She held us that way for a while, the two of us pillars by her side. Or maybe she was the one holding us up; it was hard to say. Finally she squeezed out from between us. “Well, I might be a downer, but I know better than to be a third wheel.”
“You’ll never be a third wheel,” I assured her, and she laughed. She stood up and headed for the kitchen, leaving Luke and me on one couch again, with less space between us.
The reality of this moment setting in, I felt a wave of embarrassment and brushed some invisible lint off my dress to avoid meeting Luke’s eye. When I did glance up, he was looking at me in this weird way, like he was trying not to laugh.
“So that went ... well? I think?” he said.
“It could have been worse,” I agreed. “She could have repeated the banana demo she gave us when we were twelve.” I hadn’t even stopped playing with dolls then.
“Don’t remind me,” Luke said with a shudder. “I got it first.”
It dawned on me that we were sitting around talking about sex ed. Or Mel’s version of it anyway.
“Want to watch TV?” Luke asked.
“Sure.”
He grabbed the remote, then came back and sat down, and the awkwardness was making it hard for me to breathe. I started to panic. Maybe our connection wasn’t the earthshattering thing I’d thought it was when there was six hours of distance between us. Maybe we’d jumped the gun by telling Mel. Maybe ...
Luke found some random sitcom, plopped the remote down on the ottoman, and patted his lap.
“Feet?” he asked, and it took me a second to understand what he was saying. When I did, I turned on the couch so I was facing him, adjusted my dress, and stretched out my legs over his lap the way I’d been doing for years. Everything might have changed, but he was still my footrest.
His thumb made small circles on the top of my foot. He used to tickle my feet to annoy me when we were younger, but he’d grown out of that a couple of years ago and now it was more like a feather-light foot massage.
Luke’s eyes were fixed on the television, and he continued to absently run his hands over my feet. The only difference was, this time he went even higher, gliding his thumb over the swell of my ankle and then over my calves. I wondered whether it was a conscious decision on his part or whether he was just spacing out. Was touching my leg like this something he’d always wanted to do, something he’d wondered about—the way I wondered about the freckle just below his left ear?
I couldn’t play it cool, couldn’t stop looking at him, until he turned to face me.
“What?” he asked.
“You have a freckle right there,” I said, reaching forward to touch it. He leaned closer so I could run my finger over it. It felt like we were on the same page, like he knew that I knew that we were both doing the things we’d always wanted to.
Feeling brave, I asked, “Also, just how soft is your hair?”
He leaned over again, letting me have at it. I dug my fingers into his hair, slowly brushing up from root to tip. I loved that he closed his eyes until I was finished.
“Anything else?” he asked, his voice quiet.
“We’ll stop there for now,” I said over the lump in my throat. His eyes darted to the kitchen door, then back to me, and I noticed that his neck was getting red, like maybe he could think of other things he wanted to do.
We went back to watching TV in silence.
Rowan walked in the front door about halfway through the second episode of our sitcom marathon. He held a basketball under one arm, had a gym bag over the other shoulder, and was dripping with sweat. My first instinct was to jump away from Luke, to put as much distance between us as possible, but doing so would make it look like we were doing something odd. Which, technically, we weren’t. Luke had always been my footrest.
So I stayed exactly as I was. Luke, for his part, didn’t react, glancing away from the screen just long enough to throw his brother a casual “Hey,” his hand continuing to make small circles on my leg the whole time.
“Hey, Ro,” I said, trying to sound normal.
“Jess! Didn’t know you were coming over.” Ro sounded genuinely happy to see me, which instantly made me feel guilty. I’d purposely come over when he wouldn’t be home, so I could have my talk with Mel.
Ro strode over to the other couch and flopped down. “What are we watching?”
While I was answering, Sydney came prancing into the room and Ro became temporarily distracted.
“Hey there, puppers! Did you miss me?” he cooed.
I turned my attention back to the TV.
