lu

“I’ve been right here.”

“Your body has been right here.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “You wrote four hundred words on the housing board vote and then deleted three hundred of them. I heard you do it. The keys sound different when you’re deleting.”

You stare at her.

“I’m not wrong,” she says.

You look back at your screen. The cursor blinks.

“I’m just tired,” you say.

Priya doesn’t push it. She looks at you a second longer, the kind of look people give when they’ve decided not to say the thing they’re thinking, then straightens up and goes back to her own desk. You sit there with the housing board piece open and four hundred words that don’t sound like anything and a tab underneath it full of streets you’ve never walked down.

You stare at the board piece for another minute, then close the tab on Manchester entirely, like that’s going to fix anything, like the problem is the tab and not what’s underneath it.

You go back to the article. Read your own opening sentence three times. It’s fine. It’s a perfectly fine sentence. The housing board voted to delay implementation of the new zoning amendment for the fourth consecutive month, citing ongoing community input sessions that several residents have characterized as performative. That’s accurate. That’s the story. You sat in that meeting for two hours on Thursday night with your notebook out and your recorder running and you have everything you need to write this, and you can’t make yourself care about a single word of it.

You used to care. That’s the part that feels strange. You didn’t fake interest in this work, not for one single piece in six years. You liked the meetings. You liked the residents who showed up with their binders and their grievances and their twenty years of paying close attention to a neighbourhood that the rest of the city barely thought about. You liked being the person who wrote it down properly, who got the quotes right, who made someone’s frustration legible to people who would never sit through a zoning meeting themselves.

You still like all of that, in theory. In the abstract. You just can’t seem to access it from inside your own chest anymore, not like you used to, and you don’t entirely know when that happened, except you do, actually, you know exactly when it happened, it happened somewhere between a farmers market and a recording studio and a rooftop bar with the whole of Los Angeles spread out below you.

You delete the opening sentence and write it again, slightly differently, and it still doesn’t sound like anything.

Your phone buzzes on the desk.

Harry: lunch?

You look at the time. Quarter to twelve. He’s five hours ahead, which means it’s nearly five in London, which means he’s between things, that specific in between he gets during a day full of meetings and sessions that he never quite explains the details of, just mentions in passing like they’re nothing, like flying to London for two days of meetings is a completely ordinary Tuesday.

You: can’t talk long. is everything okay?

Harry: everything’s fine. just wanted to see your face

You smile at your screen despite yourself, despite the four hundred words of nothing sitting open behind the message, despite Priya twelve feet away definitely still clocking your general state of being.

You: give me ten minutes

You close your laptop halfway, just enough to signal to anyone walking past that you’re stepping away. You head for the small conference room at the end of the floor that nobody ever uses before one, the one with the good light and the door that actually closes properly. You sit down at the table and call him.

He picks up on the second ring, the screen taking a second to load. Then his face fills the small rectangle, cap off, hair pushed back, a window behind him already starting to get dark. London ahead of you in more ways than one today.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.” You settle back in the chair and pull your knees up slightly, making yourself small in a room that isn’t really yours. “How’s London?”

“Grey. Wet. Several meetings about things I will not be discussing with you because they’re boring even to me.” He tilts the phone slightly, like he’s trying to get a better look at you. “How’s the housing board piece.”

“It’s not happening,” you say.

“That bad?”

“I’ve written the opening sentence four times.”

“What’s it about.”

“Zoning amendment. Delayed again. Residents are annoyed.” You rub your eyes. “I know exactly what it should say. I just can’t make myself say it.”

He’s quiet for a second, watching you through the screen with that attention he gives even through a phone, even across an ocean and five time zones.

“I miss you,” you say. It comes out before you’ve decided to say it, less filtered than it used to be with anyone.

Something in his face softens. “I miss you too.”

“It’s stupid. It hasn’t even been that long.”

“It’s not stupid.”

You look at the conference table. At the little water ring from someone’s coffee cup that’s been there for as long as you’ve worked here. “I just don’t want to be here,” you say. “In the office. Writing about zoning. I don’t mean that as some huge thing. I just mean today. Right now. I don’t want to be here.”

“Where do you want to be?”

You think about it. “I don’t know. Anywhere but here, honestly.”

He’s quiet again. Not a worried quiet. Just a listening one.

“Hm,” he says.

You laugh a little, despite everything. “That’s all I get? Hm?”

“What do you want me to say? What would help you?”

“I don’t know. Something useful.”

“I could fly you to London right now,” he says. “That’s useful.”

“I have a job, Harry.”

“I’m aware.”

You smile at the screen and rub your eyes again. “I think I might book a session with my therapist,” you say. “Or get a massage. Honestly those feel like the same thing right now.”

“They’re not the same thing.”

“They’re functionally the same thing. Someone listens to me. Someone touches my shoulders. I leave feeling slightly less like a held breath.”

He laughs at that, properly, the kind that makes you feel like you said something good even though you weren’t really trying to.

“Book both,” he says. “See which one works better. Report back.”

“I’ll do a controlled study.”

“Very scientific of you.”

“I’ll see if they’re open tonight,” you say. “The massage place. If they have a slot I’m taking it.”

“Where do you go?”

“This little boutique spa place near my apartment. Bare Theory.” You shrug slightly. “It’s tiny, like four rooms, but the woman who runs it is the only person who’s ever actually gotten the knot out of my left shoulder, so I’m loyal.”

“Bare Theory,” he repeats, like he’s stashing it away. “Have fun.”

“I’ll try.”

You look at him for a second, his face filling the small screen, London getting darker behind him, and something in your chest does that thing it does now, the settling thing, even over a phone, even with an ocean between you.

“I should let you go,” you say. “You probably have actual important people to talk to.”

“You’re an important person.”

“Flatterer.” You lean toward the camera slightly. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He smiles, the real one. “Go write about zoning.”

“Don’t remind me.”

You end the call and sit there for a second in the quiet of the empty conference room, phone still warm in your hand. Then you open the booking app before you can talk yourself out of it and check Bare Theory’s availability for tonight.

Six o’clock. One slot left.

You book it without hesitating, type your name in, confirm, and feel something in your shoulders ease slightly just from having done it. A small good decision made for yourself, before the actual good thing has even happened.

You put your phone face down on the table and look at it for a second.

Then you go back to your desk and open the housing board piece again, and this time the opening sentence comes out almost right on the second try, which you decide to take as a sign.

You leave the office a little before five, earlier than you usually allow yourself, but Priya doesn’t say anything when you grab your coat except a small knowing look that you choose to ignore.

The walk home is cold and quick, the December dark that arrives at four thirty and makes the whole day feel shorter than it is. You change out of your work clothes into something soft, the leggings and the oversized sweater that exist specifically for evenings that require comfort over presentation, and you’re pulling your hair back when you remember the conversation with Harry from earlier, the bit about booking a session with your therapist or a massage, functionally the same thing.

You pull out your phone.

You: are you free tonight??

The reply comes almost instantly, because Camille’s phone is essentially an extension of her hand at all times.

Cami: always for you. what’s the vibe?

You think about it for a second. Cami isn’t licensed in anything except, as she’s pointed out more than once, ten years of paying very close attention to you, which she maintains is more useful than a degree anyway. She’s not wrong, most of the time. She gives genuinely good advice that cuts through things faster than a real session sometimes does, mostly because she has no professional obligation to be gentle about it.

You: I need to wine and whine. having a moment

Cami: say less. my place, 8?

Cami: also bringing the good wine not the wine I pretend is the good wine

You: perfect. I have a massage at 6 so that works

Cami: a MASSAGE. look at you taking care of yourself

Cami: this is either very healthy or you’re spiraling and dressing it up as self care

You: can it be both…

Cami: it can absolutely be both. see you at 8 🍷

You put your phone down and look at yourself in the mirror for a second, hair pulled back, the soft sweater, a tiredness around your eyes that no amount of sleep seems to be fixing lately, and you think about Harry’s face on the screen earlier today, how he just listened, how he said hm instead of trying to fix something that maybe doesn’t need fixing yet, just needs saying out loud.

You grab your bag, your keys, your coat, and head out into the cold toward Bare Theory.

Bare Theory is exactly what it sounds like. Small and warm and the opposite of clinical, a place that smells like eucalyptus and something faintly woody, soft music coming from somewhere you can never quite locate, the lighting set to a specific warmth that makes everything feel slightly outside of regular life. There are four rooms. The one you always get is the second on the left, the one with the heated table and the small plant on the shelf that you have watched grow incrementally over the past two years of coming here.

Your massage therapist, Mei, is already waiting when you check in, clipboard in hand, the small professional smile that transitions immediately into a real one when she sees you.

“Hi stranger,” she says. “It’s been a while.”

“I know,” you say. “Life got complicated.”

“I can always tell,” she says, completely unbothered, and leads you back to the second room on the left.

You change and lie down and let the heated table do its first small miracle and stare at the little circle of the face cradle and breathe in the eucalyptus and try to let your brain go quiet, which it doesn’t, not really, not tonight.

Mei starts with your shoulders.

She stops almost immediately.

“Okay,” she says. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you have about six weeks of stress living in here.” She presses a thumb into something near your left shoulder blade and you make a sound that is not entirely dignified. “When did this start?”

“I’ve been a little in my head,” you say, muffled slightly by the face cradle.

“A little.”

“Maybe more than a little.”

She works without saying anything for a moment, just the music and the pressure of her hands finding all the places you’ve been holding things without realising you were holding them. You close your eyes and let yourself just be a body on a table for a minute, not a writer with a half finished piece and a restless chest and a boyfriend in London and a trip to Manchester in February that is starting to feel like the only real thing on the horizon.

“You want to talk about it or you want to be quiet,” Mei says. She always asks. It’s one of the reasons you come back.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly.

She nods, like that’s a completely acceptable answer, and keeps working, and you lie there and let your thoughts do what they do when your body finally stops moving for five minutes.

You think about the housing board piece, four hundred words of nothing, the opening sentence written and rewritten until it stopped meaning anything. You think about Priya’s face this morning, the look she gave you before she went back to her desk, the one that said I see it even if you don’t.

You think about Harry in London right now, five hours ahead, probably done with his meetings, probably in a hotel room or a car or a restaurant with people you don’t know, living the part of his life that exists without you in it, which is most of it, which is fine, which is the arrangement, except lately fine has started to feel like a word you’re using to cover something that isn’t quite fine.

You think about Manchester.

February feels both very close and very far. Close in the sense that it’s almost December, that the year is ending, that you have started, quietly and without announcing it to anyone, researching neighbourhoods and markets and pubs and the specific coat situation required for a Manchester winter. Far in the sense that it is still weeks away and you have a housing board piece to finish and a desk to sit at and a life to keep living in the meantime.

You think about what he said. You don’t have to blow your whole life up. You just have to start.

You haven’t started. Not really. You’ve booked a massage and researched some broken link blog posts and texted Cami that you need to wine and whine, which is something, but it’s not starting.

“Okay,” Mei says, from somewhere above your right shoulder. “I’m going to need you to breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

“You’re doing that thing where you breathe but you’re not actually letting it go anywhere.”

You breathe properly. Something in your upper back releases slightly, just a fraction, just enough to notice.

“That’s better,” she says.

You lie there and breathe and let her work on the six weeks of stress that apparently took up permanent residence somewhere between your shoulder blades without asking permission. Thoughts surface now that your body has finally stopped moving.

After a while you say, mostly at the table: “I think my life is about to change pretty significantly.”

Mei doesn’t stop working. “Good or scary.”

“Both, probably.”

“Those are usually the same thing.”

You smile at that, facedown. “I met someone,” you say. “Or. Not met. It’s been a while now. But it’s.” You pause. “It’s the kind of thing where I can feel it pulling at everything else. Like it’s not enough anymore to just be here doing what I’ve always done. And I don’t know if that’s about him or about me or about both and I can’t quite tell anymore which parts of this are what I want and which parts are just because of him.”

Mei is quiet for a moment, working a knot loose near your neck that you didn’t even know was there.

“Does it matter?” she says eventually.

You think about it. “I don’t know.”

“Wanting something because of someone isn’t the same as not really wanting it,” she says simply. “People change what they want all the time. Usually because of something or someone. That doesn’t make it less yours.”

You lie there and sit with that for a second.

“He wants to take me to Manchester in February,” you say. “For two weeks.”

“Manchester,” she says.

“England.”

“I know where Manchester is.” She moves to your lower back, finds something immediately that makes you exhale sharply. “And what’s stopping you?”

“Nothing, technically. I said yes. I’m going.”

“So what’s the problem?”

You think about it properly. “I don’t know how to want something this much without being scared of it,” you say. “I’m not used to things feeling this big.”

Mei works in silence for a moment. Then she says: “How long have you been coming here?”

“Two years, nearly.”

“And that knot in your left shoulder.”

“What about it?”

“It’s gone,” she says simply. “Finally.”

You laugh, surprised, and she laughs too, and then she says: “Girl. An hour is not enough for all of this. You know that, right?”

“I know,” you say. “I have wine and a best friend scheduled for eight o’clock.”

“Good,” she says. “That’ll do the rest.”

You come out of the second room on the left feeling approximately forty percent more like a person than you did going in, which is the Bare Theory guarantee, or close enough to it. Your shoulders sit differently. Your neck moves without the specific resistance it’s had for weeks. The knot in your left shoulder, the one that has been a permanent fixture since approximately the second year of your last relationship, is gone.

Mei hands you a small glass of water in the waiting area and squeezes your arm.

