I load them onto my fingers by the handles the way I do, because some skills stay with you, and the mugs rattle once against each other and go quiet.
Good. One of us should.
And that’s when I notice what my body is doing, because my body has been doing it this whole time and waiting for me to catch up. I’m angled toward the far wall. Not the doorway — the wall. The specific stretch of wall with a living room on the other side of it, and a specific spot in that living room, and I could put my hand flat on the plaster right now and tell you what’s standing six feet past it.
Through a wall.
That’s not a sense. People don’t have that sense. I’m choosing a different sense.
No. We are not checking. Checking is data, and I am not collecting data tonight. Tonight I am a hostess with a beverage program. Tomorrow — tomorrow is a magical place where a more capable woman deals with silver eyes and pre-assembled men and walls I can apparently see through.
She’s got it handled.
I trust her completely.
And she is not me. Not right now.
I straighten up. I put on the face of a woman whose biggest problem is beverage distribution.
“Coffee,” I whisper, one more time, and step back toward the living room. “Right.”
They’re all exactly where I left them, which shouldn’t be a relief but it is.
“Okay, so — the blue one has a chip but it’s clean, and someone’s getting the measuring cup, I’m sorry, I had six this morning—”
I start handing them out, because motion is my friend and standing still is where the trouble lives.
Erik takes the chipped one before I can finish apologizing for it. Doesn’t look at the chip. Just takes it, like the chip was the one he wanted, which is exactly the kind of thing he does that I’ve never let myself think about for longer than four seconds.
The one with the curls says “thank you” — just that, quiet, warm, aimed directly at me — and my face goes hot for no reason at all. It’s athank you. People say thank you. I move on before my face can commit to anything.
Which brings me to the measuring cup, and I hold it out without looking up, because not looking up is the entire plan and the plan is going great—
He takes it with both hands.
Both hands. Around a measuring cup. Careful, like I handed him something precious instead of the last clean thing in my kitchen, and I look up, because apparently my neck works for him and no one else, and he’s already looking at me.
Like he found me.
I look away so fast I nearly hurt myself.
Last one. The tattooed one. I hold out his mug and our fingers catch on the handoff and something jumps between us — static, dry air, socks on carpet, pick one, I’m not investigating — and it goes up my arm and lands somewhere it has no business landing.
His smirk is gone.
Which is somehow worse than the smirk.
“Sorry about the door,” I say, to him, to all of them, to the room. Like I broke it. I don’t know why I said it. My mouth is freelancing now.
I set my own mug down on the coffee table and my hands are still shaking, which is fine. My door is in pieces on the floor and the men responsible are standing in my living room drinking my coffee. Shaking is the correct response. Shaking is, if anything, restrained.
I fuss with my mug. Turn the handle so it faces the right way, like that matters, like anyone here is going to file a complaint about handle alignment. It’s the one thing in this room I have any control over right now and I am going to control the absolute hell out of it.
And then there’s nothing left to do with my hands, and I make the mistake of looking up.
Really looking.
And I should abort that mission, right now because…
