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“Okay,” she says. “Maybe not that kind of chaos.”

And we’re standing there, both of us, hands near the same candle, close enough that I can smell the lavender in her hair and see the pulse going in her throat.

You want chaos? Here’s chaos. I back you up against this counter and kiss you until you forget where the candle goes.

I don’t say it out loud.

But I don’t have to, and that’s the problem. Whatever my mouth is doing, my eyes just told on me, and she caught every word of it.

She’s looking up at me with those careful brown eyes gone wide, half daring me to do it and half scared I actually will, because she knows exactly what I’m thinking. I made sure of that without meaning to.

And I made her a deal in a coffee shop. I’m not going to be the one who breaks it in her own kitchen fifteen minutes after walking in the door.

So I shake my head and step back. I break the moment before it breaks me.

“Alright,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I’d like. “Let’s go look at your sink.”

The disposal’s an easy fix. Jammed, mostly. A bent piece of something that has no business being down there, plus a seal that’s given up. Fifteen minutes if I hustle.

I don’t hustle.

I lie down on my back and slide half under her sink, and Olivia, after a second of visibly deciding whether this is beneath her, lowers herself cross-legged onto the floor beside me.

“You don’t have to sit down here,” I say.

“I want to help.”

“You want to supervise.”

“Same thing.” She folds her hands in her lap, prim as a schoolteacher, on the floor, in her spotless kitchen. “Tell me what you need.”

Which is how I learn that Olivia, who can name every muscle in the human body and probably diagnose me from across a room, cannot identify a single tool.

“Channel locks.”

She hands me a screwdriver.

“That’s a screwdriver.”

“I knew that.”

“The blue ones. With the jaw.”

She picks up the pliers, studies them like they might be a trick, and hands them over. When she does, her fingers slide across the back of my hand and stay a beat, warm, then jerk away like she touched a stove.

I don’t look at her. I keep my eyes on the pipe. But my mouth goes up at one corner, and I know she sees it, and now she knows I felt it, and neither of us says a word about the fact that we’re playing a game with a toolbox.

It keeps happening. “Flashlight.” Her fingers on mine. “Hold this.” Her hand over my hand a second longer than the job needs. Every time, she notices. Every time, I notice her noticing. And around the fourth time, I feel her go still beside me, like she’s just realized she keeps inventing excuses to touch me and has no idea what to do about it.

Good. Neither do I.

We work like that for a while, easy, and then she says, careful, “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything.” I mean it, which still surprises me.

“Bo’s mom.” A pause, like she’s testing whether the door’s allowed to open. “You said she’s not in the picture. You don’t have to tell me more. I just wanted to see if you’re willing to share.”

I’ve deflected this exact question a hundred times. At work, at church, at every well-meaning dinner party. But she asked it sitting on her kitchen floor handing me a wrench, no audience, no agenda, and I find I don’t want to.