جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

MAYA'S POV I looked away first.Of course I did. That was what I did. I turned back and focused on my drink and the view, telling myself it meant nothing.A moment. The kind of charged accidental eye contact that happened at parties when the lighting was warm and the wine was working and your brain was already soft from an evening of feeling vaguely untethered.It meant nothing.I believed that for approximately forty five seconds."You look like someone deciding whether to stay or leave.”His voice came from my left,low, calm, and distracting in a way I didn’t like.I turned slowly. I already knew it was him.He was closer than I expected. Not too close, just enough that I could see him clearly now, without the lights softening everything. His eyes were dark brown, catching the light. His jaw was sharp, almost too perfect. Simple dark shirt, dark jacket.and somehow, it all looked effortless on him.Like he never had to try.I admired that deeply "What makes you think I'm deciding an

By Sunday I had mostly convinced myself I imagined it.The photo. The grin. The resemblance that my tired, overwrought brain manufactured at six in the morning outside a building I had no business being outside of. I have had four days to think about it and thinking about it has gotten me nowhere useful so I have made the executive decision to file the entire night under things that happened and are now finished and move on with my life.I am very good at moving on.I pull up to my parents house just after two, parking behind Derek's truck which is already in the driveway because Derek is always early to anything involving food. The house looks the same as it always does. Brick front, flower beds my mother tends with a seriousness usually reserved for surgery, the porch light already on even though it is the middle of the afternoon.I sit in the car for a moment with no particular reason to.Then I grab the wine I brought and go inside.The smell hits me first. Roast chicken and garli

The kitchen smells like dinner and my mother's good mood. The radio is on. Something old and slow.I am washing a dish that is already clean.“You left before I could make you breakfast”.I don't know why that's the thing I keep coming back to. Not the other things. Just that.I scrubbed the plate."Caleb is lovely," my mother says from somewhere behind me. I can hear her moving, putting things away “Mmm”I say"Derek always spoke highly of him but you never know until you actually meet someone do you.""You don't," I say.You left before I could make you breakfast.Six words. He said six words in a hallway and then walked out of the door like he hadn't just rearranged something fundamental in my chest and I am standing here washing a dish that has been clean for four minutes because I cannot trust myself to drive yet."He asked about you actually," my mother says.I stop scrubbing."What?""Caleb." She appears beside me to put something in the cupboard above my head, completely unboth

I gave myself the whole weekend to think about it.By Sunday night I had made a decision. The only decision that makes any sense when you strip away the noise and the feelings and the way he looks at you when nobody else is watching.It needs to stop.Not because nothing happened, It did. Not because I don't feel anything, I clearly do and that is precisely the problem. It needs to stop because Caleb Reed is my brother's best friend, because Derek already said something that was almost a warning dressed up as a joke, because my family has Sunday dinners and shared no room for whatever this is trying to becomeI am going to tell him that.Directly, cleanly. Like an adult.I texted him on Monday morning. We need to talk. Not at Derek's. Somewhere neutral.He replies in four minutes.Tell me when.That is it, No pushback, No questions. Just tell me when, like he has been waiting for me to say it and is not going to make me work for it.I told him Tuesday. Coffee place near my studio, fa

My mother picks a restaurant she has never taken me to before. We have our places, the way families do. A brunch spot on Halsted she has been going to since before I was born. The Italian place near her church where every waiter knows her name and her order before she sits down.This place is new. Quiet. A little out of the way.She is already seated when I arrive and she stands to hug me the way she always does but it is a fraction too tight and a second too long and I tell myself I'm imagining things and sit down."How is the branding project going?" she asks, unfolding her napkin. "You mentioned it was giving you trouble.""It's getting there." I open the menu even though I am not really reading it. "The client keeps changing the brief so I keep starting over.""That's frustrating.""It really is.""Well you always figure it out." She says it simply, the way she says most things about me, like it is just a fact of the world she has never had reason to doubt.The food we ordered ar