I groan. “I need coffee.”
I retreat to the kitchen. Filter. Grounds. Water. Normal morning. Extremely normal morning, minus the audience.
Behind me, the living room makes living room sounds that absolutely make me anxious.
“Hey, beautiful. What’s this box?”
I freeze mid-scoop.
There’s exactly one box in this apartment that matters and of course it’s the one he’s got, because that’s how it goes with him — one day in and he’s already found the exact thing I don’t want touched. Three notes are inside it and I’m moving before the scoop hits the counter.
“No— don’t—”
The lid’s already open. The first note’s already in his hand, held up where a foot of height difference means I’m not getting it back.
“Gunnar, no. That’s mine. Put it down.”
He’s reading.
“It’s private.” I try. His eyebrows go up. He keeps reading.
No no no.
He’s mouthing the words as he reads them, the ones I’ve got memorized, and I’m going to die right here in my living room in a shirt with a hole in it—
Then his face changes.
The grin’s gone. I’ve known him less than twelve hours and it’s the first time it’s been all the way off. His ears go red. He reads it again, slower. Picks up the other two, reads those, and goes still.
He’s angry. My body gets there before I can argue it down — he’s angry, and I can’t tell you at what. There’s nothing in that box but three sentences and a dragon on top.
Then the grin’s back like he never dropped it, like I made the whole thing up on four hours of sleep.
He folds the note along its crease, sets it back, closes the lid. His attention catches on the little dragon and stays there. And he sets the box down on the desk with both hands, carefully. Like it might go off.
It’s too careful. Especially for him.
I find it hard to believe quiet is something he can do, but here he is doing it. The quiet’s worse than the snooping. Worse than whatever that face was.
“Don’t touch my things.” It comes out low and level and surprises both of us. “You stayed. That was the agreement. My things aren’t part of it.”
His hands come up. Both of them.
“Understood.”
And I had him sorted. Trouble. All gas, no brakes.
Apparently there are brakes.
He thinks I’m sad. That’s what this is — a grown woman keeping unsigned notes in a wooden dragon like a shrine. Fine. I’d think I was sad too, and he’s only got half the story—
Angry,my brain says. Not sad. He was angry.
At what, though. I run the options. The notes? The box? Me? Somebody who isn’t me?—
Nope. Not doing that one.
I’ve got nowhere to put it and not enough brain cells functioning at the moment to deal with any of it.
