Page 71 of Joker

No, there’s something else moving under it now. Something quieter. More dangerous.

I see it most clearly later that afternoon.

Lexi has roped Joker into sitting at one of the tables with a sticker book she found in the toy pile. I don’t know how it happened exactly. One minute he was walking through the room on his way to somewhere else, and the next he’s seated in a chair far too small for the amount of man in it, while Lexi stands beside him issuing highly specific sticker-placement instructions like she’s directing a military operation.

“No, not there,” she says, leaning across the table. “There.”

Joker stares at the page. “That’s almost the same spot.”

“No, it’s not.”

He glances up at me across the room like he’s asking if this is real.

I am absolutely no help because I’m too busy trying not to smile. “She’s the boss,” I say.

He mutters something under his breath that I’m pretty sure isclearly,then moves the sticker exactly where she wants it.

Lexi beams.

And then, because the universe has apparently decided I need to suffer, she climbs into the chair beside him and leans against his arm while she flips to the next page.

Like it’s natural. Like it’s easy. Like she has already, somehow, started filing him into the category of people she trusts.

I stand in the doorway pretending I’m only there to refill my coffee.

I’m not.

I’m there because I can’t seem to make myself walk away from the sight. Because something inside me is shifting and I don’t know how to stop it. Because the man who looks like he should terrify small children is sitting at a clubhouse table patiently helping my daughter put glitter stickers on cartoon animals while she leans against him like he’s safe.

And worse than that?

He is.

That’s the part that undoes me. Not the visual. Not the sweetness of it. Not even the fact that he’s unexpectedly good at this.

It’s the fact that there is nothing performative in him.

No forced gentleness. No exaggerated softness because he knows I’m watching. No awkward self-consciousness.

He’s just…with her.

Present. Steady. Competent in all the tiny ways that matter. And because he isn’t making it a thing, it becomes one anyway.

I stay in the doorway too long.

Long enough that Joker glances up again and catches me staring.

Our eyes meet across the room.

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t call attention to it. Doesn’t make it weird.

He just holds my gaze for one quiet second while Lexi babbles beside him about sticker priorities and bunny ears and whether trucks can have birthdays.

And something inside me shifts harder. Deeper. Enough that it almost scares me. Because I know exactly what this is starting to become.

Not love. Not anything that dramatic. Not yet.

But possibility.