“February,” she says. Like it’s a prescription.

“February,” you confirm.

She pulls you into a quick hug, the unselfconscious kind, and you let yourself have it for a second before you pull back and gather your coat and your bag and head toward the front desk to check out.

The girl at the front desk is young, maybe twenty three, with the warmth of someone who genuinely likes their job and isn’t performing it. She looks up when she sees you coming and smiles and starts typing something.

“You’re all set,” she says. “You’re all taken care of.”

You stop. “Sorry?”

“You’re all set.” She nods at the screen. “Taken care of.”

You look at her. “Did you charge the card on file?”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Looks at the screen and then back at you with an expression that is trying to be professionally neutral and is not quite getting there.

“I wasn’t really supposed to say anything,” she says. “But.” She tilts her head slightly. “Your boyfriend called earlier and took care of the session. And the tip.”

You stare at her.

“He asked us not to mention it,” she adds, in the tone of someone who is mentioning it. “But he sounded really sweet so I thought you should know.” She pauses. “Harry, right? He said to tell you to enjoy your evening.”

You stand there in the warm eucalyptus-scented reception of Bare Theory with your coat half on and your bag on your shoulder and your newly de-knotted left shoulder. You don’t say anything for a second because you’re not entirely sure what to say.

“He sounds like a real sweetheart,” the girl says.

“He is,” you say. Quietly. Meaning it completely.

You finish putting your coat on and push through the door into the cold night. You stand on the pavement for a second and look at the street, at the city moving past in the dark, all its usual noise and indifference. Then you take out your phone.

You: did you call Bare Theory?!

The reply comes back before you’ve even put your phone back in your pocket.

Harry: enjoy your evening 🙂

You stand there on the cold pavement and laugh to yourself and think about a man who calls a massage place from London to sort out the bill before you’ve even walked in the door, who asks them not to mention it, who probably assumed they wouldn’t, who didn’t do it to be thanked.

You: you’re ridiculous

Harry: you said that already

You: I’m saying it again

Harry: noted. how are your shoulders

You: the left one is fixed. Mei says hi. I say love you.

Harry: tell Mei she’s a genius. I love you too.

You: she knows

You put your phone in your pocket and start walking toward the subway, toward Camille’s apartment, toward the good wine and the whining you’ve been promising yourself since noon. You think about February and Manchester and a person five hours ahead of you who calls massage places and asks them not to mention it.

You think: this is a good thing that is happening to you and let yourself believe that.

You stop at the wine shop on the corner of Camille’s block, the small one run by a man named Patrick who has never once in four years tried to upsell you on anything. You stand in front of the reds for a moment before picking something that costs more than your usual threshold, because Mei fixed the knot in your left shoulder and a stranger at a front desk told you your boyfriend called from London and tonight feels like it deserves something good.

You grab a bar of dark chocolate from the basket by the register, the kind with sea salt, because you are a person who contains multitudes and also because chocolate and wine is a meal if you believe in yourself.

Patrick rings you up without comment. You tip well. You always tip well at the wine shop on the corner of Camille’s block because someday you will need Patrick’s help picking something important and you are playing a long game.

The walk to Camille’s is four minutes. You know it well enough that you could do it blind, past the dry cleaner and the Italian place that always smells incredible and the little bookshop with the handwritten recommendation cards in the window that you stop and read sometimes when you have nowhere to be. Tonight you don’t stop. Tonight you have somewhere to be and a lot to say and a freshly de-knotted shoulder and a glass of good red with your name on it.

Camille buzzes you up before you’ve even finished pressing the button, which means she’s been watching for you, which is a Camille thing, that attentiveness she has for the people she loves that she would never describe as attentiveness because she thinks it sounds soft.

You take the stairs, push through her door. She’s already in the kitchen in her silk pyjama set, hair up, the apartment warm and smelling like the candle she keeps on the kitchen counter that costs more than your grocery budget and that she insists is essential.

She looks up when you come in.

“Hey babe.” She tilts her head. “You look relaxed.”

“I feel relaxed,” you say, which is true in the body even if the head is still catching up. “Mei fixed the knot in my left shoulder. The one that’s been there for two years.”

“No.”

“Gone. Completely gone.”

Camille puts her hand on her chest like this is genuinely moving. “That’s incredible.”

“It is.” You hold up the wine and the chocolate. “I brought offerings.”

She takes them, inspects the label on the wine, nods with the approval of someone who knows what she’s looking at. “Okay you went good wine. This is a real night.” She starts opening it. “How was the rest of the session?”

“Really good,” you say, dropping your coat over the back of her chair and toeing off your shoes. “Mei’s great. We talked a little. Nothing heavy. Just.” You pause. “It was good to be still for an hour.” You sit down on her couch and pull your knees up and look at your phone and think about how to say the next part.

“And then,” you say.

Camille looks over from the kitchen.

“When I went to check out,” you say, “the girl at the front desk told me it was all taken care of.”

Camille puts the wine down. “What do you mean all taken care of?”

“I mean Harry called from London while I was in the session and paid for the whole thing. The session and the tip.” You look at her. “And asked them not to mention it.”

Camille stares at you.

“Holy shit,” she says.

“I know.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know, Cami.”

“He called from London.” She points at you. “From London. While you were in there. And just.” She makes a gesture that encompasses the magnitude of the thing. “Just sorted it?”

“And asked them not to say anything,” you say. “The girl told me anyway because she thought he sounded sweet.”

“He is sweet,” Camille says, with some feeling. “That is genuinely the sweetest thing I’ve heard and I say that as someone who covers a lot of sweet content professionally.” She picks the wine back up and finishes opening it with renewed purpose. “Okay. We are drinking this entire bottle.”

“Agreed.”

She brings the glasses over and sits beside you and pours generously and you both drink properly, not a delicate sip but a real one, the kind that says we mean business and also I haven’t eaten dinner.

“To Harry calling from London,” Camille says, raising her glass.

“To Mei fixing the knot,” you say.

“Both,” she says. You both drink.

You sit there for a moment in the warm apartment and let the wine and the evening settle around you and it feels like exactly what you needed, which is this, Camille’s couch and the good candle and the kind of quiet that isn’t actually quiet but is full of everything that doesn’t need to be said yet.

Camille disappears without warning.

You hear her in the bedroom, the sound of a drawer, and then she comes back holding something soft and colourful, which she throws at you across the couch with no preamble.

“Pyjamas,” she says. “Get comfortable.”

You unfold them. They’re nice, properly nice, a matching set in a dusty blue with the softest fabric you’ve ever touched.

“Where are these from,” you say.

“Selena Gomez’s beauty brand event last week,” she says, dropping back onto her end of the couch. “They sent everyone home with a goody bag. The pyjamas were in it.” She reaches into the pocket of her own set and produces two sheet masks, still in their packets, holds one out to you. “Also these. Gratis. Very hydrating apparently.”

You take the face mask. Look at it. Look at the pyjamas. Look at Camille sitting there with her wine glass and her silk set and her Selena Gomez face mask like this is completely ordinary, which for her it basically is.

“Your life is so strange,” you say.

“I know,” she says happily. “Go change. You’ll feel better.”

You come back from the bathroom in the dusty blue pyjamas and Camille looks up and points at you immediately.

“See,” she says. “Better.”

She’s right. They’re unreasonably soft, the kind of fabric that makes you want to cancel all future plans and just exist in a warm room forever. You pull the face mask packet open and smooth it onto your face and drop down onto her floor, back against the couch, legs crossed, wine glass in hand, and let the evening properly begin.

Camille puts music on, something low and easy, the kind of playlist she keeps for nights like this, not a vibe she’s curated for content but the one she actually listens to, which she’s played for you so many times over so many different versions of hard nights that you know every transition.

She slides down from the couch and sits beside you on the floor, back against the cushions, shoulder touching yours, and tops up both glasses without being asked.

“Okay,” she says. “Talk.”

You look at the wine in your glass. At the face mask packet on the coffee table. At Camille’s apartment, all warm and specific and full of her, the candles and the good art and the little dish by the door where she keeps things she doesn’t want to lose, and you think about how many versions of a hard thing you’ve said out loud in this apartment over the years.

“I hate my job,” you say.

Not I’ve been struggling with motivation, not I’m a little uninspired, not the softened version you’ve been giving everyone including yourself. Just the plain thing.

Camille nods slowly. “I know.”

“I sit at that desk and I look at my notes and I think about all the places I haven’t been and all the things I haven’t written and I just.” You stop. “I feel like I’m behind glass. Like I’m watching my own life from slightly outside of it.”

“Yeah,” she says. Quietly. No performance in it.

“There’s so much more out there,” you say. “I know that sounds like something someone says right before they have a breakdown and buy a ticket to Bali, but I don’t mean it like that. I mean it like.” You search for it. “I went to LA for a week and I ate at a restaurant where the menu changes every week and I sat on a rooftop and I went to a recording studio and I interviewed a woman about sofrito and I just.” You shake your head. “I want more of that. All of it. I want to go places and write about people in them and not spend another winter covering the same planning committee vote I covered two winters ago.”

Camille is quiet for a moment. Then she says: “I get it.”

“I know you do.”

“More than most people,” she says. “I travel constantly. I know what it does to you, seeing different places. It ruins you for standing still.” She pulls her knees up. “Once you know there’s more out there you can’t unknow it. It just sits there.”

“It just sits there,” you agree.

“So what’s stopping you.”

You think about it. “It’s new,” you say. “All of it. Harry. The idea of changing anything. I’ve been in this job for six years. I’ve been in this city my whole adult life. I’m comfortable. I know where everything is. I know what my weeks look like.” You pause. “There’s something safe about that even when it’s making you miserable.”

Camille looks at you with that expression she gets when she’s about to say something true and she knows it.

“You met someone,” she says carefully. “Someone who is actively showing you new things. Taking you places you haven’t been. Making you see your own life differently.” She pauses. “It’s okay to want more because of that. That’s not weakness. That’s just how things go.”

You sigh. The face mask pulls slightly at your cheek when you do.

“You have been in your bubble,” she says. Not unkindly. Just plainly. “A very good bubble. A very you bubble. You built it carefully and you’ve kept it safe and it’s served you.” She looks at you. “And now it doesn’t fit anymore. And that’s not a bad thing. It just means you grew and don’t fit in your bubble anymore.”

You stare at the middle distance. At the candle on her coffee table burning down slowly.

“What do you actually want,” she says. “Not what makes sense. Not what’s responsible. What do you actually want.”

You don’t hesitate.

“I want to be with him,” you say. “Properly. Not across an ocean with a FaceTime schedule and a countdown to the next visit. I want to be in the same place. I want to wake up and have breakfast and go see things and write about them and come home to him.” You stop. “I want that life. The one that doesn’t look like this one.”

Camille looks at you for a long moment.

“Then do it,” she says simply.

“Cami—”

“Quit your job,” she says. “Go. Go overseas. Go to Manchester, go wherever he is, go everywhere. Write about all of it. You’re a good enough writer that people will read it wherever it comes from.”

You look at her. “I don’t want to be a gold digger.”

Camille laughs. Not a polite laugh. A real one, the kind that takes over her whole face, the kind she can’t help.

“Babe,” she says, when she gets herself back. “Babe. You are this worried about being a gold digger.” She shakes her head. “A gold digger would have been on a plane six months ago. A gold digger would not be sitting on my floor in free pyjamas agonizing about it.” She looks at you. “You are the opposite of a gold digger. You are the person who argued about valet parking.”

You open your mouth.

“Twenty dollars,” she says. “You argued about twenty dollars.”

You close it.

“The fact that you’re this worried about it,” she says, “is exactly why it’s not a thing.” She tops up your wine. “You’re not taking from him. You’re building something with him. There’s a difference.”

You sit with that. The music moves through something slow and the candle burns and outside the city does its winter thing, cold and loud and indifferent, and you think about what she said and let it settle somewhere it maybe needed to go.

“What about you,” you say eventually.

She looks at you. “What about me.”

“If I go. If I actually do this.” You look at her. “You’re here. Everything is here.”

Camille is quiet for a second. She looks at her wine glass, turns it slightly in her hand, and then she looks back at you with the expression she gets when she’s made a decision and is about to say it like it’s obvious.

“Move over there,” she says, “and there’s a good chance I will too.”

You stare at her.

“I’ve been thinking about it anyway,” she says, with the casual air of someone who has absolutely been thinking about it. “London’s got incredible content potential. The fashion. The food. The general Britishness of everything.” She waves a hand. “My following is forty percent international anyway. It makes sense.”

“You would move to London,” you say slowly. “For content potential.”

“I would move to London,” she says, “because my best friend might be there and I have been mildly obsessed with the idea since you told me about Manchester and I looked it up at one in the morning.” She shrugs, completely unbothered. “Also the content potential.”

You look at her for a long moment.

Then you lean your head on her shoulder.

She leans hers on top of yours.

“I’m scared,” you say.

“I know,” she says. “Do it anyway.”

“Okay,” you say. “Okay. So what do I actually do. Right now. Tonight. What’s the first step.”

Camille looks at you like the answer is extremely obvious.

“You get on the phone,” she says. “Right now. And you tell him everything you just told me.”

You look at her. “Everything.”

“All of it. The job. The wanting more. The being scared. All of it.”

You exhale slowly. The face mask has dried slightly at the edges. The wine is nearly gone. Outside Camille’s window the city is doing its December thing, cold and lit up and completely indifferent to the fact that you are sitting on your best friend’s floor in free Selena Gomez pyjamas about to potentially blow up your entire life.

