And yet here we are, standing in a cabin he built, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Like no time has passed at all. Like I could step forward and he'd catch me and it would be easy, so easy to fall back into?—
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard.
"Thank you," I say quietly, forcing myself to stay rooted where I am. "For this. For..."
"You don't have to thank me, Len."
The nickname, soft and familiar, and the sound of it in his voice makes something crack open in my chest.
"I meant what I said. You need space, you've got it. And if there’s anything else you need, you know where to find me.”
He moves toward the door, and the loss of his proximity feels physical—warmth disappearing, gravity shifting.
Part of me wants to ask him to stay, to sit on the couch and talk like we used to, to bridge this gap that feels both infinite and paper-thin.
"Hey, Nate?"
He turns back, hand on the doorframe, and the light catches in his eyes—brown with flecks of gold, the same eyes that used to look at me like I was the only thing that mattered.
"Will you show me the rest? Of the studio?”
Something flickers across his face—pleasure, maybe, or surprise that I'm asking. Relief, possibly, that I'm not ready to let him leave yet.
"Yeah. Of course."
We walk backto the main building, and I'm hyperaware of this ridiculous electricity that's currently pacing between us.
Is it just me? Or does he feel it too?
More importantly: How do I switch it off? Is there a button? A twelve-step program?
I shift slightly to the left, creating more distance. Creating the illusion that I'm a rational adult woman with healthy boundaries and not someone whose entire nervous system just lit up like a Christmas tree because our hands almost touched.
He notices but doesn't comment, just keeps walking, keeps that careful space between us that we both seem to need.
Thank god. At least one of us is capable of basic self-preservation.
Inside, he takes me through it properly this time.
Shows me the recording booths with their custom acoustic panels, explaining the technical details in that low, focused voice that should not be doing things to me but absolutely is.
This is educational. Completely platonic studio tour behavior.
Except when he leans past me to point out a detail, his scent surrounds me and I have to resist the urge to close my eyes and just breathe it in like some kind of unhinged person.
Which I'm not.
I'm fine.
Totally fine.
Just casually having a normal reaction to being in close proximity to someone who smells unreasonably good and happens to be my first love who I definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent do not still have feelings for.
This is fine.
In the mixing room, he explains the equipment with genuine enthusiasm, his whole face lighting up in a way I remember, and I lean against the console just to have something solid to hold ontobecause watching him like this—passionate, accomplished, so completely himself—makes me want things I have no right to want.
"I can't believe you really did it," I say, because I can't stop saying it. "Well no, actually, I knew you would. I just didn't think it'd be so?—"
