After dinner, dishes divided the way they always were — he washed, I dried, my rule, I hated the drying — we ended up on the couch without discussing it.My legs across his lap. His hand on my ankle, warm and absent, the touch of someone who wasn't thinking about touching but whose hand had found a place to be and stayed there. He had a book. I had my phone, then didn't, then picked up the book I'd left on his coffee table three visits ago.The lamp in the corner. The quiet."This is nice," I said to the ceiling at some point."Mm.""I mean it. This exact thing. Right now, specifically."He looked up from his book. At my face, the way he looked at things he was paying attention to — fully, without the performance of casual."Yeah," he said.Just that. No elaboration.Yeah.It was enough. It was exactly enough.---I reached for him.Not urgently. Not with the particular desperation that had driven so many of the times before — the angry reaching, the frightened reaching, the reaching
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