“What if he says no,” you say.

Camille laughs, short and certain. “Then fuck him,” she says. “Do it anyway.” She pauses. “But he won’t. You know he won’t. He wants this too. He’s been trying to find ways to make it work since approximately the rooftop in LA.” She looks at you. “You doing this makes it easier. Not that anything’s going to happen, but even if it did, even worst case, you move or you come back. You’re not disappearing. You’re just going somewhere.”

You look at her. “Do you actually want to do this? Come with me. Not just saying it.”

She grabs both your hands in hers and looks at you with the complete seriousness she reserves for the things that matter.

“I would do anything with you,” she says. “I mean that. Ten years and counting. You go, I go. Maybe not immediately, maybe not the same week, but.” She squeezes your hands. “You’re not doing this alone. You’re never doing anything alone.”

You look at her for a second and feel something loosen in your chest that you didn’t even know was tight.

Then you throw back the rest of your wine, set the glass down on the carpet, pick up your phone, and press his name before you can think about it any further.

It rings twice.

“Hey lovey.” His voice is warm and a little tired, the end of a long day in London settling into it. “You all good?”

You open your mouth.

“No,” you say.

A beat. His voice changes immediately, sharpens slightly, the tiredness gone. “What’s wrong, what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” you say quickly. “I’m fine. I’m at Cami’s. Everyone’s fine.” You look at Camille. She gives you a small nod, the go on kind. “I just.” You take a breath. “I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” he says. Steady. Just waiting.

“I want to quit my job,” you say.

Silence.

Not a bad silence. Just him taking it in, sitting with it, which is what he does.

“Okay,” he says.

“I’ve been trying to write the same piece for three days and I can’t do it,” you say, the words coming out faster now, the wine and the pyjamas and Camille’s hand still on your arm making it easier than it would have been at your own kitchen table. “I can’t make myself care about it and I used to care, I really used to care, and now I sit at that desk and all I can think about is every place I haven’t been and every person I haven’t written about and this whole other version of my life that I can’t stop thinking about.” You stop. “I don’t want to be here anymore. Not in a scary way. Just in a this doesn’t fit anymore kind of way.”

He’s quiet for a moment.

“I know,” he says gently.

“I want to come to you,” you say. “Not just February. Properly. I want to figure out what that looks like.”

Another beat of quiet. Longer this time.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Yeah,” you say. “I don’t have it all figured out. I don’t know exactly what it looks like or how it works or what I’d do for money at first or any of the practical parts of it. I just know that I’ve been sitting at that desk for three weeks feeling like I’m behind glass and I come alive when I’m with you and I want to write things that matter and I can’t do any of that from here anymore.” You pause. “I think I’ve known that for a while and I’ve just been scared to say it.”

“I know you have,” he says. Quietly. Not I told you so. Just I know.

“I don’t want you to think this is because of you,” you say, and then you laugh a little because you’ve said that before, on a street in November walking to a diner, and he said the same thing back then that he says now.

“I know it’s not because of me.”

“It’s not not because of you either,” you admit.

“I know that too,” he says. A pause. “I want you to come. I want you here. I’ve wanted that since and I haven’t pushed it because it had to be yours.” Another pause, shorter. “But I’m really glad it’s yours now.”

Your eyes go warm at that. You tip your head back and blink at Camille’s ceiling.

“I’m scared,” you say.

“I know.”

“What if I quit and it all falls apart and I have nothing.”

“You won’t have nothing,” he says. Simply. Completely certain. “You’ll have your writing and you’ll have me and you’ll have Cami who I’m assuming is sitting right next to you nodding very aggressively right now.”

You look at Camille.

She is nodding very aggressively.

“She says hi,” you say.

“Hi Cami,” he says.

“He says hi,” you tell her.

“I heard him,” she says. “Tell him I’m proud of both of you.”

You relay this. Harry makes a small sound that might be a laugh.

“So,” he says. “What happens now? What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” you say honestly. “I think I just needed to say it out loud to someone other than Cami’s living room floor.”

“Well,” he says. “You said it.”

“I said it.”

“And I’m saying it back. Come. Figure the rest out as you go. You’re good at that even when you don’t think you are.”

You sit there on Camille’s floor in the dusty blue pyjamas with the dried face mask pulling at your cheeks and the empty wine glass beside you and the candle burning low on the coffee table and you think about a housing board vote you cannot make yourself finish and a second tab full of Manchester neighbourhoods and a knot in your left shoulder that is finally, finally gone.

“Okay,” you say.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” You take a breath. “I’ll figure out the notice period. And the logistics. And all of it.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “Together. Don’t panic.”

You close your eyes for a second.

“I love you,” you say.

“I love you too,” he says. “Now go finish the wine.”

“There is no more wine.”

“Then go get more wine.”

You laugh, properly, the kind that comes from somewhere real. “Goodnight Harry.”

“Goodnight,” he says. “Lovey.”

You hang up.

The apartment is quiet for a second. Just the music, low and easy, and the candle, and Camille sitting beside you on the floor not saying anything, which from Camille is its own kind of everything.

Then she picks up both your empty glasses and stands up.

“I’ll get the other bottle,” she says.

“You said that was the good wine.”

“This calls for the other good wine.” She looks down at you with the expression she gets when she’s happy about something and trying to be moderate about it and failing. “You did it.”

“I did it,” you say. Like you’re still catching up to it.

She goes to the kitchen. You sit there on her floor and look at the candle burning on the coffee table and think about Manchester in February, about streets you haven’t walked down yet, about a market on Saturdays and a pub pie and a park where he used to sit and think, about all the people in all the cities you haven’t found yet, about the sofrito woman and how there are a thousand of her everywhere.

You think about a second tab with broken photo links that you’ve read twice without absorbing.

You’re going to absorb it now.

Camille comes back with the other good wine and drops back down beside you and fills both glasses and holds hers up.

You hold yours up.

“To blowing up your life,” she says.

“To blowing up my life,” you say.

You both drink.

Outside New York keeps going, loud and cold and completely indifferent, the city that never asked you to stay and never asked you to leave, just kept moving and let you decide for yourself.

The diner. The red vinyl booths and the laminated menus and the coffee that went lukewarm while you were talking. The walk back after, his hand finding yours somewhere around the second block, loose and easy, like it had always just been there. The room. The city through the window. The conversation that went on for a long time in the dark, the kind that moves slowly through the real things, the things you’ve been carrying around and not quite saying, and he listened without rushing it or fixing it, just letting it be what it was.

Manchester. February. You said yes and you meant it and you fell asleep with it sitting in your chest like something finally put down in the right place.

I love you. Twice now. Once by accident on a curb outside LAX with the morning sun and your defenses completely gone, and once last night quietly in the dark, and both times it landed the same. Clean. Certain. Not like a revelation but like a confirmation. Like something that had been true for a while and was only just being said.

You are not scared this morning.

That keeps catching you off guard. Last night you told him you were scared, which is not something you say easily, and he didn’t try to argue you out of it or tell you not to be. Just said scared means it matters and held on, and something about the simplicity of that, the complete absence of performance in it, made you feel like maybe it was going to be okay. Not because he fixed anything. Just because he didn’t try to.

Now it’s morning and the fear has gone somewhere and what’s left is just this. The warm weight of him behind you. The light through the curtains. The city moving quietly far below.

You lie still and look at the thin line of morning and think about February.

You think about a market bigger than the one in LA. A pub he’s been going to since he was eighteen. Streets he walked down before he was anything to anyone, before any of it, when he was just a person from a place, which is all any of you are underneath everything else. He showed you the studio because you asked to see something real. Now he wants to show you where he’s from. The actual place. And you said yes, and you meant yes, and somewhere between the diner and falling asleep you stopped being scared of that and started being something closer to excited, which is not a word you use lightly.

You think: this is a good morning.

You think: I could lie here for a long time.

Outside a car passes. A door somewhere. The particular sound of a city waking up slowly on a day it doesn’t have to rush.

His arm tightens slightly around you in his sleep. Not waking up, just shifting, pulling you a little closer without knowing he’s doing it, and you put your hand over his and stay very still and don’t do anything to disturb it.

You stay like that for a while.

Then your phone lights up on the nightstand.

You reach for it carefully, shifting just enough to see the screen without waking him.

Cami: good morning are you alive

Cami: hello

Cami: okay I’m going to Claudette at eleven with or without you they just changed the menu and I need the butternut squash thing before it sells out

Cami: also I need to talk to you

Cami: also I have content to make and I need a witness

Cami: please respond I’m spiraling

You look at the messages for a moment. Then you look at him, still asleep, hair doing several things at once, completely unbothered by the world.

You type back.

You: I’m here. I’m with Harry.

You put the phone face down on the nightstand and wait.

It buzzes almost immediately. Then again. Then several more times in rapid succession.

You pick it up.

Cami: WHAT

Cami: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE WITH HARRY

Cami: as in WITH with?

Cami: as in he’s THERE?

Cami: okay I need you to bring him

Cami: Claudette at eleven. both of you. do NOT be late they stop walk ins at eleven thirty and I have a look planned and I will not be standing on the street in November

Cami: also hi harry 🫶🏼

You press your lips together to keep from laughing.

“Good news or bad news?”

You turn over. He’s awake, or mostly there, propped up on one elbow, watching you with that unhurried attention he seems to have regardless of the time of day or how recently he’s been asleep. His hair is doing several things at once. He looks completely unbothered by all of them.

“Camille,” you say. You hold the phone out so he can see the messages.

He reads through them slowly. Something moves in the corner of his mouth.

“She wants to meet you,” you say. “Claudette at eleven. You really don’t have to come. I can just go on my own and—”

“I want to come.”

“You don’t have to feel—”

“I know I don’t have to.” He looks at you over the phone. “I want to meet her.”

You look at him for a second. “She’s a lot.”

“I know,” he says. “You’ve told me.”

“I’m just saying. She’s going to have her phone out the whole time and she’s going to be taking photos of everything and she’s going to ask you questions that are slightly too personal for a first meeting and she’s going to pretend she’s not starstruck when she absolutely is going to be a little starstruck even though she’ll die before she admits it.”

He’s watching you with an expression somewhere between amused and fond.

“What,” you say.

“You’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

He just looks at you.

“I’m a little nervous,” you say.

“I know.” He hands the phone back. “It’s going to be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually.” He sits up. “What time is it.”

You check. “Quarter past nine.”

He nods and reaches for his own phone on the nightstand and you lie there and watch him and feel the morning sitting on you, warm and slightly impossible, because three weeks ago you were lying in your own apartment with an alphabetized bookshelf and a very clean bathroom cabinet and a planning committee meeting on Thursday and now you are lying in a hotel room in your own city on a Saturday morning watching Harry Styles check his phone and trying not to be nervous about brunch.

Your life, you think, is genuinely something else lately.

“I’ll get ready here,” he says, without looking up. “And I’ll get an Uber to swing by yours on the way. You don’t need to worry about the car.”

You look at him. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“I can just drive—”

“You don’t need to.” He glances over. “Go home. Get ready. I’ll come and get you.”

You open your mouth.

He gives you a very patient look.

You close it. “Okay,” you say. “Thank you.”

He nods. Like of course. Like this is just what you do.

You find your clothes on the chair in the corner and change quickly, pulling yourself back together as best you can, which is relative. You haven’t looked in a mirror yet but you’re aware of the general situation. His shirt from last night, which you’ve changed out of. Your hair, which has made several overnight decisions you haven’t had the chance to negotiate with yet. Your mascara, which you did not take off because you were busy agreeing to Manchester and saying I love you and eating pancakes at midnight, and which has almost certainly done something interesting while you were sleeping.

You find your bag. Your coat. Your keys.

He’s still in bed, phone in hand, completely at ease, sorting out the logistics of your morning like it’s nothing, because for him it probably is nothing, and you stand in the doorway for a second just looking at him.

“Text me when you’re ready,” he says, without looking up.

“Okay.” You pause. “Don’t let me be late. Cami will genuinely never forgive me.”

“Go.” He glances up then, just briefly. “You have mascara—” He gestures at his own eye.

“I know about the mascara.”

He smiles. Goes back to his phone.

You point at him. He doesn’t see it but somehow that’s fine.

You leave.

The corridor is quiet, carpet thick enough that your footsteps disappear. The elevator is already waiting. You ride down alone watching the numbers change and think about the key card at the bottom of your bag, handed over last night without ceremony, just given like of course you should have it, in case you want to stop by, just so you have it, and you think about how that is such a perfectly him thing to do that it still makes something warm happen in your chest.

The lobby is quiet at this hour, just the morning staff and the particular hush of a hotel before the day fully starts. You push through the front doors and the November air hits you immediately, cold and sharp and completely indifferent to the fact that you are in yesterday’s clothes with last night’s hair and a heart that is very full of things you haven’t quite finished processing yet.

The valet from last night recognises you and brings your car around without being asked. You tip him and get in and sit there for just a second with your hands on the wheel.

You pull out into the street.

Your apartment is exactly as you left it.

That’s always the strange part. You come back after something significant and the place just sits there being itself, completely unaware, the bookshelf and the desk and the kitchen and the window with its view of the street, all of it exactly where it was when you left yesterday afternoon forty minutes early to go to an airport. Nothing has moved. The apartment waited for you the same as it always does and you came back and it’s all the same and you are not, and that gap between the place and the person is something you feel every time but don’t usually have words for.

