Page 67 of At First Dance
The corner of his mouth thinks about lifting. “I can handle loud.”
I don’t know what to do with the ache that sentence wakes up, so I move. “I went to the market and saw your mom. She bribed me with pecans.”
He huffs what might be a laugh. “Sounds like her.”
“She said you were… being you.” I watch his eyes for a flinch or a joke. Neither comes.
“I am,” he says. The simplest admission. Then after a beat that feels like it contains three letters I can’t bear to spell out, he says, “I heard music.”
I glance at the guitar on the chair behind me. “I was just playing around.”
He nods, accepting the lie for what it is: protection. “Sounded like you.”
I hold the doorframe because my knees have decided to be dramatic. “You heardme?”
He studies me the way he studies the sky before a storm—attention sharpened, shoulders loose, ready to move if he needs to. “I heard steady,” he says. “Even where it shook.”
I can feel the words land under my sternum, warm as a hand. “I was sick,” I say, because deflection is a reflex. “You… took care of that.”
His jaw works once. He looks past me, over my shoulder, like the cottage might give him an answer. “You scared me,” he says, just above a whisper. Not a confession he owes, but one he gives.
My chest goes tight and sweet. “I don’t like scaring you.”
“I don’t like being scared.” The honesty sits between us like a Mason jar on a porch rail, catching the light. “But I’ll do it, if that’s the cost of you being here.”
There’s a version of me who makes a joke. Another version runs. I do neither. I step onto the top board, closing the inch that has felt like a mile for days. Up close, I can see the gold ring of hazel in his eyes. My hand lifts like I’ve forgotten I ownit. I don’t touch him. I let the gravity do the work between our bodies until my throat remembers how to move.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “I mean—” I breathe. “I’m trying very hard to mean it.”
He nods, once, relief crossing his face so quickly I almost miss it. Then his gaze tips to my mouth and stays there, and all the carefully stacked reasons to be cautious tilt.
The air gets crowded—fireflies starting up in the yard, a car in the distance, and my pulse in my ears. If he steps forward, if I lean, if one of us stops being so damn noble, I don’t know where we’ll stop.
A screen door slaps somewhere at the main house as a gust of wind picks up. The moment shivers and settles without breaking. Rowan steps back one board like he’s saving us both from ourselves.
“Bailey said to tell you she’ll drop biscuits in the morning,” he says, voice steadying on neutral ground. “I told her you’d bite me if I woke you before nine.”
“That’s slander.”
“That’s survival.” The corner of his mouth finally, finally lifts. It hits me like a warm front.
I curl my fingers around the basket handle so I don’t do something reckless, like hook my hand in his shirt and pull him inside and let the whole question answer itself. “Thank you,” I say, and I mean it for more than the delivery service. “For… the bath. The…” I swallow. “For staying.”
He nods like I’ve offered him a job he wants. “It’s what I do.”
I step backward into the cottage before I say something irretrievable. “Good night, Rowan.”
“Night, Ivy.” He lifts a hand, palm open to the world, then lowers it to his side and turns toward the path. I stand in the doorway and watch him go until he turns at the fork: left forthe house, right for me. He glances once over his shoulder, like a man confirming the stars are where he left them, and then the oaks take him.
Inside, the cottage is the same—and not. The air holds the ghost of his soap, or maybe I’m inventing it. The peaches on the counter glow like they know what they are. I pick up the guitar before the quiet gets ideas.
The chorus arrives whole.
I don’t need the city lights to find me,
I don’t need a headline to believe—
Call it ordinary holy, call it honey on my tongue,
