Page 117 of That Rush

By nine, Josie is asleep in the spare room with Sprinkle tucked beneath her chin and one hand resting on the book Aiden read to her.

He eases the door closed and joins me in the kitchen. “She made it three pages.”

“She had a demanding day. There were rocks to inspect.”

“And a fish she needed to lecture about personal boundaries.”

“It followed her.”

“It was hoping she’d drop food.”

“That is an assumption. Maybe she has a magnetic personality.”

Aiden takes the dish towel from the counter while I turn on the faucet. “She does.”

The quiet confidence in his voice catches me off guard. He says it while looking down at the plate in his hands, with the matter-of-fact confidence he uses for anything obvious.

We clean without assigning jobs. I wash. He dries. Our shoulders brush whenever he reaches past me, and once he guides me two inches by the hips rather than asking.

“Bossy,” I say.

“Efficient.”

“You could say excuse me.”

“I could.”

He does it again with the next plate.

He sets the dish in the cabinet and pulls out his phone. A soft melody drifts into the kitchen, quiet enough that it will not carry down the hall.

“Did you make a cleanup playlist?”

“I came prepared.”

“Of course you did.”

He sets the phone beside the sink, takes the plate from my hand, and places it in the drying rack. Then his fingers close around mine.

“What are you doing?”

“Improving your Friday.”

“My Friday was doing fine.”

“It can do better.”

He draws me away from the sink and slides his other hand around my waist. Three feet of open floor between the island and my couch hardly qualifies as a dance floor, but I rest my palm against his shoulder and let him guide me into an easy sway.

“You planned this,” I say.

“The song?”

“The entire evening.”

“I brought food and pajamas for my child. You chose everything else.”

“And yet there’s slow dancing.”