Page 13 of At First Dance
I don’t reply to my mother. The old reflex to obey crackles and snaps, but I step away from it like a live wire.
“Work?” Rowan asks.
“Zoom at three.” I grimace. “I’ll keep it short.”
“You need the big house Wi-Fi?”
“The cottage is fine.” I hesitate. “Thank you. For making space for me to… not run.”
He tips his chin, eyes searching mine like he wants to check the ground before he nods. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Not owing and not being grateful aren’t opposites,” I say, because maybe he needs to hear it. Maybe I do.
Something in his face shifts—pleased, wary, soft. He pushes the cottage door open and leaves me on the threshold with a brand-new-to-me record player and a new appreciation for small-town life.
“See you later,” he says.
I watch him walk away until the oak eats him, then sit cross-legged on the rug and listen to Stevie Nicks tell me not to chain my heart. I make a cup of lemon water. I read five pages without absorbing a single word. At 2:59, I click a link.
Mara’s face fills my screen—neat bun, cat-eye liner, smile like a solution.
“You look… peaceful,” she says, surprised and delighted. “It’s unsettling. In a good way.”
“I’m doing a rural immersion program,” I deadpan.
“Great. Think we can monetize it?”
We run down the list—deliverables, the three interviews I need to reschedule, and a charity gala I was somehow on the poster for despite not agreeing to attend. Mara promises to deflect, delay, and de-escalate. She uses words likewindowandresetandcreative space. She asks if I’m writing. I don’t lie.
“Not yet,” I say, tracing a circle in the condensation of my glass. “But there’s humming.”
“Good enough.” She leans closer. “Also, you should know that the internet thinks you’re on an enlightenment retreat in Idaho. Shh. Don’t correct them.”
I laugh. “Bless the internet’s geography.”
The call ends without stress lodged behind my eyes. That in itself feels like a minor miracle. I sit with it. Then I stand because my body remembers a different kind of ritual I haven’t had in months.
I take the record off the player and slide it back into its sleeve. And then I bait fate by walking up to the main house at dusk.
His porch is all long shadows and soft sounds—wind through leaves, insects tuning up, a distant laugh that could be a neighbor or a fox. The screen door is propped with a smooth river rock. I tap my knuckles anyway.
“It’s open,” he calls from somewhere inside.
The kitchen is small and clean in that unfussy way—no matching canister sets, just a line of jars and a wooden spoon that’s earned its keep. Rowan stands at the stove in a gray T-shirt and jeans, bare feet, a dish towel slung over his shoulder like it’s a uniform. He turns when I hover in the doorway and does a quick once-over, eyes catching on the clean hoodie I quickly snag off the counter like it pleases him against his will.
“Tomato sandwiches?” he asks. “Got good ones at the market this morning.”
“You’re speaking a love language I didn’t know I had.”
He gestures with the knife. “Wash up and slice the other one. Salt’s in the pinch bowl.”
We move around each other like we’ve done this a dozen times instead of zero. I wash the tomato, slice it carefully and thinly, then salt it like he said. He toasts the bread and lays down a scandalous amount of mayo without shame. We build something perfect between two palms, then carry plates out tothe back steps, where the light turns everything it touches into memory.
I bite. I close my eyes. Rowan makes a small sound that could be a laugh if he were the laughing-out-loud type.
“Okay,” I say when I can speak again. “This is… indecent.”
“Don’t tell the nutritionist.”