You drop your bag and your keys by the door and go straight to the bathroom.

It’s about what you expected. The mascara has migrated. Your hair has done what hair does when you sleep in a hotel room after an emotional evening and don’t think to do anything about it first. You look like someone who had a very significant night and is only now catching up with the physical evidence of it.

You turn the shower on and stand there while it heats up and look at yourself in the mirror for a moment.

You think about him in the hotel room right now. Getting ready. Moving through it without any apparent stress, because that’s how he moves through most things, like the logistics of living are just minor details that sort themselves out if you’re calm enough about them. Ordering the Uber. Timing it so you arrive together.

You think about Cami at Claudette right now, because she is definitely already there, definitely early, definitely has a whole look planned and a shortlist of questions and her phone fully charged.

You get in the shower.

You give yourself forty minutes and you mostly stick to it. The hair takes longer than you’d like. You stand in front of your wardrobe for a while, which you knew you would, because it’s brunch in the West Village with your best friend and the person you love on a Saturday morning in November and you want to look like yourself but the right version of yourself, the version that suggests you woke up in your own bed feeling well rested and completely together, which is not the version you currently are but is the version you are aiming for.

You settle on something. It works. You’re putting your earrings in when your phone buzzes on the bathroom shelf.

Harry: fifteen minutes. how are you doing

You look at yourself in the mirror.

Mascara resolved. Hair sorted. You look like a person. A real one.

You: good. ready when you are

You: nervous

You almost delete that last one. You don’t.

His reply comes back quickly.

Harry: don’t be

Harry: she already likes me. she said hi

You laugh out loud in your bathroom alone at nine fifty on a Saturday morning and think that this is somehow one of the better moments you’ve had in recent memory.

You: that’s not how that works

Harry: I think it is

Harry: ten minutes

You put your phone in your bag and do one last check. Keys. Wallet. The small lip thing you always forget and then miss. You look around the apartment, at all the familiar ordinary things of your life that have been sitting here being the same while you were out becoming a different version of yourself, and you think about what he said last night.

You don’t have to blow your whole life up. You just have to start.

You lock the door behind you.

He’s already outside when you come out of your building, the Uber idling at the curb, and you can see him through the window before he sees you. Cap on, dark coat, looking at his phone. Just a person sitting in the back of a car on a Saturday morning. Then he looks up and sees you coming down the steps and he puts his phone away and something in his face just settles, quiet and warm.

He leans over and pushes the door open from the inside.

You get in.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” you say back.

He looks at you for a second. Just taking you in. “You look nice.”

“Thank you.” You pull the door closed. “You too.”

He smiles and the car pulls out and you settle back into the seat beside him and the city moves past the windows and neither of you says anything for a moment, just sitting together in the back of a car on a Saturday morning in November with the West Village twenty minutes away and Camille already there with her whole look and her fully charged phone and her list of questions.

“She’s going to take a lot of photos,” you say.

“I know.”

“Of everything. The food, the table, the light. Us, probably, if you’re okay with that. She’ll ask first.”

“That’s fine.”

“And she’s going to ask you things. Not rude things. Just.” You pause. “She’s thorough.”

“Okay.”

“And she’s going to pretend she’s completely unbothered by you but she’s going to be a little bothered. She’ll never say so.”

“Obviously.”

You look at him. “You’re very calm about this.”

He glances over. “Should I not be?”

“No, it’s good. I’m just.” You look back out the window. “I’m glad you’re coming.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just reaches over and puts his hand over yours on the seat between you, easy and unhurried, and you turn your hand over and let him and watch the city go past and feel the nerves in your chest start to settle.

The West Village on a Saturday morning is its own specific thing. Slower than the rest of the city, leafier, the streets narrower and older feeling, the kind of neighbourhood that has always known what it is and doesn’t feel the need to announce it. People move at a weekend pace. A couple with a dog. Someone with a paper under their arm. The particular quality of a Saturday that belongs to the people who have nowhere to be except exactly where they are.

You’ve been coming to this part of the city since you moved here. Before Camille, before any of it, back when you first arrived and used to walk for hours on weekends just learning the shape of the place. You know which coffee shop has the best light in the morning and which wine bar gets too loud by nine and which block smells like bread on Saturday afternoons from the bakery on the corner. It’s yours in the way that the parts of a city you’ve loved longest are yours, not because you own any of it but because you’ve spent enough time in it that it knows your face.

“I used to walk down here when I first moved to New York,” you say. Not to him specifically. Just out loud.

He looks over. “How long ago was that?”

“Six years. Nearly seven.” You watch the buildings go past. “I didn’t know anyone. I’d just gotten the job and I had this tiny apartment in the East Village and I used to spend whole Sundays just walking. Learning the streets.”

“Did you love it straight away?”

You think about it. “No,” you say. “It took a while. New York takes a while. It doesn’t care if you love it or not. It just keeps going and eventually you either find your place in it or you don’t.”

“And you did.”

“Eventually.” You glance at him. “What about Manchester?”

He looks at you. “What about it.”

“Do you love it.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Not avoiding it. Just thinking about it properly. “Yeah,” he says. “I do. It’s not a pretty city. It’s not trying to be. But it’s honest. It doesn’t put on a show. What it is, it just is.”

You look at him. “That sounds like you.”

He looks back at you. Something in his expression shifts, just slightly, when something lands. He doesn’t say anything. Just looks at you for a second and then looks back out the window.

The car slows.

“This is it,” you say.

Claudette is on a corner, small and warm looking from the outside, the kind of place you’d walk past and immediately want to go into. A chalkboard on the pavement. Window boxes. A small queue of people on the step.

And there, standing slightly to the side of the queue with the particular posture of someone who has arrived early, scoped the situation, and is currently composing a caption in her head, is Camille.

She’s wearing a camel coat you haven’t seen before, dark jeans, the kind of boots that are technically practical but are doing a lot aesthetically. Her hair is down and has clearly been done, not in an I spent time on this kind of way but the Camille kind, the kind that looks entirely effortless and absolutely isn’t. She has her phone in her hand and she’s angling it slightly upward at the restaurant front and you know without being able to see her screen that she’s getting a shot of the sign.

She looks up as the car stops at the curb.

She sees you first. Then she sees him.

Her expression does several things very quickly. Delight. Surprise. A very fast recalibration. Then the particular composed warmth of someone who has decided to be completely normal about this and is deploying it immediately.

You get out of the car.

“Hi,” you say.

“Hi,” she says. Her eyes go briefly to Harry getting out behind you, then back to you, then back to him. She smiles, the full one, the one that is genuinely Camille and not the camera version. “Hi,” she says again, to him this time.

“Hello,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Infamous,” you say, under your breath.

Camille looks at you with an expression that says she heard that and will be addressing it later. Then she looks back at Harry and holds out her hand. “Camille,” she says. “You can call me Cami. Everyone does.”

He shakes it. “Harry.”

“I know,” she says pleasantly. “I’ve also heard a lot about you.” She glances at you. “Some of it very recently.”

You look at the restaurant. “Should we go in?”

“I already put our name in,” she says. “They’ll have a table in ten minutes.” She holds up her phone. “Can I get a photo of the front? For context.”

“Context for what,” you say.

“The post.” She’s already stepping back, framing the shot. “Just the front. Autumnal. Very cosy. I’ve been wanting to come here for weeks and now I’m here with,” she lowers the phone briefly and looks at you both, “a lot to talk about, so.”

Harry glances at you.

You shrug. This is what you warned him about.

Cami takes three photos of the exterior, considers them, takes two more at a slightly different angle, then puts her phone in her pocket with the decisive air of someone who has what they need.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go in.”

The inside of Claudette is everything the outside promised.

Small and warm and lit in that particular way that makes everyone look like they’re in a film about their own life, the morning light coming through the windows and landing on white walls and pale wood and little vases of dried things on every table. It smells like coffee and something buttery and faintly of the candles burning on the bar even at this hour. The kind of place that takes brunch seriously without making a production of it.

The hostess takes them to a table by the window, small and round, the three of you slightly closer together than you would be at a bigger table, which feels very deliberate on Camille’s part. She slides in across from you both and picks up the menu and opens it and then immediately holds it up toward the window.

“The light in here is incredible,” she says, mostly to herself. She’s already reaching for her phone.

“Cami,” you say.

“I’m just documenting.” She takes a photo of the menu. Then the candle on the table. Then the window. Then she puts the phone down and actually looks at the menu. “Okay. The butternut squash thing is on there. I need it.”

“What’s the butternut squash thing,” Harry says.

“It’s a hash. With poached eggs and this whipped ricotta situation and I cannot explain it you just have to have it.”

“I’ll get that then.”

Camille looks up from her menu. Something in her expression softens, almost imperceptibly, and you clock it and she clocks you clocking it and she looks back at the menu.

“Good choice,” she says simply.

The waiter comes. You order coffee, all three of you, without discussing it, and Camille orders a juice as well, something with ginger in it, because she saw someone make it on her feed last week and has been thinking about it since. The waiter writes it down without comment and disappears and Camille puts both elbows on the table and looks at Harry.

“Okay,” she says. “I have questions.”

He looks back at her, completely at ease. “Alright.”

“Not scary questions,” she says. “Just.” She tilts her head slightly. “You seem normal.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean that as a genuine compliment. I was prepared for something more.” She waves a hand vaguely.

“More what,” you say.

“I don’t know. More produced. Like someone had done a lot of work on how to seem normal.” She looks at Harry. “You just seem like a person.”

“I am a person,” he says.

“I know. I’m saying it reads.” She sits back. “She talked about you a lot. After LA.”

“Cami,” you say.

“She showed up at my apartment at midnight in your crewneck,” Camille says to Harry, completely unbothered. “I think that gives me the right to say whatever I want.”

Harry looks at you. You look at the table.

“She mentioned the crewneck,” he says.

“She mentioned nothing,” Camille says. “She showed up looking like that and I had to get everything out of her over two glasses of wine.” She pauses. “It took a while. She’s not exactly forthcoming.”

“I know,” he says. “She takes her time with things.”

“Exactly.” Camille points at him like he’s just confirmed something she suspected. “Exactly. She sits with things. Turns them over. Doesn’t say them until she’s sure.”

“I’m right here,” you say.

“We know,” they say, at almost the same time.

You look between them. Camille has the expression of someone who has just found an unexpected ally and is very pleased about it. Harry has the expression of someone who is trying very hard not to look too satisfied.

“This is already a disaster,” you say, but you’re smiling and they both know it.

The coffee arrives. Camille wraps both hands around hers and looks at Harry over the rim.

“She said you have a piano,” she says.

“I do.”

“She said you taught her five notes.”

“C D E F G,” he says. “She picked it up quickly.”

“She’s like that,” Camille says. “Once she decides something is worth learning she’s very committed.” She glances at you. “About most things.”

“I’ve noticed,” he says.

You take a sip of your coffee and say nothing because there is nothing to say that won’t make this worse.

“Okay.” Camille sets her cup down. “Manchester.”

You look at her.

“She told me,” she says simply. “Last night. She texted.”

“At what time,” you say.

“Late. I was awake.” She looks at Harry. “February?”

“February,” he confirms.

“Two weeks.”

“Minimum.”

Camille nods slowly, with the air of someone receiving a business proposal and finding it acceptable. “And you’re going to show her the city properly.”

“That’s the plan.”

“The market.”

“Saturdays.”

“The pub.”

“Best pie you’ll ever eat.”

Camille considers this. “She doesn’t eat a lot of pie.”

“She will,” he says simply.

Camille looks at him for a long moment. Then she looks at you. Then back at him. Then she picks up her coffee and takes a sip and says nothing, which from Camille is its own kind of verdict and you know it and she knows you know it.

“Good,” she says finally.

The food arrives and it’s everything it was supposed to be. The butternut squash hash is exactly what Camille promised, the ricotta light and the eggs perfect, and Harry eats with the focused appreciation of someone who takes food seriously and knows when something is good. You order the French toast because you always order the French toast at Claudette and Camille gets something with salmon that she photographs from three angles before she touches it.

“For the post,” she says, to no one in particular.

“What’s the caption going to be,” you ask.

She thinks about it, genuinely. “Something about autumn menus and good tables.” She tilts the plate slightly. “Maybe something about the light.”

“The light is good,” Harry offers.

She points at him. “The light is so good.” She takes one more photo and then puts the phone down and picks up her fork. “Okay. I’m present now.”

You eat and the conversation moves without a fixed direction, drifting from one thing to another and back again. Camille tells a story about a brand event she went to last week where someone tried to get her to promote a supplement she’s fairly sure was just crushed vitamins in expensive packaging. Harry listens with genuine interest and asks questions at the right moments, which Camille responds to by becoming approximately twenty percent more animated, because she is Camille and she feeds on an engaged audience.

You sit between them and watch it happen and feel something very quiet and very good settle in your chest.

They like each other.

Not in a performed way, not in the way people sometimes like each other when they’re both trying to make something work for someone else’s sake. Actually like each other. Camille is laughing at something he said, the real laugh, the one that comes from somewhere genuine and not the one she deploys at events, and Harry is watching her with that quiet attention he gives people when he’s actually interested in them, and you think about how you lay in a hotel room this morning being nervous about exactly this and how completely unnecessary all of it was.

“She used to call me from city council meetings,” Camille is saying. “Not during. After. She’d come out and just stand on the pavement and debrief me.”

“They’re interesting,” you say.

“They are,” Harry says.

Camille looks at him. “You think city council meetings are interesting.”

