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“Thank you,” he said. “For asking.”
The streetlight above us turned everything it touched into a sepia photograph. It hit his face from the left, catching the line of his profile. I had spent my career reading light on faces, and this particular light on this particular face was doing something to my circulatory system that was medically inadvisable.
His eyes dropped to my mouth for less than a second.
My body treated it like evidence.
“Goodnight, Evan.”
I turned toward the car.
His voice stopped me.
“Samantha.”
Just my name. Low and rough, like it had been sitting in his throat all night waiting for permission.
I turned back.
He was closer than I expected. One step, maybe two, closed in the time it took me to reach for the door handle. His eyes were dark in the streetlight, and for once they were not calculating. They were not looking for exits.
They were looking at me.
He kissed me the way he did everything: controlled and precise. His hand came up to my jaw, palm warm, thumb settling just beneath my ear. He tilted my face toward his with the same careful authority he used to angle a puck out of danger, and my hand found his chest before I could pretend I had made a rational decision.
When his mouth found mine, it was not testing.
It was a decision made with the full weight of a man who did not make decisions lightly.
The kiss lasted four seconds. Maybe five. Long enough for the taste of bourbon and night air to register. Long enough for my hand to feel his heart beating faster than his body wanted to admit. Long enough for the city to dissolve into irrelevance.
He pulled back. His hand stayed against my face for one more breath. Then it dropped.
“Goodnight,” he said.
I stood there for a long time. A car passed. Somewhere inside Jazz, TX, the quartet started another set, the saxophone carrying the first note into the street like a question nobody needed to answer.
I got in my car. Started the engine. My pulse was doing something completely unacceptable.
My phone lit up in the cupholder.
Bella: You’re still out. I can feel it. Something happened. TELL ME EVERYTHING.
I picked up the phone. Typed three words. Deleted them. Typed them again.
Me: He kissed me.
The response came in under four seconds.
Bella: I AM GETTING IN MY CAR RIGHT NOW.
Me: Do NOT come to my condo.
Bella: Too late. Bringing wine. This requires a full debriefing.
I laughed, actually laughed, alone in my car in a parking lot in Southtown at eleven-something on a Wednesday night, with the taste of a man I barely knew still on my lips and my best friend already halfway to my door.
I pulled out of the lot and drove toward home, the city scrolling past my windows in streaks of gold and shadow.
