Page 175 of In Somnis

A small, stupid jolt moves through me at the thought of Nevan, which is becoming inconveniently familiar.

I glance at the clock above the kitchen door.

After one.

He still hasn’t shown up.

I don’t know whether to be proud of myself or worried about him, and mostly it’s landing somewhere between the two.

His alarm went off at four-fifteen. It nearly scared me out of my skin—an aggressive buzzing from somewhere in the region of his crotch. I fumbled for his phone in the soft light of a streetlamp outside, already half-panicked, until I got the screen lit up and saw the label.

brekfast sarvic alarm :)

Something about that almost did me in right there.

I silenced it, then I lay still and listened to him breathing, his face slack in a way it never quite is when he’s awake and running himself at that constant low-grade sprint he does. He was holding Mr. Muffin. Not like he’d grabbed him on purpose, more like my plushie had migrated toward the warmest thing available and Nevan had just accommodated it in his sleep, one arm loose around him.

He looked young. That was the thing I kept thinking.

Too young for how tired he always looks.

He looked like somebody’s kid brother, not a man who’d been holding an inn together with both hands and sheer stubbornness since he was probably too young to be doing it.

And he looked as if he needed a few more hours of sleep.

So I left. Quietly, quickly, with my shoes in one hand and my jacket tucked under my arm, easing the door shut behind me with both hands until the latch caught without a sound. I walked to the inn in the cold morning air with my hair still damp from the world’s fastest shower.

Breakfast service wasn’t complicated. Eggs, toast, fruit, yogurt, dressed up with honey and walnuts, because I can’t do anything simply. The guests were happy.

Fed people tend to be, which is one of the more reliable truths in the world.

Nevan’s name came up twice, once from the couple in Room 3 asking after him, and once from the woman at the corner table, who said he always remembered how she took her coffee and hoped he wasn’t ill.

But honestly, I’m not surprised.

He’s the first face people see here.

He’s the reason people come back.

Nevan doesn’t give himself enough credit. Yes, his cooking skills are lacking, but he makes up for it in every other aspect of this place. But he needs to remember himself. He’s only one person, and to carry the weight he does, I don’t know how he does it.

He’s the kind of person who fills a room without trying, remembers how people take their coffee, and has probably been doing it since long before he was old enough to be responsible for anyone.

I know what that looks like from the inside. I’m always the one who shows up, remembers details, and holds things together so everyone else can fall apart in an orderly fashion. I know how exhausting it is. Not the tired from working, but the tired from being needed, which is different, and doesn’t go away with sleep. It doesn’t show on your face until it suddenly does.

It showed on his face last night. Before the crying, before Spencer’s call, before any of that, really. I saw it the second he’d walked into the kitchen and found me wiping down a counter that was already clean. He looked at me and knew, the same way I looked at him and knew.

He deserves to wake up slowly and lie there for a few minutes just being a person, not a load-bearing wall. Just himself, in a room, with nowhere to be.

I hope he’s still asleep. I genuinely, earnestly hope that when he wakes up, it’s without an alarm, and that he stays there long enough to remember what that feels like.

I think he’s forgotten.

Until last night, I think I had too.

I realize I’ve been plating the same sandwich for about thirty seconds too long, so I make myself finish the fourth plate, cover it, and step back to look at my workspace. Lunch service is winding down, the dining room noise mellowing out from its earlier peak, and the kitchen is in reasonable shape.

Sydney comes back through for a coffee order and pauses at the pass. “Those sandwiches,” she says, eyes wide.