“People making decisions about the places they live,” he says. “Yeah. I think that’s interesting.”

Camille stares at him for a second.

Then she looks at you.

You look at your French toast.

“Okay,” Camille says. Under her breath. Just to herself. She picks up her fork and goes back to her food.

You refill your coffee from the small pot the waiter left on the table and look out the window at the West Village on a Saturday morning, people with dogs and pastry bags and that particular weekend looseness the city gets when it’s not in a hurry. Harry is beside you, his shoulder close to yours, listening to Camille tell another story, something about a trip she took to Copenhagen for work last spring and the hotel that had no mirrors, which is either an artistic statement or a practical oversight and she still hasn’t decided which.

Your phone buzzes face down on the table.

You flip it over.

AirDrop from Camille’s iPhone.

You look up. She is looking entirely at Harry, completely engaged in her own story, both hands moving, absolutely not looking at you.

You accept it.

It’s a photo.

Harry, caught in profile, not looking at the camera, looking at you. You’re saying something, you don’t remember what, and he’s just looking at you with that quiet particular attention he has, and it’s. You stare at it for a second. You didn’t know that’s what it looked like from the outside. You don’t know exactly what to do with the fact that it does.

Your phone buzzes again.

Another one.

This one is both of you. You’re looking at each other across the table, mid conversation, and something about the angle and the light makes it look like the rest of the room doesn’t exist, like the table and the coffee cups and the little vase of dried flowers are all just peripheral to the two of you looking at each other.

You flip the phone over.

You look up.

Camille is looking at you now. Story apparently finished. She has her coffee cup raised halfway to her mouth and she is watching you with an expression that is trying very hard to be neutral and is not succeeding even slightly.

You feel the heat rise in your face before you can do anything about it.

She raises her eyebrows. Just slightly. A tiny, private, I told you so, delivered entirely without words.

You look at the table.

“You okay?” Harry says.

“Fine,” you say. “I’m fine.”

Camille takes a serene sip of her coffee and says nothing.

You are going to kill her. Warmly and with love but you are absolutely going to kill her.

“What did I miss,” Harry says, looking between you.

“Nothing,” you say.

“Nothing,” Camille agrees, in the exact tone of someone who means the opposite.

He looks at you for a second. Then at Camille. Then he seems to decide this is something he is not meant to be part of and picks up his own coffee with the patient expression of a man who has learned when to stay out of something.

Camille waits until he’s looking away and then looks at you and mouths something.

You mouth back: stop it.

She mouths: he looks at you like THAT.

You look at the ceiling.

She mouths: I’m just saying.

You mouth: I know you’re just saying.

She grins into her coffee cup, the full grin, the one she gets when she’s right about something and knows it and cannot help herself.

Harry looks back at you both.

You both look at him with completely normal expressions.

He looks back out the window.

Camille puts her phone in her bag with a small decisive click, which means she has what she came for and is now fully present, and she settles back in her chair and looks at you both with the warm satisfaction of someone who has just eaten a very good brunch and had a lot of very good information confirmed.

“Okay,” she says. “I like him.”

“Cami—”

“I’m telling her, not you,” she says to you. Then she looks at Harry. “I like you. For the record. I was prepared to withhold judgement but I’m not going to.”

Harry looks at her. “Thank you.”

“She’s my person,” Camille says simply. “So that’s what that means, coming from me.”

“I understand,” he says. And something in the way he says it makes it clear that he does, actually, understand. Not just the words but what’s underneath them. The weight of what she’s saying and why she’s saying it and what she’s asking for without quite asking for it.

Camille looks at him for a second.

Then she nods, once, and picks up her fork and finishes the last of her hash, and that’s it, that’s the whole thing, that’s Camille giving her verdict, and you sit there between them feeling something very warm and a little overwhelming in your chest and concentrate very hard on your French toast so your face doesn’t do anything embarrassing.

“Right,” Camille says, fork down, sitting back, reaching for her phone again. “Can I get a photo of the table? Just the table. The cups and the plates and the light. Very editorial.”

“Go ahead,” Harry says.

She stands slightly and angles the phone down over the table, moving a coffee cup two inches to the left, adjusting the little vase of dried flowers, tilting a plate slightly. She takes four photos. Studies them. Takes one more.

“Perfect,” she says. She sits back down and starts typing. Then she holds the phone out to you.

autumn menus and good tables and the kind of saturday morning that makes you remember why you live here 🍂

“That’s good,” you say.

“I know.” She posts it. Puts the phone face down. “Okay. I’m done. I’m present. What are we doing after this?”

You look at Harry.

He looks at you.

“Whatever you want,” he says.

“We could walk,” you say. “It’s cold but it’s not bad cold.”

“The market on Bleecker is on today,” Camille says. “Very autumnal. Very content-able.” She catches herself. “I mean. Nice. It’s just nice.”

You smile. “We can go to the market.”

Camille reaches for the last of her coffee and looks between you both with the expression she gets when she’s happy about something and trying to be moderate about showing it, which she has never been particularly good at and which you love about her.

“Good,” she says. “It’s settled then.”

Outside the West Village keeps going, slow and golden in the November light, and inside Claudette the three of you sit at a small round table with empty plates and full coffee cups and the particular ease of a morning that has gone exactly right, and you think about the hotel room ceiling this morning and how nervous you were and how completely, entirely unnecessary all of it turned out to be.

Camille’s phone buzzes on the table.

She flips it over.

You put the phone down and look at the light and feel the smile on your face and decide not to do anything about it.

You park in the short term lot because you are not doing the pickup lane. Not tonight. You are not going to sit in a line of cars and watch him appear on the curb and have thirty seconds before someone honks at you. You pay the flat rate without looking at the price and walk into the terminal and find the arrivals board and locate his flight and stand there with your hands in your coat pockets and wait.

The terminal is busy in that specific JFK chaos, people moving in every direction with their bags, their coats, their particular urgency. You find a spot near the arrivals exit where you can see the doors and plant yourself there and try to look like someone who is just casually standing in an airport and not someone who has thought about this moment approximately four hundred times in the last three weeks.

You have thought about it approximately four hundred times.

You thought about it on the train. You thought about it finishing the sofrito piece. You thought about it at two in the morning three days ago when you couldn’t sleep and lay there staring at the ceiling of your very clean apartment. What it would feel like to see him again in person after three weeks of a face on a screen. Whether it would feel different. Whether the airport would feel like a full circle or just a door opening into whatever comes next.

The doors slide open and a new wave of people comes through and you scan faces automatically.

Then you see him.

Cap on, dark coat, a single bag over his shoulder, looking down at his phone as he comes through the doors. Then he looks up, scanning the terminal for someone, and his eyes find you almost immediately.

He stops for just a second.

Then he smiles. Not the public one, not the one that exists for cameras and stages, the real one, the quiet one you have learned means something, and he starts walking toward you and you stay exactly where you are because your feet have made a decision without consulting you.

He reaches you and doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just looks at you, taking his time with it, like he’s checking that you’re real and that you’re here and that the last three weeks actually happened.

“Hi,” he says quietly.

“Hi,” you say back.

He puts his bag down, pulls you into him, and you go, easy, your arms around him and your face pressed into the side of his neck. He holds on properly, both arms around you. The terminal moves. Neither of you pays it any attention.

He smells exactly like you remembered. Better actually, because memory never quite gets the specific warmth of a person right, and you stand there in the arrivals hall of JFK with your eyes closed and feel three weeks of distance just quietly dissolve.

“You actually came to the airport,” he says into your hair.

“I said I would.”

“You were in the neighborhood.”

“I was,” you say. “Coincidence.”

He laughs softly and his arms tighten around you and you feel it all through you.

Eventually, reluctantly, you pull back and look at him properly. He looks tired in that particular exhaustion of someone who has been on a plane for six hours, a little worn around the edges, but his eyes are warm and he’s looking at you like you are the best thing he’s seen all day, which you decide to simply accept without deflecting.

“Good flight?” you ask.

“Long,” he says. “Better now.”

You pick up his bag before he can, which surprises him, and he gives you a look.

“I’ve got it,” you say. “My turn.”

He holds up both hands like that’s completely reasonable and falls into step beside you, his shoulder close to yours, and you lead him out of the terminal and into the cold New York night.

Your car is the only familiar thing in the short term lot. You find it without thinking, which feels like its own small victory. He waits while you unlock it, tosses his bag in the back, gets in the passenger side. The door closes. Suddenly the airport is muffled and distant and it’s just the two of you in a small warm space again.

He looks around your car with that quiet curiosity he brings to everything that belongs to you.

“This is very you,” he says.

You glance over. “How so?”

“Organized,” he says. “But there’s a coffee cup in the holder that’s been there a while.”

You look at the coffee cup. “That’s recent.”

“Is it.”

“Mostly.”

He smiles and looks out the windshield at the lot. You start the engine, pull out, find the exit without needing your phone, which you are quietly pleased about. Then you’re on the expressway and New York is doing its thing around you, all lit up and loud and completely indifferent to the fact that this is a significant evening.

He doesn’t say much at first. Just sits with his elbow on the door and watches the skyline come into view as you get closer, appearing in pieces, and you watch him from the corner of your eye.

“I always forget,” he says.

“Forget what?”

“How much there is of it.” He turns his head slightly toward the window. “LA spreads out. New York just goes up.”

“Which do you prefer?”

He considers it. “Depends on the day.” He glances over at you. “Tonight I prefer this.”

You keep your eyes on the road.

The traffic is what it always is, stop and start and mildly infuriating, and you navigate it the way you’ve been navigating it for years and he watches you do it with that quiet attention he gives most things.

“You’re a good driver,” he says.

“Years of practice,” you say. “New York doesn’t give you a choice.”

He smiles and looks back out the window.

You stop at a light and the city hums around you and you glance over at him and find him already looking at you, not with anything urgent in it, just looking, and the light turns green and you look back at the road.

“I missed you,” he says. Quietly. Just putting it out there, the same he does with most things that are true.

You feel it settle somewhere in your chest.

“I missed you too,” you say. “A lot actually.”

“Yeah?”

“I reorganized my entire apartment.”

“I know,” he says. “The bookshelf. The bathroom cabinet.”

“There was also the kitchen cupboard situation.”

He turns to look at you. “You didn’t tell me about the kitchen cupboard.”

“It was embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than the bathroom cabinet at eleven pm?”

“Different kind of embarrassing.” You signal and change lanes. “I alphabetized my spices.”

There’s a pause.

“Alphabetized,” he repeats.

“By first letter.”

“Obviously by first letter.”

“It’s a system,” you say. A little defensive. “It works.”

He laughs, low and genuine, looks back out the windshield. You feel that laugh somewhere warm and specific and think about three weeks, bathroom cabinets, alphabetized spices, how much of it was really just about this. Getting back to this. Him in the passenger seat of your car with the city outside the window, the two of you talking about nothing, it being enough.

“I missed this,” he says, quieter now. More to himself than to you.

You glance over at him. He’s looking at the street ahead, not at you, and something about that makes it land harder.

“Me too,” you say. “I really did.”

You pull up outside his hotel a few minutes later, a nice one in Midtown, the kind with a doorman and a lobby that glows warm gold through the glass, and you find a spot at the curb and put the hazards on and he doesn’t move immediately.

Neither do you.

He looks at you with an expression somewhere between amused and baffled.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come up. It’s late.”

He laughs, short and surprised. “It feels like you’re throwing me to the curb.”

“I’m not throwing you, I’m—” You gesture at the hotel. “I thought you’d want to sleep.”

“I thought you were coming up.”

You look at him. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” He tilts his head slightly. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I just.” You pause. “I didn’t want to assume. It’s late and you’ve been on a plane all day and I figured you’d want to be alone and—”

“I want to be alone,” he says. “With you.”

You look at him for a second.

“Oh,” you say.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” You look back at the street. “I’ll find somewhere to park.”

“Have the valet do it.”

“That’s so expensive.”

He gives you a look of profound patience. “I’ll charge it to the room.”

“Harry.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s twenty dollars minimum.”

“I’m aware of how valet parking works.”

You press your lips together. He waits. Outside the doorman is pretending very professionally not to have noticed any of this.

You look at him for a moment. “Okay,” you say. “Fine.”

He smiles and gets out. You pull forward to the valet stand, hand over your keys with the specific expression of someone who finds this slightly absurd. He comes around, takes your hand, leads you through the front doors into the warm lobby like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Which, with him, it always is.

He’s still shaking his head slightly as he pushes through the lobby doors, your hand in his, muttering something under his breath that you only half catch but sounds distinctly like absolutely crazy under a smile he’s not quite suppressing.

“I heard that,” you say.

“Good,” he says.

He steers you toward the front desk. It’s a nice lobby, warm and quiet at this hour, the kind of hotel that takes itself seriously without being cold about it. The woman at the desk looks up and recognizes him in that practiced way of someone who works somewhere good and has learned not to make anything of anyone.

“His bags,” you say quietly, glancing back toward the entrance.

“Valet brings them up to the desk,” he says, without looking away from the check in process. “They sort it.”

“Oh,” you say. “Right.”

He checks in and you stand slightly to the side and look around the lobby and try to act like you belong in a hotel like this at ten thirty at night, which you think you’re pulling off reasonably well.

Then the woman slides two key cards across the desk.

Harry picks them both up and hands one directly to you.

You look at it. Then at him.

“What’s this?” you say.

“A key.”

“I can see that.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Harry.” You look at him properly. “Why are you giving me a key to your hotel room?”

