Page 112

Laura

By ten, the staffing problem is handled, which confirms what I already knew when I got dressed this morning: they didn’t need me. I knew it while I was standing in front of my closet, taking far too long to decide what to wear. I passed over the cream blouse I usually reach for without thinking and chose the dark teal one instead, the one that fits closer through the waist, with black trousers and the earrings I normally save for dinners out. For a few seconds, I considered changing back because the teal felt more noticeable. I didn’t. Nobody here has commented, and I’m relieved. The choice wasn’t for them anyway. When I looked in the mirror before leaving, I liked what I saw.

And then I came to work anyway. There was a real problem here at the hospital. Two people called out, one department manager panicked, and somebody needed to move schedules around before the day turned into a disaster. But by the time I walked through the hospital doors, half of it was already solved. I answered three questions, made one call, and spent the next hour doing work that could have waited until tomorrow.

None of that is why I’m here. I’m here because I woke up with Kell’s arm around me and our fingers tangled together over my stomach, and for a few seconds before either of us moved, I wanted to stay exactly like that. The realization unsettled me.

Sex I understand. Even very good sex. Even sex involving robe belts, a knitted scarf, a safe word system I learned from romance novels, and a Wicker Man who discovers new interests by accidentally tying willow around his wrist. I can categorize all of that.

What happened afterward is harder. Kell untying me carefully, rubbing my hands and checking my wrists, bringing me water, holding me while I came down from everything we’d done. Falling asleep with him. Waking up with his arm around me.

I keep hearing him say, Someone I want to tell. I put down the report I’ve been pretending to read and rub both hands over my face. That sentence is the problem. Not the restraint or the sex. Not even waking up tangled together, though pretending that doesn’t matter is probably cheating.

It’s the ordinary pieces that won’t stay where I put them. Kell listening for me to come home. Kell thinking about what will make me laugh. Kell wanting to tell me about his day before the day is even over.

Dave did that. He used to call from the grocery store because he’d found some ridiculous cereal he thought I needed to see. He’d save stories from work because he knew which ones would make me laugh and which ones would make me furious on his behalf. Sometimes he came through the door already talking, halfway into a story before he’d taken off his shoes.

I loved that. I loved him. Nothing about Kell changes either of those things.

The problem is that Kell is nothing like him. Dave liked plans. He made lists and followed them. He folded towels the same way every time because there was, according to Dave, a correct method, and I’d spent twenty-five years refusing to learn it on principle.

Kell forgets to eat when he’s painting. He gets paint on dining-room chairs and thinks flavored coffee creamer is an entire category of human achievement. He can spend an hour completely absorbed in something and then abandon it because a song catches his interest from another room. Dave built his life slowly, one practical decision after another. Kell woke up in my condo almost three weeks ago and is somehow already painting canvases too large to fit comfortably inside it.

I know different isn’t bad. It also doesn’t automatically mean compatible, which still leaves me with no idea what I’m supposed to do about us.

My phone vibrates beside my keyboard. Kell’s name fills the screen, and my pulse jumps before I even answer, which is ridiculous enough that I refuse to examine it.

“Hi.”

“I signed the lease.”

I straighten in my chair. “You did?”

“Yes.”

There’s something in his voice that makes me smile before I can stop myself. “Tell me everything.”

He does. Carl talks too much. The water in the sink ran brown before it cleared. Blair made Carl change something in the lease about protecting the walls, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Kell had never written his name, so Blair printed the letters for him and showed him how to copy them. That takes the smile right out of me.

“She taught you to write your name?”

“Yes.”

“And you understood what you were agreeing to?”

“Yes.”

I close my eyes for a second. “Kell, that’s wonderful.”

“I know.”

The absolute confidence in his answer makes me laugh. Then he tells me Carl needed the deposit and first month’s rent before the lease could take effect. Kell used his card.

He paid for the studio himself.

“And Blair still managed to find something wrong with the lease?”

“I think she likes telling Carl he’s wrong.”