Page 23 of Service Included

“Seriously? You have the sense of humor of a middle school boy.”

“I come by it naturally. Got it from my own sister.”

Nico held the open bag toward her, inviting her.

Her hand brushed past the thin plastic to dip into the waiting cherries. The fruit felt firm against the tips of her fingers, but she knew not to squeeze. The tender flesh of Rainiers, more delicate than the darker red variety used in pies, bruised easily, turning from palest yellow and coral pink into mottled brown. These were purely for enjoying in the moment, in excesses of seasonal gluttony. Taking one likely meant following the example of the letter writer who’d unwrapped those chocolate-covered cherries, and that was fine. Better than fine. She paused with the cherry halfway to her mouth, realizing that he was as focused on her hand as she had been on his.

“One more thing.” Her mother, almost forgotten, continued from the phone. “The movers aren’t going to be able to take the mattresses and springs to the dump until tomorrow, so you’ll still have somewhere to sleep tonight, and you have to let them in again in the morning.”

He couldn’t hear that reminder that beds waited upstairs, could he?

But of course he knew. He was the mover.

“I have to go now, okay?” While she exchanged goodbyes with her mother, Nico crossed the room to examine the wall-mountedcabinets and shelves her father had cherished. In a world with feasible real estate prices, she’d have a home office and keep the Danish Modern-style system, but her two-bedroom town house was already bursting. No matter how the wall’s worth of polished teak and clean angles begged to go with her to Seattle, her life had no space.

Nico set the bag of fruit on top of the gleaming orange-brown wood of the hanging desk. One cherry rolled out, a splash of contrasting color.

She moistened her lips.

Then he crouched to check underneath the unit. Since there was neither an ancient goddess to strike her blind for ogling the deity’s favorite young man, nor an interfering mother to embarrassingly shove her forward, she admired how the line of his spine led to the curve of his butt. Triangular holes of shredded denim marked his back pocket at the place where she assumed he often stuck a phone. The urge to insert her hand there and wiggle her fingers out between the white strings was so strong, she curled her fingers into her palm to fight it. And found the small ball of a cherry, the one she’d plucked from the bag moments ago. The one that had lost out to watching Nico.

When she bit into it, summer burst in her mouth. She twisted and pulled the stem while her teeth gripped the pit and she sucked the sweet flesh loose.

He shifted his weight and dropped a hand to his thigh to preserve his balance.

Likewise, she had to lock her knees, because she was close to trembling. The fetish for male models in crouching poses was at least as ancient as the sculptor Myron’sDiscobolusstatue, that naked athlete caught in the instant before he sprang upward to throw a discus. A more self-controlled woman would look out the window or maybe find a fleck of lint to remove, but evenwhen he stood and dusted his hands on his thighs, and she knew he would turn around any moment, she couldn’t look away.

Instead of facing her, he braced both hands on the wall-mounted desk unit and pushed down, checking the strength of the brackets. “Change in plans?” After so long with her mother’s chatter at her ear, his voice was startlingly deep and slow.

“My daughter’s staying with them tonight.” Her answer felt incomplete, making her want to tack on a paragraph of explanation to fill airspace. “At their new place.”

The phone clutched close to her chest seemed to become too heavy to hold when her arm muscles morphed to spaghetti. She could leave it on the coffee table next to her lunch, or she could set it on the desk, closer to him. Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet, but she assumed he sensed her approach even though he bent to the wood surface, putting more weight on his arms. His T-shirt sleeves stretched across the trapezoids that popped into definition. She stopped close enough that she could sense his warmth. She imagined him sitting in the sun with his lunch while she’d been in here with drawn blinds and her magazine.

He took a breath and turned his head toward her. “Does that mean you’re free this evening?”

“I—” The small click as she placed her phone on the wood surface didn’t conceal the rasp of air crossing her dry lips.Full chicken-shit mode. Great.“Yes, I am.”

Now it was his turn to speak, ask her to get a drink, keep the conversation volleying, but he didn’t. He turned back to face the cabinet, and the pain that crossed his face made her look down to see if he’d banged his elbow or his shin on a corner. His eyebrows had squeezed downward hard enough that the ridge between them stood out, and his mouth and cheeks appeared to be fighting to hold something behind his teeth, maybe a groan or a cry.

She didn’t understand. Their last couple sentences replayed in her mind—no plans, Callie away, free tonight—nothing of portent, nothing there to cause this pain.

Then he took a deep breath and shuddered. When he blew out, he shook his head and then blinked several times. “This unit’s cleared out.”

His voice was a little thick and caught before the last word, but he seemed to have pushed away whatever had momentarily overtaken him.

He tapped one knuckle on the wood, the staccato rhythm mimicking her heartbeat. “We’re supposed to leave it for a specialty furniture guy coming tomorrow. Is there anything else you want help with?”

If he wanted to act like the last two minutes hadn’t happened, she could ignore them too.

“Well.” She swiveled her head and pretended to study her surroundings, but she knew what she wanted from this room: a few classic board games, the framed poster from the 1996 Imperial Tombs of China exhibit at the Portland Art Museum, and her grandfather’s tomato-red Olympia typewriter. All could easily fit into her car.

When he faced her, she automatically cataloged his body position, the way she would a model for a game avatar. He’d shifted so that his left thigh rested against the desk and he braced on his left hand, while his right arm hung loosely along his side. Near enough to another pose immortalized by Praxiteles that once again, she drowned in her newly discovered weakness: men who inadvertently stood like Hellenistic statues.

“Well?” he echoed. “Plenty of time.”

More than two thousand years before she and Nico breathed the air in this room, Aristotle had asked why people were ashamed to admit that they wanted to have sex when they didn’tfeel ashamed to crave food or drink. She didn’t know the answer, but she had to try. “There is…something.”

He waited.

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