He looks at you like the answer is genuinely obvious. “In case you want to come hang. Or stop by. Or.” He shrugs, easy and unbothered. “Just so you have it.”

You stare at him.

“In case I want to stop by,” you repeat.

“Yeah.”

“At your hotel.”

“That’s generally where the key would get you, yes.”

You look back down at the key card and then back up at him and he is watching you with that patient expression, the one that says he has made a completely reasonable decision and is waiting for you to catch up to it.

You close your fingers around the key.

“Okay,” you say.

“Okay,” he agrees, and picks up his copy and nods toward the elevator like that’s entirely settled.

The elevator is small and warm and mirrored on three sides, which means there are several versions of the two of you standing close together as the doors close, and you look at one of the reflections instead of him because looking at him directly right now feels like a lot.

He looks at one of the reflections too.

Then he looks at the real you.

“You cut your hair,” he says.

You touch it involuntarily. “Just a trim. Like an inch.”

“It looks nice.”

“You can’t tell from an inch.”

“I can tell,” he says simply.

The elevator opens on his floor. He leads you down the corridor, quiet at this hour, the carpet thick enough that your footsteps disappear entirely. He finds the room, taps the key, holds the door. You walk in ahead of him.

It’s a good room. Big windows looking out over Midtown spread out below in all its excessive brightness, the kind of view that reminds you that New York is genuinely extraordinary even when you forget to notice it. A big bed with crisp white linen. A sitting area near the window. Everything clean and ordered and anonymous in that particular hotel way.

You go straight to the window.

“It’s a good view,” you say.

He comes to stand beside you and looks out. “It is.”

“You can see my office building from here actually.” You point. “That one. The ugly one.”

“They’re all a bit ugly.”

“That one especially.”

He looks where you’re pointing and nods seriously. “You’re right. That one is particularly ugly.”

You smile at the window. Outside the city does what it always does, completely indifferent, all that light going on forever in every direction. You stand there beside him with your coat still on and the key card in your pocket and think about how three weeks ago you were standing on a curb outside LAX in the morning sun saying I love you by accident. Now you’re here, his city and yours overlapping in a hotel room on the forty second floor. None of it feels accidental anymore.

“Are you hungry?” you ask.

“A little.”

“There’s a diner two blocks from here that’s open late. Good pancakes.” You glance at him. “Or we can order room service if you don’t want to go back out.”

He considers it. “Pancakes.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been on a plane for six hours. I want pancakes and I want to sit across from you in a diner.” He looks at you. “Is that okay?”

You look at him standing there in his coat in the hotel room with the city behind him, tired and warm and looking at you like that.

“That’s very okay,” you say.

He shrugs his coat back on. You take the elevator back down. The doorman holds the door. You step out into the cold together and it hits you both immediately, that particular New York cold that has no interest in being gentle about itself.

He exhales and his breath clouds in front of him.

“Right,” he says.

“Welcome to November,” you say.

“I thought I remembered this.”

“You didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” he agrees, and pulls his coat tighter and falls into step beside you.

The city at this hour is looser than during the day, the daytime urgency replaced with people who actually want to be out, moving at their own pace. You walk without a destination, just letting the blocks go past, your shoulder close to his.

“I have a few things while I’m here,” he says after a moment. “Press stuff mostly. A couple of interviews. Radio thing on Thursday.” He pauses. “Show on Friday night.”

You look at him. “A show?”

“Small one. Industry thing. Not a proper tour date.” He glances at you. “I’d like you to come if you want to.”

Something lights up quietly in your chest. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He says it like it was always part of the plan. “And the rest of the time.” He pauses, looking at the street ahead. “I want to spend it with you.”

“Whatever you can give me. I know you have work. I’m not asking you to cancel anything.” He glances over. “I just mean when you’re free. I want to be with you.”

You walk a few steps without saying anything, looking at the pavement, at the steam rising from a grate in the street.

“Okay,” you say.

“Okay?”

“Okay, spend it with me.” You look at him. “All of it. I’ll figure out work.”

He looks at you for a second with something quiet and warm in his expression and then looks back at the street.

You walk another block in comfortable quiet, shoulders brushing, the cold settled around you both.

Then you say, without planning to: “I haven’t really loved it lately.”

He glances at you. “Work?”

“Yeah.” You pause. “I mean I had that piece. The sofrito one. That felt right. But mostly.” You look at the street. “I don’t know. I came back from LA and sat at my desk and looked at my notes for a planning committee meeting and just felt.” You search for it. “Distant from it. Like I was doing it from behind glass.”

He’s quiet, listening.

“Which is stupid,” you say quickly. “Because it’s a good job. It’s what I wanted. I worked really hard to get there and I genuinely believed in it and I still do, kind of, but.” You stop. “Something shifted. I don’t know when exactly.”

“I think you do,” he says quietly.

You look at him.

“I think you know exactly when,” he says. Not unkindly. Just honestly.

You look back at the pavement. “LA didn’t help.”

“No.”

“You didn’t help.”

“No,” he agrees, and there’s something in that which isn’t quite an apology and isn’t quite not one either.

“I sat on your patio and watched you crouch down to look at that flower and I thought about my editor asking for more bite and I just.” You laugh a little, quietly, at yourself. “I want to write things that matter. I always have. But now I want to write things that matter somewhere else too. Not just here.” You gesture at the street, at the city, at all of it. “I love New York. I do. But I’ve never lived anywhere else. I’ve barely been anywhere else. And now I’ve been to LA and you’ve talked to me about Manchester and I just.” You shake your head. “I feel like I’ve been sitting very still for a very long time.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. You walk another half block, past a late night bodega spilling warm light onto the pavement, past a couple walking a dog in a coat, past all the ordinary nighttime things of a city that never stops.

“What would you write?” he asks. “If you could write anything. Anywhere.”

You think about it properly.

“People,” you say. “Still people. But bigger ones maybe. Or the same small ones in different places. The sofrito woman but in a hundred different cities.” You pause. “I interviewed a man once who had been feeding the same stray cat outside a laundromat for nine years. That piece did better than anything I’d written in months. And I thought, what if there are a thousand of those stories everywhere and I’m only ever finding the ones within a ten block radius of my office?”

He looks at you while you talk and you can feel it even without looking back.

“That’s not a job problem,” he says.

“I know.”

“That’s a life problem.”

“I know,” you say again, quieter.

You stop at a crossing and wait for the light and he stands beside you and neither of you says anything for a moment, just the city noise filling the space, a cab horn somewhere, the distant rumble of a train underground.

“I’m not saying any of this because of you,” you say, when the light changes. “I want to be clear about that. This isn’t me following you somewhere. This is something that was already moving and you just.” You pause. “You made it harder to ignore.”

“I know,” he says. “I know it’s not because of me.”

“I just didn’t want you to think—”

“I don’t think that,” he says simply.

You walk a little further. The diner appears on the next block, warm and lit up, the classic kind with the neon sign and the booths visible through the window.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, as you reach the door.

You look at him.

“I think you should write whatever you need to write,” he says. “Wherever it takes you.” He holds the door open. “And I think you already know that.”

You look at him standing there in the cold holding a diner door open at eleven at night, and you think about the sofrito piece and the planning committee meeting and the bathroom cabinet and the flower in the terracotta pot, and you think yeah.

You do already know that.

You just needed to say it out loud.

You walk inside.

The diner is everything a diner should be at this hour. Warm and slightly too bright, the booths cracked vinyl and the menus laminated and enormous, a specific smell of coffee and butter and something on the grill. A couple in the corner. A man at the counter with a newspaper. The particular peaceful hum of a place that exists outside of regular hours and doesn’t apologize for it.

You slide into a booth and he slides in across from you and picks up the menu and looks at it with genuine interest, which you find endearing, because it is a laminated diner menu at eleven thirty at night and he is studying it like it might say something important.

“Pancakes,” you say. “You said pancakes.”

“I’m allowed to look.”

“You’re going to get the pancakes.”

“I might get eggs.”

“You’re going to get the pancakes and you know it.”

He looks at you over the top of the menu. Then he sets it down. “Pancakes,” he says.

You smile and set your own menu down and the waiter appears with water and you both ask for coffee without discussing it, which feels like its own small thing.

The conversation picks up where it left off on the street, easier now that you’re sitting down, the warmth of the diner loosening the last of the cold from both of you.

“You should start a travel blog,” he says.

You look at him.

“I’m serious,” he says.

“A travel blog.”

“Write about people in different places. Like you said. The sofrito woman but everywhere.” He wraps both hands around his coffee cup. “You’re a good writer. People would read it.”

“People don’t pay for travel blogs,” you say. “Not enough to live on. And so much of it would come out of my own pocket. The flights, the accommodation, all of it. I’d be spending money I don’t have to make money I probably wouldn’t.” You shake your head. “It’s a nice idea.”

“But?”

“But nice ideas don’t pay rent in New York.”

He looks at you for a moment. Then he exhales slowly, like he’s been sitting on something and has decided to just say it.

“What if you came with me?”

You look at him.

“Not.” He pauses, choosing the words carefully. “Not in a you give everything up kind of way. I don’t want that. I like that you have your life. I like that it’s normal and that you care about city council meetings and sofrito recipes and stray cats.” He looks at his coffee. “But I travel constantly. And you want to see the world and write about people in it. And.” He glances up. “You’d also get to see me.”

You hold his gaze for a second.

Then you shake your head. “No.”

“Just hear me—”

“Harry.” You say it gently but clearly. “No. I can’t take from you like that. I can’t be someone who just travels around on your money because it’s convenient and romantic sounding. That’s not who I am.”

“I know that.”

“So.” You pause. “You understand.”

He looks at you for a moment. “What if it wasn’t like that. What if I set you up with something. There are jobs on the road, actual jobs. Merch, logistics, the website, all of it needs people and—”

“No,” you say again. Softer this time but just as certain. “I’m not going to be your employee either. That’s worse actually.”

“Why is that worse?”

“Because then I’m the girl who dates the artist and conveniently also works for him and everyone has an opinion about it and I lose the only thing I’ve always had which is that my work is mine.” You look at him. “I need my work to be mine.”

He opens his mouth.

Closes it.

Looks at his coffee.

“I hear you,” he says quietly.

“I’m not saying no to everything,” you say. “I’m just saying no to that.”

He nods slowly. He doesn’t push it, which you appreciate more than you say.

The waiter appears then, notepad out, completely indifferent to whatever just happened in this booth.

“What can I get you?”

Harry looks at you.

“Pancakes,” you both say, at exactly the same time.

The waiter writes it down without comment and disappears. You look at each other across the table. The conversation folds itself away for a moment, not finished, just set down. Harry picks up his coffee. You pick up yours. Outside the city keeps going. Neither of you needs to fill the silence.

He sets his coffee cup down and leans back in the booth and looks at you with that expression that means he’s already decided something and is now going to present it as a suggestion.

“Okay,” he says. “Manchester.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Manchester.”

“You said okay to Manchester. Back in LA. On the rooftop.”

“I said okay take me to Manchester. That’s not the same as a confirmed plan.”

“It absolutely is,” he says. “I have a confirmed plan.”

You look at him. “You have a plan.”

“I have a very good plan.”

“When did you make this plan?”

“The flight over,” he says, completely unbothered. “I had six hours.”

You laugh despite yourself and wrap both hands around your coffee cup and lean forward on your elbows. “Okay. Tell me the plan.”

He sits forward too, mirroring you, and something about it, the two of you leaning toward each other over a diner table at midnight with coffee going cold between you, feels like something you want to remember.

“February,” he says. “I’m going to be there for most of February. I’ve got some studio time booked, nothing too heavy, and the rest of it is mine.” He pauses. “I want you to come for at least two weeks. More if you can manage it.”

“Two weeks,” you say.

“Two weeks minimum.”

“That’s a long time to be away from work.”

“You just told me you don’t love your work right now.”

You point at him. “You can’t use that against me.”

He smiles. “I want to show you the city properly. Not just a weekend. Two weeks means you actually get to know it.” He picks up his coffee. “There’s a market on Saturdays that makes the LA one look modest. There are restaurants I’ve been going to since I was eighteen. There’s this pub near where I grew up that has the best pie you’ll ever eat and I will stand behind that statement completely.”

“A pub pie,” you say.

“Don’t say it like that. It’s an institution.”

“I’m not saying it like anything.”

“You said it like that.”

You look at your coffee. “Keep going.”

“I want to take you to the place I grew up,” he says, quieter now, less performance in it. “Not as a tourist thing. Just.” He pauses. “I want to show you where I’m from. The actual place. The streets and the corner shop and the park I used to sit in when I needed to think.” He looks at you. “I showed you the studio in LA. I want to show you the rest of it.”

You look at him across the table and feel something settle in your chest, something quiet and significant, because you understand what he’s saying underneath what he’s saying. He showed you the studio because you asked to see something real. Now he’s offering you the realest thing he has, which is where he came from, the version of him that existed before any of it.

“And the weather?” you say, because you need to say something or you’re going to get emotional in a diner at midnight and you’ve already cried in one airport this month.

He grins. “Cold. Grey. Possibly raining the entire time.”

“Fantastic.”

“I told you I’d buy you a coat.”

“You did say that.”

“I meant it.” He leans forward slightly. “Come to Manchester. Two weeks. Let me show you everything.” He holds your gaze. “And then tell me you want to go home early. I dare you.”

