Page 197 of Across His Line

I don’t sleep.

I can’t. Every time I close my eyes, it’s right there. His eyes, green, and then dark. His hand going still on my waist when I shook. The forehead. Are you sure. His mouth so careful the first time I almost didn’t believe it had happened. I don’t want to scare you. The sound he made when I got it wrong.

I touch my mouth once, in the dark, with two fingers. Then I feel stupid and put my hand down.

Around three, the light under his door across the hall goes out.

I lie there with my eyes open until the window starts to go gray.

When I finally get up the next morning, his door is open and he isn’t in his room.

The bed’s made, badly, the comforter pulled up over a lump of pillows. The couch has my blanket on it, folded, which I didn’t fold. The brand book is on the coffee table where I left it.

And for one second, standing in the hall in my socks, I think about whether or not it was weird for him. Did he wake up and think about it and decide—

I stop it there. I don’t let it go any farther than that.

I go downstairs.

The house smells like cinnamon and coffee, and the tree is on in the front room even though it’s morning, and there’s music coming out of the kitchen, something old with sleigh bells in it. Mrs. Waleska is at the stove in an apron that says kiss the cook in faded red letters, which I don’t think she bought for herself. Mr. Waleska is at the island with his phone and his reading glasses and a mug of coffee the size of a soup bowl.

She turns around and sees me.

“Merry Christmas Eve, Tessa,” she says.

I stand in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Merry Christmas Eve,” I say with a smile.

I haven’t said it to anybody in years. My grandma treats it like it’s another day. My mom never called. It’s three words. I sit down at the island before my face can do anything about them.

Mr. Waleska looks up from his phone and looks at me over it. “Sleep all right?”

“Yes,” I lie. “Thank you.”

He goes back to his phone. Mrs. Waleska puts a plate in front of me. Eggs, scrambled soft, and a slice of something that looks like bread and smells like cinnamon, with butter melting into the top.

The back door opens. Cold comes in. And Rafe comes in with it.

He’s in a gray hoodie, with his hair wet and pushed back and his cheeks red from outside, and his breath still going a little hard, like he ran somewhere and back. He kicks his shoes off in the mudroom. He doesn’t look at me. He pours a glass of water at the sink. He drinks the whole thing standing up. He fills it again.

Then he comes over and sits down on the stool next to mine. His knee about two inches from mine under the island.

He doesn’t say good morning. He doesn’t say anything. He pulls the plate his mom puts in front of him toward himself and starts eating.

I eat my eggs.

Mr. Waleska puts his phone down and eats. His mother hums along to the sleigh bells wrong. The tree lights blink through the doorway from the front room.

And I move my leg just a little under the island, where nobody can see. Two inches, until my knee is against his, and then the side of my thigh, through my sweatpants and his, from the knee halfway up.

He stops chewing.

I keep eating my eggs.

He turns his head and looks at me. I don’t look back. I take a bite of the cinnamon bread. It’s so good it’s almost upsetting.

He looks back at his plate. And he leaves his leg exactly where it is.