Page 142 of In Somnis

I reach out without fully deciding to and encircle Lennon’s wrist, drawing her toward me and away from him. He makes a sound that is definitely a chuckle, grabs a skateboard from against the wall, and heads for the stairs without looking back.

A skateboard.

I’m standing here being quietly unsettled by a twenty-something-year-old who travels via skateboard.

When he’s gone, the smile Lennon offers is so completely and entirely aimed at me that anything else ceases to matter.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Ready,” she says.

Two hours later, I’m holding four bags and a quietly escalating internal crisis.

The plan was simple. Take her shopping and have a conversation over coffee. Low pressure. An afternoon that gives two people who have known each other for only a short time enough room to actually learn about each other without anyone feeling overwhelmed.

She walks ahead of me up the path to my front door, a small bag dangling from her fingers with three shades of yellow tucked inside.

Three, because she stood there with different yellows in each hand, looking back and forth between them like she couldn’t choose. She scrunched her nose and bit her lower lip before she started putting one back, so I told her I’d buy her both. She looked at me with big, light blue eyes and said she only needed one, which she would buy for herself.

So I grabbed them and added a third to the basket, a deeper yellow that had been sitting beside the others that she was glancing at too. She let me buy them for her, wearing the expression of someone who has been outmaneuvered and hasn’t fully decided whether to object or enjoy it.

She isn’t used to being treated, or at least encouraged in what she likes, which tells me more about her dating life than anything she’s said out loud.

But then she found the delicacy shop.

And that’s where the bags in my hands came from. She asked if she could cook for me, as if she were already planning it before the question was even finished. I said yes because apparently, I am incapable of saying no to her.

This is not how the afternoon was supposed to go.

“You okay?” she asks, turning at the top of my doorstep to look at me. “You went quiet.”

“I’m fine.” I rearrange the bags in my hands to find the key in my pocket. “Just thinking.” About how you’re about to walk into my kitchen and cook in it, and I’m going to have to sit at my own table and be a person who eats dinner as if it’s simple.

I know the internal negotiation required to get through a meal that didn’t come from my own controlled preparation. I do it at Renée’s twice a week. I can do it here.

I can probably do it here.

“Oh, okay,” she says softly, worrying her lip.

Perfect, now you made her insecure again, Paul.

She steps inside the house ahead of me and slips off her shoes, setting them neatly beside the door without being asked. Her feet in stockings make soft sounds as she steps farther inside, looking around. “Where’s your kitchen?”

“This way.” I lead her through the living room, then push open the kitchen door, and she freezes in the doorway.

She doesn’t say anything for a full three seconds.

“I don’t know if you⁠—”

“You have a Lacanche?” she says with a gasp, hurrying inside, her gaze moving across the range with something approaching reverence. “A Lacanche, Paul? A Lacanche.”

“I was told it was called that, yes. It’s just a range.”

“Just a range,” she mutters disbelievingly, running her hand along the top and over to the counter. “You have a chef’s kitchen. You have my dream kitchen…” Her hand stills on the counter. “Wait.” She presses herself flat to the surface. “Is this lowered?”

It is, in fact, lowered. I’d requested the modification when the kitchen was fitted, but haven’t thought about that in years. Seeing that it’s exactly the right height for her does things to my chest.

“It appears so,” I say, setting the bags on the kitchen table.