You look at him across the sticky diner table with the too bright lights and the coffee that’s gone lukewarm and the pancakes that haven’t arrived yet and think about a market bigger than the one in LA and a pub pie he’s been eating since he was eighteen and streets he walked down before he was anything to anyone and a park where he used to sit and think.

“Two weeks,” you say.

“Minimum,” he says.

“I’ll talk to my editor.”

Something in his face shifts into something warm and certain and quietly thrilled, though he doesn’t make a production of it because he never makes a production of anything.

“Good,” he says simply.

The pancakes arrive then, enormous and golden, exactly what both of you needed. The waiter refills your coffee without being asked and disappears again. Harry cuts into his stack with the focused satisfaction of a man who has been on a plane for six hours and earned this. You do the same. The conversation settles into something softer and easier, the big things said, the plan made, just the two of you in a booth in a diner in your city with the night still going outside and nowhere else to be.

The walk back is slow in the best way.

Neither of you suggests hurrying. The cold has settled into something almost comfortable now that you’ve been out in it long enough, and the city at this hour is quieter, the streets thinned out, just the occasional cab and the odd person walking with somewhere to be. You are not those people. You are two people very full of pancakes with nowhere to be except back to a hotel that is eight minutes away and you are taking at least fifteen to get there.

His hand finds yours at some point, loose and easy. You walk like that through the Midtown blocks, the steam rising from the grates, the buildings lit up above you, the whole city doing its indifferent thing all around you.

“Good pancakes,” he says at one point.

“Told you.”

“You didn’t tell me. I suggested the diner.”

“I suggested the diner.”

He thinks about it. “You said there was a diner two blocks from the hotel.”

“Which is a suggestion.”

“That’s just information.”

You don’t say anything. He’s wrong but you let it go, which is the most mature form of winning.

The lobby is quieter now, just the night staff and the low hum of a hotel existing after hours. The elevator comes quickly. You ride up still hand in hand. He finds the room, taps the key, holds the door. You walk in. The city is still there through the big windows, all that light going on forever.

You drop onto the edge of the bed and start taking your shoes off. He opens his bag, roots around in it, tosses a shirt across the room at you without saying anything. Soft, worn, the kind of thing that has been washed enough times to feel like nothing.

You catch it and look at it.

“Get comfortable,” he says simply, and disappears into the bathroom.

You change quickly, his shirt falling to mid thigh. Fold your clothes over the chair in the corner. Get into bed, pull the covers up, look out at the city through the window. Something very settled and very right about all of it.

He comes back out a few minutes later in sweats and a t-shirt and gets in beside you. You migrate toward each other without discussing it, his arm around you, your head against his chest, the city spread out beyond the glass, the room warm and quiet around you.

Neither of you says anything for a moment. His hand moves slow on your arm. Outside a siren passes somewhere distant and fades.

“Can I ask you something?” you say.

“Yeah.”

“The traveling thing.” You pause. “Do you actually think it could work? Practically? Not the romantic version of it. The actual version.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

“How.”

“Because life is short,” he says simply. “I have more money than I know what to do with. That’s not me being flash about it, it’s just true. You want to see the world and write about it. I can make that easier. I don’t understand why that’s something to fight against.”

“Because it’s yours,” you say. “The money. The opportunity. None of it is mine.”

“Does that actually matter to you or does it just feel like it should?”

You go quiet.

That is, you think, an extremely good question.

“I don’t know,” you admit.

“Because from where I’m sitting,” he says, “you have a skill. A real one. You write about people in a way that makes them matter to strangers. That’s not nothing. That’s not something I’m doing you a favor about. That’s something you bring.” He pauses. “I’m just offering the geography.”

You stare at the ceiling for a moment.

“I need to be honest with you about something,” you say.

“Okay.”

You take a breath. “If this doesn’t work out. Between us.” You feel him go still slightly but you keep going. “If something happens and it ends, I’d have nothing to come back to. I’d have left my job, my apartment, my whole life here, and I’d have nothing that was mine anymore. And that terrifies me more than anything else.”

He doesn’t say anything immediately. You appreciate that he doesn’t rush it.

“I wouldn’t leave you like that,” he says quietly. “I want to be really clear about that. Whatever happens between us, I wouldn’t just cut you off and leave you with nothing. That’s not something I’m capable of doing to someone.”

“You say that now.”

“I’d say it any time you asked me.” He shifts slightly so he can look at you better. “But I also hear what you’re actually saying. And it’s not really about the money or the job or any of that, is it.”

You look at him.

“You need to know there’s more out there,” he says. “Not because of me. Just for you. You need to know your life is bigger than it currently is.”

Your eyes go a little warm at that.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “That’s exactly it.”

“Then go find out,” he says. “Manchester first. Then wherever. Write about it. Send it to whoever. Figure out what it looks like when you’re not standing still.” He looks at you steadily. “You don’t have to blow your whole life up to do that. You just have to start.”

You lie there in the warm hotel room with the city outside the window and his arm around you and think about the planning committee meeting, the bathroom cabinet, the sofrito recipe, all the small contained ordinary things that have made up your life until very recently. A market in Manchester. A pub pie. Streets he walked down before he was anyone. The sofrito woman, and how there are a thousand of her everywhere, and you’ve only ever found the ones within ten blocks of your office.

“I’m scared,” you say. Just plainly. Just honestly.

“I know,” he says.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“No.” He pulls you a little closer. “Scared means it matters.”

You close your eyes.

Outside New York keeps going, loud and bright and completely indifferent, the city that never asked you to stay and never asked you to leave, just kept moving and let you decide for yourself.

“Plus,” he says, after a moment, “I think this could really work. Us. If you were around more we wouldn’t have to keep fighting the distance.”

You’re quiet for a second.

“What if it’s easy because of the distance?” you say.

He looks down at you. “What do you mean?”

“I mean.” You pause, trying to find the right way to say it. “What if the reason this works so well is because we only ever get a week here, three weeks there. What if the anticipation is doing most of the heavy lifting and we’ve never actually had to be around each other long enough to find out if it’s real.” You look at the ceiling. “What if I come to Manchester and I don’t fit into your world and it turns out we’re better as something you look forward to than something you actually have.”

He’s quiet for a moment.

Then he says: “That’s silly.”

You turn your head to look at him. “It’s not silly. It’s a real thing that happens to people.”

“I know it’s a real thing that happens to people,” he says. “I’m saying it’s silly in our specific case.”

“Why.”

“Because we’ve spent more time actually talking to each other than most couples who live in the same city.” He says it easily, without any performance behind it. “We’ve had the hard conversations. We’ve seen each other tired and just woken up and jet lagged and emotional at airports. You’ve been in my kitchen. You’ve met my regular sushi guy and the woman at the farmers market who knows my name. I’ve seen you cry. I’ve heard you snore.”

“I don’t snore.”

“We’ve established that you do,” he says. “My point is that’s not distance doing the heavy lifting. That’s just us.”

You look at him for a moment.

“And the fitting into your world thing,” he says. “Where did that come from?”

“Harry.” You give him a look. “Your world is a lot.”

“My world is also a patio with a lemon tree and a sushi restaurant and a farmers market on Saturday morning,” he says. “You fit into all of that just fine. In case you forgot.”

You did not forget.

“That’s the private part,” you say. “The rest of it is different.”

“The rest of it isn’t as big as you think it is from the outside.” He shifts slightly, looking at you properly. “And the parts that are big, you’d be fine. I know you’d be fine.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’re you,” he says simply. Like that settles it entirely.

You look at him in the low light of the hotel room, at the complete absence of doubt in his face. He has never once made you feel like you are less than whatever room you’re standing in. That is not a small thing. It is actually a very large thing that you haven’t said out loud yet.

“You really think so,” you say quietly.

“I really think so,” he says.

You look back at the ceiling.

“Okay,” you say, after a moment.

“Okay?”

“Okay I’ll stop catastrophizing.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“For tonight,” you add. “I reserve the right to catastrophize again tomorrow.”

He laughs softly, pulls you closer. You settle back against him. The room is warm. The city is outside. The conversation has gone quiet in that particular way it does when everything that needs saying has been said for now.

“You’re goofy,” he says, into your hair. “That’s why I love you.”

It hits you the same way it did at the airport. Clean and simple and completely certain, like something that was always true and is just being confirmed.

You lift your head and look at him.

“I love you too,” you say.

He looks at you for a second with that quiet warm expression, and then he just nods slightly like yes, exactly, that’s what I said.

You settle back against him.

“Is this actually a good idea?” you say, after a moment. “Honestly.”

“It’s a great idea,” he says. No hesitation.

“You’re biased.”

“Completely,” he agrees. “Still a great idea.”

You stare at the ceiling. “What if—”

“What would Camille say?” he asks.

You stop.

Think about it for approximately one second.

Then you laugh, properly, the kind that comes from somewhere real. “She would tell me to run away with you and do whatever you say and text her photos from everywhere and not look back.”

“Camille sounds very wise,” he says.

“Camille is a menace who is going to be insufferably smug about all of this.”

“Still sounds wise to me.”

You smile at the ceiling and feel him shift beside you. His hand finds yours on top of the covers, fingers threading through. He squeezes once, slow and certain.

“It’s going to be okay,” he says quietly. Not performing it. Not trying to convince you. Just saying a true thing.

You look at your hands. His thumb moving slow across your knuckles. The city outside still doing its thing, all that light, all that noise, all that relentless forward motion that has always felt like pressure and right now just feels like company.

You take a breath.

“Okay,” you say.

He turns his head toward you. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You look at him. “I’ll do it. Manchester. Whatever comes after. I’ll do it.”

He doesn’t say anything. He just pulls you into him, properly, both arms around you. You go easily, wrap your arms around him, press your face into his shoulder. He holds on like he means it.

Then he pulls back just enough to find your face and kisses you, warm and unhurried and thorough. You kiss him back. The city glitters beyond the window. The room is warm and quiet around you both.

When he pulls back he looks at you for a moment.

“Camille is going to be so smug,” you say.

He laughs. You laugh. He pulls you back into him. You lie there in the dark with his arm around you, the decision sitting in your chest like something that has finally been put down in the right place.

Outside New York keeps going.

You think about Manchester.

It comes out simply, without dressing it up, because it’s early and you’re too tired to be anything other than honest.

He exhales slowly. His arm tightens a little more.

“I know,” he says quietly.

“It was a really good trip.”

“It was.”

You stare at the curtain and feel the day sitting on your chest, not heavy exactly, just present. The flight. The packing. The going back to your apartment and your routine and the city that doesn’t have him in it.

“Three weeks,” he says after a moment.

“What?”

“Three weeks from today I’m in New York.” His voice is low and unhurried. “Exactly three weeks.”

You sit with that for a second.

“Three weeks,” you repeat.

“Three weeks,” he says. “And then after that Manchester.”

You laugh softly despite yourself, small and warm. “You’re really committed to Manchester.”

“I’m really committed,” he agrees. Simply. Like he means more than just the city.

“Three weeks isn’t that long,” you say, mostly to yourself.

“No,” he says. “It’s not.”

His thumb traces slow across the back of your hand and you let yourself believe him, which is easier than you expected, which maybe says everything.

He shifts slightly behind you, propping himself up on one elbow, and you roll onto your back so you can look at him properly. His hair is doing several things at once and he looks soft and unhurried and completely unbothered by any of it.

You look at the ceiling for a moment.

“Can I tell you something without it being weird?” you say.

“Yeah.”

“I almost didn’t download the app.” You pause. “Like genuinely almost didn’t. Camille basically did it for me. I sat on her counter thinking it was the most ridiculous idea I’d ever heard and she just.” You shake your head. “She just kept going.”

He’s quiet, listening.

“And then when we matched I threw my phone across the room,” you say. “Literally threw it. Camille knocked over her wine.”

He laughs softly at that.

“I just never thought.” You pause, searching for the right way to say it. “I wasn’t expecting to find something like this. Not there. Not like that.” You glance at him. “I wasn’t really expecting to find something like this anywhere if I’m honest.”

He looks at you for a moment. “Why not?”

You think about it properly. “I don’t know. I think I’d just gotten used to things being fine. Perfectly fine. And I thought that was maybe just what it was like.” You pause. “And then you messaged back about the boats and it was just.” You laugh quietly. “It was just so easy.”

“It is easy,” he says simply. “That’s the thing. It just is.”

“I know.” You look at him. “That’s what got me. I kept waiting for it to be hard or weird or for one of us to say something that didn’t land. And it never happened.”

“It still hasn’t,” he says.

“It still hasn’t,” you agree.

He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, easy and absent, the gesture so familiar now after just a few days that it feels like something you’ve had for much longer.

“I don’t take that lightly,” he says quietly. “How easy this is. I know what it feels like when it isn’t.”

You look at him.

“Me too,” you say.

The room is warm and still around you and you lie there for another moment just looking at each other in the easy uncomplicated way of two people who have said the real things and don’t need to keep saying them.

Then he takes a breath.

“Right,” he says. “Come on.”

“Come on what?”

“Up.” He sits up and reaches for you, pulling gently. “One last coffee. Proper one. And then I’ll help you with your bags.”

You groan quietly and he pulls a little more insistently and you let him drag you upright, sitting there with your hair a mess and his crewneck on and your chest feeling very full of something you don’t have a clean word for yet.

He stands and stretches and offers you his hand.

You take it.

“One last coffee,” you say.

“One last coffee,” he agrees.

He leads you downstairs with his hand loosely around yours and steers you toward the kitchen island, pulling out a stool.

“Sit,” he says.

