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“If you like her a lot, you should tell her.”

I stop on the step. “That’s the plan, bud.”

He nods, satisfied he’s handled it, and goes back inside to find his shoe or start something new entirely.

I get in the truck and I don’t start it right away.

I’ve done harder things than this. I’ve carried people out of houses coming down around us. I stood in a hospital hallway at twenty-two with a four-day-old and no idea what I was doing. This is coffee, with a woman I’ve already had coffee with, in a shop I could find blindfolded.

My hands aren’t quite steady on the wheel.

So I sit there a second and do the thing Dottie taught me for exactly this. I hand it over. Lord, I don’t know what I’m doing here. You know it’s been a long time. Just don’t let me talk myself out of the best thing that’s wandered into my life since Bo, and keep her heart easy tonight, whatever it turns into. Amen.

It’s not much of a prayer. Dottie could’ve done better in her sleep. But my hands settle some, and I’ll take it as an answer.

I back out before Dottie can get to the window and see any of it.

She’s waiting outside her building when I pull up, and she comes toward the truck before I’ve got it in park, which is very Olivia. She doesn’t wait for things she can handle herself.

I get out anyway, and run to her side of the truck.

“You don’t have to,” she starts.

“I know.” I open her door.

She looks at the open door, then at me, and her cheeks go pink. They’ve been doing that for a couple weeks now, and I’ve started keeping track of what does it. Opening her door does it. Calling it a date does it. Standing a little too close does it.

“I am fully capable of opening my own door, you know,” she says, climbing in anyway.

“I know.”

I shut her door and go around, and I catch myself grinning at the hood of my own truck before I get back in.

Royal Brew is five minutes away. I could make it four. I take the long way, because I’m in no hurry to be anywhere that isn’t this.

Inside, it smells the way it did the first time. Espresso and warm brick. The same oversized chairs in the corner, empty tonight.

“Go ahead and grab us a seat,” I tell her. “I’ve got the drinks.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You know what I want?”

“Iced caramel latte.” I shrug one shoulder and grin at her, easy, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because it is. You pay attention to somebody, you learn them. I’ve been paying attention to her for weeks.

She holds my eyes a second longer than she needs to, then goes to claim the corner. I watch her square the chairs before she sits, nudge the little table a half inch straighter, and I think about the candle in the dead center of her kitchen and how much I already love the parts of her she thinks she’s hiding.

I order her latte and my white mocha. When the barista at the register asks for a name, it’s out before I can stop it.

“Lu-liv.” I pause, and start over. “It’s Luke.”

The barista writes it down slow, like he’s not sure I should be operating a vehicle.

“Long morning,” I tell him.

I carry both cups to the corner. I set them down, and we just look at each other for a second. No phones. No wrong numbers. No kid narrating from the backseat. Just her, in the low light, hair down, taking me in the same way I’m taking her.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hello.”