I went still too. My hands tightened on the wheel without my permission, knuckles pulling pale, and I kept them there because I needed something to hold onto.
“I am about to do something I have been thinking about all night,” she whispered.
The words moved through me like a current. My heart was doing something loud and immediate in my chest, and I was aware of everything—the dark of the alley, the warmth of thetruck cab, the small distance between us that had never felt smaller—and I made myself breathe before I answered.
“What’s that?” I whispered back.
“I am about to walk up those stairs.” She held my eyes in the dark. “And I am going to do it without apologizing for the fact that I want you to follow me up them.”
I did not say anything for a moment.
I just looked at her. Looked at her the way I’d been wanting to look at her all evening without anything between us, no restaurant, no table, no careful distance, just this—her face in the dark and her hands in her lap and everything she’d just said hanging in the air between us, honest and unguarded and entirely hers.
My throat was dry. My heart was somewhere it had no business being and showing no signs of returning.
“Cara.” My voice came out lower than I intended. “Are you sure?”
“Not to come inside.” A breath. “But?—”
“I know,” I said quietly. “I know exactly what you want.” I let go of the steering wheel and turned toward her fully. “I want it too.”
She opened her door before I could come around to open it for her. Not because she was rushing, but because she was trying very hard to be brave, and she did not want to give herself the chance to lose her nerve in the space between the passenger side and the front of the truck. I got out on my side and came around and found her already standing by her car door with the book of poems still pressed against her chest and her small leather purse on a thin strap across her body, and her chin tilted up at me with shy determination.
I reached for her hand. She gave it to me without hesitating.
The wooden staircase climbed the back of the building from the alley up to the landing. It was sturdy but old; it creaked alittle under our weight. I went up a step behind her so my knee would not slow her down, and so I could watch her climb ahead of me in the dark green dress, and so if she slipped on the old wood, I would be right there to catch her. She did not slip. She climbed slowly, one hand on the railing, the other still in mine, her shoulders squared in a way that made me want to kiss the back of her neck.
At the top, the landing opened up into a small square wooden porch. I had time to notice exactly three things before Cara turned to face me.
First, the door. Warm dark green. It was pretty.
Second, a small wooden bistro table and chair set pushed against the wall to the left of the door, with a paperback left open on the seat and a ribbon bookmark trailing over the edge. She had been reading out here recently. Probably last night, or the night before. Hopefully, while thinking about me.
Third, a terracotta pot next to the chair with a small rosemary bush in it, still green against the cold October air. Its faint herbal scent rose into the space between us as Cara brushed past it on her way to the door.
A single wrought-iron sconce next to the door threw soft yellow light across the landing.
Cara reached the door and turned around to face me.
She was standing with her back almost against the green door, the book of poems still clutched against her chest in both hands, the sconce catching the side of her face in a way that made her small silver earrings glow warm against her hair. I was standing about two feet in front of her on the landing. The alley below was quiet. The only sound was the faint, distant hum of the streetlight at the end of the alley and the soft, small give of the wooden landing under our feet.
She looked up at me with the same unguarded attention she had been giving me all night, but something had shifted in thelast minute. Something about the stairs, or the landing, or the green door behind her. Her eyes were a little wider. Her breath was shallow.
“Jasper, I don’t know what to say next.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I kind of do. I feel like I have to say something or I am going to combust on my own landing.”
I took one step closer. Not close enough to touch her yet. Just close enough to make the next step the one that mattered. She did not move back. The book pressed tighter against her chest.
“I have spent every day since we set this date trying not to kiss you. I am not going to spend another one.”
Her whole face went still.
“Jasper.”
“Tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.”
