Silence stretches. Not awkward, exactly. Just... loaded. Waiting to see what comes next.
“Post-it time,” I say.
He turns his head to look at me. “What?”
“You heard me.” I push myself up onto one elbow. “Part of the deal. After significant emotional experiences, you name what you’re feeling. Out loud.”
“You want me to pick a Post-it after that?”
“I don’t have the board here, but I want you to tell me. What are you feeling right now?”
He looks at me for a long moment. I watch him consider deflection, see it rise and then fall away.
“Terrified,” he says finally. “And... alive. More alive than I’ve felt in months. Maybe years.”
“Those are good words.”
“Are they?” He reaches over, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Terrified doesn’t sound good.”
“Terrified is honest. Terrified means you understand that this matters.” Terrified means you’re not pretending this is casual. Not acting like it’s just chemistry or convenience or years of proximity finally snapping.
I catch his hand, hold it against my cheek. “What else?”
He thinks about it. Really thinks, the way he never used to before I started forcing him to.
“Exposed,” he says. “The same way I felt in the chair yesterday. Like you’re seeing parts of me I don’t show anyone.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.” His thumb traces my cheekbone again. “It doesn’t feel bad. It just feels... new.”
“New can be scary.”
“New is definitely scary.” He sits up, runs his hand through his destroyed hair. “Gisele, what is this?”
I sit up too, tucking my legs underneath me. The question hangs between us—the question I’ve been avoiding for three years because I was afraid of the answer. The question that has a thousand possible answers and only one true one: this is everything I’ve wanted and everything I’m afraid of wanting.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I started this because I was worried about you. Because I watched you break down in the street and I couldn’t keep standing on the sidelines pretending everything was fine.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m sitting on a mat in an equipment room having just kissed you senseless, and I’m realizing I might have been lying to myself about my motivations.”
His mouth twitches. “Kissed me senseless?”
“Don’t fish for compliments. It’s unbecoming.”
“I’m not fishing. I’m clarifying.” He leans closer, voice dropping. “Because from where I was, it felt pretty mutual.”
“It was mutual.” I meet his eyes. “That’s what makes this complicated.”
The word lands between us. Complicated. A placeholder for everything we’re not ready to name.
“I should tell you something,” he says slowly.
“Okay.”
“The reason I’ve been keeping you at arm’s length all this time. The reason I never—” He stops, starts again. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want this.”
