Still looking far too comfortable in my bed for someone who was a stranger yesterday.
Then I drag myself back into functioning adulthood and head downstairs.
The house carries that early coastal chill that never quite counts as cold but still makes bare feet move faster across floorboards.
Heath is awake.
Or rather, Heath is sitting in front of the dark grey beanie like a grumpy old man deeply dissatisfied with temporary accommodation, blinking at me as though this relocation has been a personal insult.
“Well,” I murmur, leaning on the island. “You survived.”
He twitches one whisker.
Food mostly gone. Water lower. No obvious signs of fresh rodent trauma.
“That’s promising.”
He continues to stare.
I nod once. “I’m choosing to take that as approval.”
This is absurd.
I am conducting a morning welfare check on a hamster because his owner is asleep upstairs in my bed.
Yeah.
Definitely need the run.
Ten minutes later I’m outside, trainers hitting the familiar curve of the seafront path.
The cold bites first, then settles.
Salt, damp timber, seaweed, coffee drifting from somewhere already open.
Whitstable is only half awake, which is when I like it best. Dog walkers. Two old men pretending they are notracing each other. Someone in an expensive waterproof looking betrayed by weather as a concept.
Usually this is where my brain clears.
Today it does the opposite.
Because Philip is upstairs.
Because somewhere between Islington and Whitstable he stopped feeling like a stranger I brought home and started feeling like someone I am already accounting for.
I replay stupid details without permission.
His laugh in the car when he forgot the hamster.
The way he held Heath as though the tiny thing might shatter.
The look he gave me in the kitchen when I told him this wasn’t a hook-up.
The way he curled back into me in the dark with the easy trust of someone who had known me longer than a day.
The cumulative effect of it sits somewhere uncomfortably close to hope, which is reason enough to increase my pace.
My trainers hit harder against the pavement.
