Page 180 of Dream On, Liar

It should not have affected me the way it did.

It was such a simple thing to say.

But my chest tightened anyway, as though some part of me had been waiting for exactly that answer and did not know what to do with it now that I had heard it.

“Yeah?” I asked, softer than I intended.

“Yeah.”

There was something almost certain in the way he said it, as though the decision had already been made.

“I’ll think of something.”

I watched him turn back towards the bags, unpacking them as though the conversation had not just shifted something between us.

But it had.

I could feel it in the air, beneath my skin, in the sudden restlessness that made it difficult to sit still.

“What did you buy?” I asked, mostly because I needed something normal.

“Food, and some other stuff.”

“I can see that. Did you get me a book?”

He glanced towards me and shrugged.

“I saw that you’d finished it earlier.” He pulled a paperback from one of the bags as though it were nothing special. “So, I got you the next one in the series.”

I stared at the copy he’d placed in my hand. “It was terrible.”

“You still finished it in a short few hours.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You want me to go and return it?”

“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, clutching it closer to my chest.

He remembered.

He placed another book beside the bag, then added a small box to the growing pile.

I already knew what it was before he said anything. “Matcha?”

He nodded. “Authentic Matcha.”

My eyebrows lifted.

“And tools.”

I stared at him. “You asked for recommendations?”

“I saw a local brand had a stall in the store, so I asked the woman in the shop about the correct ones.”

That made me sit up a little straighter.

“You did?”