MasukIvy’s POVI had not planned to come home when I did.That was the honest truth of it, I had been at Sarah’s, a friend from my old job, and we had been having the kind of evening that extended itself naturally, one glass of wine becoming two becoming a third and a conversation about nothing important that felt important the way those conversations did. I had genuinely lost track of time.When I looked at my phone at eleven fifteen and saw it was eleven fifteen I had said goodbye and got in a cab and come home and let myself into the apartment with my keys and walked into my kitchen and found my brother and my best friend not looking at each other with the most elaborate casualness I had ever witnessed.I knew what I had walked into. I had walked into the tail end of something and I was not obtuse and I did not need a forensic analysis to understand what the counter-staring and the careful positioning and the slightly too-even voices were communicating.I had looked at the ceiling beca
Dexter’s POVMy hand was at her jaw.She had not moved away. That was the first thing, the fact that she was still there, still looking at me, still letting the moment be what it was without shutting it down or stepping back or doing any of the things she had done in hallways and kitchens and corridors over the last weeks when the moment arrived and she had decided it was not yet time.She was not deciding that now.I kept my hand where it was. Felt the warmth of her skin under my palm, the slight angle of her jaw, the particular stillness of someone who was present in a room completely. Her eyes were on mine and they were doing what they always did when she was feeling something she had made peace with, clear and direct and not hiding anything.“Daisy,” I said. Her name, in my voice, at whatever volume the kitchen required.“I know,” she said.I leaned in.Slowly. Deliberately. The kind of slow that was its own statement, not hesitation, intention. I was giving her every second to de
Daisy’s POVThe next day we came home together to a quiet apartment, after work.I noticed it the moment Dexter pushed open the front door, the particular quality of a space that had been empty for a while, the absence of Ivy’s shoes by the door, the kitchen light off, the living room undisturbed. She had texted me at nine saying she was staying at a friend’s and not to wait up, which at the time had made me smile because Ivy’s timing was rarely accidental.Tonight I was less certain whether to be grateful or terrified.We came in and I put my bag on the hook and he put his keys in the dish and we moved into the kitchen the way we always did at the end of an evening, the instinctive migration toward the room where the light was good and the counter was there to lean against and the kettle was available if anyone needed something to do with their hands.Nobody turned on the kettle.We stood in the kitchen in our coats and the apartment was very quiet around us and the evening was still
Ivy’s POVI came home to an empty apartment.That was the first thing, the particular quality of a space that had been recently occupied and recently vacated. Not the empty of a place where nobody had been all day. The empty of a place where two people had been and were now somewhere else together.Both doors closed. No sound from either room. No Daisy on the couch. No Dexter in the study with the light on and a case file open. Just the apartment in its Friday evening quiet with the city outside the windows doing its weekend thing.I stood in the hallway for a moment and just registered it.They were out. Together. At the dinner that had been booked and confirmed and anticipated since Wednesday morning when I had heard his voice through the walls saying have dinner with me and her saying yes and I had stood in the corridor with my hand over my mouth being extremely mature about the whole situation.I went to the kitchen.The counter told its own story.A takeout menu, the one from t
Daisy’s POVThe restaurant was exactly right.That was the first thing I thought when we walked in, not impressive, the way he had said, but right. Small and warm and lit with the kind of light that made people look like themselves rather than like versions of themselves designed for being seen. Close tables with enough distance between them for real conversation. A menu written on a small card without the ceremony of leather covers. The kind of place that existed for eating and talking rather than for being seen to eat and talk.He had thought about this.Not about what would look good or communicate the right signal, about what would feel right. There was a difference and I had spent enough time around people who confused those two things to appreciate it when someone understood the difference.We were seated at a corner table. He pulled out my chair and I sat and he sat across from me and we opened the small menus and I looked at the food and thought about how very ordinary and ver
Dexter’s POVI had been thinking about this dinner since Wednesday morning.Not obsessively, I was a lawyer, I had a full caseload, I had a managing partner who sent emails at six in the morning with the cheerful energy of someone who did not believe in boundaries between professional and personal time. I had things to do and I did them. But underneath the doing of them, in the background of every meeting and brief and phone call, Friday was there. The awareness of it. The particular weight of something I had wanted to get right and now had to actually get right.I had made a reservation at a restaurant I had eaten there once, two years ago, for a quiet dinner with a colleague after a long trial at court. It was not a place designed to impress. No marble entrance, no lighting that felt like a set, no menu that required translation. It was a corner restaurant in a quieter part of the city with good food and close tables and the kind of warm noise that allowed for conversation without p
IVY♡I went for a run that evening, which I normally do when I feel overwhelmed or stressed. I was stressed about the conflict between my best friend and my brother. I met Daisy on the floor of my bathroom, though she wasn’t crying. That was the first thing I noticed, the absence of it. Daisy sat
DEXTER♡what it was before I finished looking at it before Daisy took it from me.Fine chain, small clasp, the particular weight of something I had held in a jewellery shop two years ago and turned over in my hands before deciding it was right. I had bought it on a Tuesday afternoon in a moment of w
DEXTER ♡The date had been fine. I guess it was fine. That was the honest assessment, fine, in the way that things were fine when they were technically without fault and entirely without feeling. She was beautiful. She was easy company. She had a sharp sense of humour and she laughed at the righ
DAISY ♡Ivy made pasta on Thursday evening.The good kind, the kind she only made when she had time and the particular domestic energy that came over her when she wanted an evening to feel normal. Sauce from scratch, proper parmesan, the kitchen smelling warm and like something that required no co







