than me. I mean, he was the type of person who considered a 1% margin of error to be a personal insult.”
I snorted softly. “Must run in the family.”
