First time you slept over.
You said you liked this salami that time I made you a sandwich and you dropped mustard on your shirt.
Cheese infused with olives. Made me think of you.
Tears burn in my eyes. My throat tightens with each label.
Because you always want chocolate after you eat.
This one is my favourite. I want you to try it.
“Hi.”
I whirl around, nearly flying right off the couch. A yelp of surprise leaves my throat, but I manage to catch myself on the edge of the table before I hit the floor, just in time to see my favourite pair of green eyes staring down at me from a few feet away.
“Jesus,” I whisper, placing my hand on my chest. “I thought you were a serial killer.”
Boston arches a dark brow. “I quite literally knocked before I walked in.”
I must have been too engrossed in the charcuterie board to have heard it.
We stare at each other. There is so much distance between us.
He looks good. Handsome, practically healed. Beautiful. I don’t know how to be in the same room as him anymore, not when I’ve only ever known flirting or messing with him. There’s never been a gray area. Never been a friendship. It was always me chasing and him holding the goalpost slightly out of reach.
I don’t know how to exist in a world where I am not supposed to want him. Where I’m not supposed to love him, either.
The silence stretches into what feels like minutes until I start to panic at the look on his face. I need to fill the quiet, need to say something so we aren’t just watching each other the way we are.
“Is this from you?” I ask, gesturing to the table.
He shoots me a bored look.
Oh, how I’ve missed that look.
I grin, which makes him relax a bit, just like I’d hoped for. He slowly trudges toward the couch, every single step hesitant, and takes a seat a few cushions away from me.
I reach forward, stealing a couple of olives and popping them into my mouth. Any excuse to do something with my hands, with my mouth. Any excuse not to focus on him being so close.
I’m nervous. Did you pick up on that?
“Ari.”
I swallow, forcing myself to meet his eyes. He looks tired, but he also looks whole for the first time since that night at the bar. Instantly, visions of the blood, of his body hitting the ground, they attack my senses until it’s all I can see when I blink. It overrides every thought in my head. I want to touch his face. I want to stroke the outline of those bruises. I want to apologize for the position I put us in.
We stare at each other, all the confusion and desperation seeping into those few, short seconds. He knows how I feel. I told him. I did it to cut us both loose before it got too bad, before we got in too deep, and I still feel like it wasn’t quick enough. My heart feels like he’s held it my whole life, like it’s always fit perfectly in his palm. It feels like I gave up the greatest thing that I never knew I had, and I still have to see it in a shop window everyday when I pass, knowing I can’t have it back.
Boston sighs, fishing his phone out of his pocket. His fingers busy themselves for a couple of seconds before he places it on the coffee table, his eyes snapping back up to mine.
A familiar song starts playing quietly through the living room.
I smile, the memories of us in that bathroom replacing the memories of him being hurt. Just like that.
I angle my head, peering up at him as he stands. “Ilovethis song. How did you know?”
He fights back a grin, but I see it there, tugging at the corner of his mouth. Instead, he holds out his hand. “Dance with me?”
My throat bobs. I look from his hand to his face. “What?”
