Page 143 of In Somnis

“This is the perfect height for me.” She looks up, genuinely baffled. “But you are tall, so why is that?”

“Fortunate coincidence.”

She narrows her gaze, but then her hands resume their slow survey of the counter, fingertips trailing along the edge.

“You never cook in here,” she states, a truthful observation.

“Occasionally.”

She gives me a look.

“Rarely,” I amend.

“Okay, well.” She turns back to the counter with a small, satisfied smile. “I’ll be honored to pop your kitchen’s cherry.”

I huff a laugh, and she gets right to work, unloading groceries and moving things around, grouping ingredients. Her hands still on a bunch of thyme, and she looks up at me with an expression I can’t quite pin down.

I glance at the herb, trying to keep the low-grade nausea at bay.

“Okay, so,” she starts. “The plan was mushroom risotto, and I stand by that plan. The porcini in that shop were genuinely beautiful, and I almost cried a little. Then on the walk back, I kept thinking about how the same porcini, with shallots and thyme, would be absolutely incredible in a stroganoff instead. I think that’s objectively the better idea, the problem being that I’d need beef for that, but I didn’t grab beef because I was thinking risotto. I could still do the risotto which was always a good plan and is still a good plan, or I could run back out, except the shop might be closed by now, so maybe risotto is just…” She sets the thyme down, scrunching her nose at it. “Sorry. You don’t need the full internal monologue.”

“I don’t mind the internal monologue,” I say honestly. “Both options are fine. I can go grab beef if you want the stroganoff, it’s not⁠—”

“The shopping was lovely,” she says, cutting across me.

I pause. “It was.”

“You were lovely.” She’s looking at the porcini now, not at me. “And then you went quiet, and I’ve been doing that thing in my head where I replay everything and try to figure out at what point I said something weird or did too much or…” She turns a mushroom over. “Who invites themselves to someone’s house to cook dinner? On a first date? That’s insane, but I just did that. Nevan talked me down from the sandwiches by inhaling them, but then I looked at a delicacy shop and basically said yes, I will be moving into your kitchen now. You were too polite to say no, and now you’re standing there being quiet, and I just… if this isn’t what you expected, or I’m not what you expected, you can say so. I can take all of this home. I’m genuinely not offended. I just don’t want to be here making you uncomfortable in your own⁠—”

“Lennon.”

“… kitchen when you could be having a perfectly nice, quiet evening without someone reorganizing your⁠—”

“Lennon.” I push off the table, and her eyes flick to me as I approach.

“… whole virgin kitchen, and⁠—”

I cup her face with my hands, tilt her head back, and press my lips to hers. She goes completely still against my palms, but the words stop, which was my hope. I pull back a fraction to see her face. Her eyes are closed, lashes dark against her cheeks, lips slightly parted. There’s a faint flush climbing her throat, and she looks, God, she looks…

So much for not moving too fast.

“You’re not too much,” I murmur, and she opens her eyes. “I’m sorry. I went quiet because I was trying to figure out how to tell you something. Not because I wanted you to leave.”

She swallows. “Oh.”

Her hands find my wrists somewhere in all of that, fingers wrapped loosely around them.

“What did you want to tell me?”

I’ve told her about the nightmares, about the celibacy, and my fear of darkness. I dropped all of that without any difficulty, because those things are clinical to me now, managed, filed away into language I can use without bleeding.

This, apparently, is harder. She releases my wrists, and I let my hands fall from her face as I take a small step away,

“I have ARFID.”

Her flushed, embarrassed expression dissolves as understanding moves in to replace it. “Textures?” she asks. “Or smell, taste…”

“Textures, mostly… but honestly, it’s most food.”