The waitress comes by. Gage orders the meatloaf without looking at the menu. I do the same because I don't care what I eat, only that I'm eating it across from him.
When she leaves, Gage's sleeves are pushed to his elbows.The tattoo on his forearm—the one he pulled his cuff over in the stairwell weeks ago—is out in the open for once.
"It was for my mom," he says when he catches me looking. "Got it at eighteen, before my first deployment. She cried when I enlisted. Wanted to carry something of her with me."
"That's sweet."
"Seemed important at the time." He rubs his thumb over the rose without seeming to notice. "Lot of things seemed important at eighteen that don't make sense now. But that one stuck."
"Did she ever see it?"
"Yeah." A small smile. "Cried again. Happy tears, though. Said at least part of me stayed soft."
"Did you? Stay soft?"
He's quiet for a long moment. The restaurant noise fills the silence—a clink of dishes, murmur of conversation, someone laughing at the counter.
"I thought I'd lost it," he says. "After everything. The military. The divorce. Watching... what I've watched. Thought whatever soft parts I had got burned out somewhere along the way." His eyes find mine. "Then you showed up."
The coffee arrives. Gage has a system—he adds cream first, then sugar, then stirs counterclockwise with the spoon before setting it on the saucer.
"You came back," I say. "From all of it."
"Yeah." He turns his coffee cup on the saucer. "Some days I'm not sure I brought all the pieces with me."
"Whatever came back is enough."
He looks up at me and I see it in his face, the same thing I feel in mine—we're both people who've been changed by things we can't undo.
The meatloaf is unremarkable but the company is perfect. We talk about nothing important—his brother's new baby, my gym schedule, the podcast about missing persons cases that I've been binging. Normal, easy things.
When the check comes, he pays before I can reach for my wallet.
"Next one's on me," I say.
"Next one?"
"If you want."
His answer is to take my hand as we walk to the parking lot.
Outside, the parking lot is quiet under the neon sign. We stop between our cars, neither of us moving toward our doors.
"Hope." His voice is lower now, rougher. "I'm not good at this. The words, the—whatever this is supposed to be. I don't know how to do it right."
"You're doing fine, Gage."
"I don't know what's going on between you and Chadwick. I'm not asking." He shifts his weight. "But I'm standing here scared shitless that I just had one of the best night I’ve had in ages and you're going to drive home and forget about it."
I should tell him it's not that simple. That I don't know what I'm doing either.
Instead I reach for the front of his jacket and pull him down to me.
His mouth finds mine before either of us decides who kissed who. His hand comes up to the side of my neck, rough and warm, he tastes like coffee and his beard scrapes against my chin. My knees go soft and I grab his jacket tighter because the alternativeis falling down in a parking lot. His other hand grips my hip and pulls me flush against him for one breath, two, and then he tears himself back.
We stare at each other. His hand is still on my neck, thumb pressed to my pulse, and we're both breathing hard.
"Shit," he says.