You sit.

He moves around to his side of the counter and starts pulling things out of the fridge. You watch him with open curiosity.

“Close your eyes,” he says, without turning around.

“Why?”

You close them. You put your hand over them for good measure, which feels sufficiently committed.

You last approximately fifteen seconds.

Through the gap between your fingers you watch him pull out the milk, then root around in a cupboard for something, then disappear briefly to the other side of the kitchen. You hear the coffee machine start up, then something else, a different sound, and you crane your neck slightly to see better.

He’s brewing the coffee directly over a glass of ice.

You watch him pour the milk in slowly, then reach for something on the back counter. Whipped cream. An actual can of whipped cream from somewhere in his very composed and adult kitchen, which makes you press your lips together to keep from laughing. Then he reaches for something else.

Chocolate syrup.

He is making you a chocolate whipped cream iced coffee in complete seriousness and you are watching all of it through your fingers and trying desperately not to make a sound.

You fail.

A giggle escapes before you can stop it. Small but audible.

He turns around immediately.

“You’re watching me.”

“I’m not.”

“Your hand is basically transparent.”

“I have my eyes closed.”

“You have one eye closed.” He points at you with the chocolate syrup. “I can see you.”

You drop your hand and give up entirely, laughing properly now, and he shakes his head with the expression of someone deeply unimpressed who is also trying not to smile.

“I just wanted to see what the special was,” you say.

“Now you’ve ruined the surprise.”

“The surprise is whipped cream and chocolate syrup.”

“The surprise,” he says, turning back with great dignity, “is the execution.” He adds the whipped cream with the focused concentration of someone who takes this seriously, a proper amount, not a token gesture, and then drizzles the chocolate over the top in a slow deliberate spiral.

He sets it in front of you.

It looks genuinely wonderful. The ice and the dark coffee visible through the glass, the milk pale against it, the whipped cream piled on top with the chocolate catching the morning light.

“A Harry original,” he says, and leans against the counter with his arms crossed, waiting.

You look at it. Then at him. Then back at it.

“You are so proud of yourself,” you say.

“I’m a little proud,” he admits.

You pick it up and take a sip and it is genuinely delicious, sweet and cold and rich and exactly the kind of thing you didn’t know you needed at eight in the morning on a last day you’ve been dreading.

“Okay,” you say. “It’s really good.”

He smiles. Properly. “I know.”

You stay at the kitchen island for a long time after that. Long enough for the ice to melt halfway, long enough for him to make himself a regular coffee and lean against the counter across from you and just talk, the easy wandering kind of conversation that doesn’t need a destination. He tells you about the first time he tried to make the iced coffee, which apparently went badly involving too much chocolate syrup and a very unhappy kitchen surface. You tell him about the time Camille convinced you to try making cold brew at home and the resulting situation with the cheesecloth. He laughs so genuinely at that, head dropping slightly, that you feel it somewhere warm in your chest.

At some point you both go quiet and just sit in it, your empty glass between your hands, his coffee nearly done, the kitchen full of soft light, and the particular unhurried feeling of a morning that neither of you is rushing.

Then his eyes move to the clock on the wall and back to you.

“We should probably,” he says.

“Yeah,” you say. “We should.”

He pushes off the counter and comes around to your side and takes your empty glass without being asked and rinses it in the sink and sets it on the drying rack, and you watch him do something that small and domestic and feel something tighten quietly in your chest.

Upstairs he helps you pack the way people who are good at taking care of things help you pack. Holding the bag open while you fold. Finding the charger you left on the nightstand and handing it over without comment. Noticing the toiletry bag still in the bathroom and going to get it before you’ve registered it’s missing. He moves around the room quietly and efficiently and you think about how strange it is to have someone know where your things are after only a few days, to have your presence distributed through a space that isn’t yours but has started to feel a little bit like it is.

His crewneck is folded on the bed from when he picked it up off the floor.

You look at it.

“Keep it,” he says, not looking up from where he’s checking the zip on your bag.

You pick it up and put it in without a word. You’re not even a little sorry about it.

He zips the bag and sets it by the door and you stand in his bedroom for a moment and just look at it. The unmade bed. The lamp on the nightstand. The curtain still moving from the cracked window. The small evidence of a week that felt longer than it was, longer and fuller and more real than anything you were prepared for when you booked a flight to Los Angeles on what felt at the time like an act of mild insanity.

You think about Camille on her kitchen counter with the invite code and the look on her face. You think about lying on your own couch staring at three photos and a song choice and telling yourself it was fake. You think about the bar in New York and the elevator situation and how relieved you were when he walked in, how the relief surprised you, how much you had apparently been hoping without admitting it.

He puts his hand briefly at the small of your back.

You pick up your bag.

The drive to the airport is quiet. Still comfortable, still the two of you, but with something underneath it that neither of you is naming out loud. The city moves past the windows and he has one hand on the wheel of the Range Rover and the other finds your knee at some point, easy and warm, the same thing he did the first night coming back from the sushi place, and you put your hand over his and look out at the palm trees and try to memorize them. Not because you’ll forget but because your brain wants to hold onto everything right now. The light. The warmth. His hand under yours.

You keep your eyes on the window so he can’t see your face doing what it’s starting to do.

He squeezes your knee once. He probably already knows anyway. He usually does.

The terminal drop off is busy the way airports always are, cars pulling in and out, people moving with their bags in every direction. He pulls to the curb and puts the car in park and gets out and comes around and lifts your bag from the back and sets it on the pavement beside you and suddenly it’s all happening very fast, the way endings always do after beginnings that felt like they lasted exactly the right amount of time.

You look at him.

He’s in a cap pulled low and a plain white t-shirt and shorts and sunglasses and he looks so normal standing there on the curb, so completely like a person rather than anything else, and you think about the first night you saw him walk into that bar in New York and how your brain took a second to catch up and how it still does sometimes, even now, even after all of this.

You open your mouth to say something reasonable and composed.

Your eyes fill up instead.

“Oh no,” you say, which is not what you planned.

“Hey,” he says immediately, stepping forward.

“I’m fine,” you say, which is not true at all, your voice already going tight and unreliable, and then you make a sound that is genuinely not cute, not a delicate controlled cry but a full honest ugly one that escapes before you can stop it, and any remaining dignity you had dissolves completely on the curb outside LAX on a Tuesday morning.

He pulls you into him before you can say anything else.

You cry into his shoulder properly. The embarrassing kind, shoulders shaking and breath hitching, and he wraps both arms around you and holds you there with cars moving past and people wheeling bags around you like the world is just continuing, which it is, which feels slightly offensive.

“I’m sorry,” you manage. “This is so embarrassing.”

“It’s not,” he says into your hair.

“I don’t normally do this.”

“I know.”

“I’m a very composed person generally.”

He makes a small sound that might be a laugh, soft and fond. “I know that too.”

You press your face further into his shoulder and he holds on, one hand moving slow on your back, and you think about him saying I still want to try on the rooftop last night, how simple he made it sound, how much you needed it to sound that simple.

“It was just a really good week,” you say into his shirt.

“It was,” he says. “It really was.”

“I wasn’t expecting it to be like this.”

“Me neither.”

You weren’t, is the thing. You genuinely weren’t. You came here with a return flight booked and low expectations and somewhere between the sushi and the piano and the farmers market and the couch you stopped being someone who was visiting and started being someone who belonged here, at least a little, at least for now, and now you have to go back to being the person who doesn’t.

You pull back after a moment, wiping your face with the back of your hand, blinking hard in the bright morning. He takes his sunglasses off and looks at you, those green eyes direct and steady, and his thumb comes up and wipes the last of it from your cheek.

You look at him. At his face in the morning light, at the cap and the white t-shirt and the patience of him, at three weeks stretching out ahead of you like something you can survive.

“I’ll text you when I land,” you say.

“Please do.”

You nod. Pick up the handle of your bag. Take one breath.

“I love you,” you say.

It comes out completely naturally, the way things do when you’re not guarding yourself, when you’ve been crying on someone’s shoulder on an airport curb and your defenses are entirely gone. The words are out before you’ve processed them and then they’re just sitting there in the warm morning air between you and your eyes go wide.

“I.” You stare at him. “That was. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

He’s looking at you.

“I mean I just.” You shake your head. “Sorry. Ignore that. I’m emotional and I just.”

“Hey,” he says quietly.

“You don’t have to.” You’re already reaching for your bag. “Seriously just forget I.”

“Hey.” His hand finds your wrist gently. “Look at me.”

You look at him.

His expression is very steady and very quiet and very certain.

“I love you too,” he says.

Simply. Clearly. Like it was never going to be anything other than that.

You stare at him.

“Yeah?” you say, in a very small voice.

“Yeah,” he says.

You stand there on the curb with your bag and your red eyes and the whole unlikely story of the two of you sitting somewhere in your chest, the app and the boats and Italy and New York and the bar and all of it, every single improbable piece of it, and you laugh a little through whatever is left of the tears.

He steps forward and kisses you, soft and unhurried, one hand at your jaw, and you hold onto the front of his t-shirt and kiss him back and the airport keeps moving around you and neither of you pays it any attention.

When he pulls back he rests his forehead against yours for a second.

“Three weeks,” he says quietly.

“Three weeks,” you say back.

He picks up your bag and hands it to you properly and steps back and you look at him one more time, at the cap and the sunglasses back on and the white t-shirt and the everything of him standing on the curb in the LA morning like he’s just a person, like this is just a Tuesday, like you didn’t just say I love you on an airport curb and mean it more than you’ve meant most things.

You turn and walk through the doors.

You don’t look back.

You already know what you’d see.

You sleep for most of the flight.

Not the deep uninterrupted kind, just the drifting in and out that happens when you’re tired enough to close your eyes but your brain hasn’t quite agreed to shut down. You watch the clouds for a while. You order a ginger ale you don’t finish. You put your headphones in and stare at the seat back in front of you and think about nothing and everything alternately.

Somewhere over Nevada you pull his crewneck out of your carry on and put it on.

The woman in the seat next to you doesn’t comment. You appreciate that.

You land at JFK at eleven at night, local time, the air when you step out of the terminal cold in a way that feels like a punishment after a week of LA. Sharp and damp and uncompromising, the kind of cold that doesn’t ease into you but just arrives all at once.

You stop on the pavement outside arrivals and just stand there for a second with your bag and your crewneck and your red eyes and breathe it in.

New York. Your city. The one that is loud and argues outside your window and never smells like jasmine and has no lemon trees on any patio you have ever seen.

Your phone buzzes.

Cami: I’m in the pickup lane. White car. Do not make me circle.

You laugh despite yourself and start walking.

She spots you before you spot her, leans across and pushes the passenger door open from the inside, and you climb in and drop your bag in the back and she takes one look at your face and your crewneck and the general state of you and says nothing for a full three seconds which is, for Camille, remarkable restraint.

“Don’t,” you say preemptively.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Good.”

She pulls out into the airport traffic and you lean your head back against the seat and look at the ceiling of her car and feel the week sitting on you like something physical, warm and heavy and already starting to feel like something you’re looking back on rather than something you’re in.

“I don’t want to go home,” you say.

She glances at you. “Okay.”

“I mean it. I can’t go back to my apartment tonight. I can’t.” You turn your head to look at her. “Can I come to yours?”

“I already assumed,” she says simply, and changes lanes.

Her apartment is warm when you get in, candles on the counter because of course there are, a blanket already on the couch like she anticipated this exact situation, which she probably did because she knows you and she’s been waiting for this debriefing for a week and she prepared accordingly.

You drop your bag by the door and sit on her couch and pull the blanket over your legs and she comes back from the kitchen with two glasses of wine and hands you one and sits beside you and waits.

You open your mouth.

You start crying again instead.

Not the ugly airport kind, just the quiet tired kind, the kind that comes when you’ve been holding something together for a long time and you’re finally somewhere safe enough to put it down. Camille doesn’t say anything, just puts her hand on your knee and lets you get through it.

“Sorry,” you say eventually.

“Don’t be stupid,” she says.

You wipe your face with the sleeve of his crewneck and take a breath and then you tell her everything. Not the edited version, not the highlights, all of it. The sushi and the chopsticks. The shower and the body wash and the internal crisis in his bathroom. The Fleetwood Mac in the Range Rover. The farmers market and the peach and the dress. The couch. The studio and the piano and five notes and the way he kissed you afterward. The rooftop and the stumbling conversation about what this was and neither of you having a clean answer. The breakfast on the patio and the small flower in the terracotta pot and the way he threw your own words back at you.

The airport.

The thing you said without meaning to say it.

The thing he said back.

Camille has not moved or spoken for approximately eight minutes. She is holding her wine glass very still.

“He said it back,” she says finally.

“He said it back.”

“At the airport.”

“At the airport.”

She exhales slowly. “Okay.”

“I know.”

“That’s.” She shakes her head. “I don’t have a word for that.”

“Me neither.”

You both sit with it for a second.

Then you lean back into the couch and look at her ceiling and feel the thing that has been sitting underneath all of it finally surface, the thing that isn’t just missing him, the thing that is bigger than that.

“Cami,” you say.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to go to work on Monday.”

She’s quiet.

“I love my job,” you say. “I genuinely love it. You know that. I love the city council meetings and the small stories and all of it.” You pause. “But I got on that plane tonight and I thought about going back to the office on Monday and writing about zoning permits and I just.” You stop. “I felt nothing. Less than nothing.”

“That’s not nothing,” she says carefully.

“There’s more out there,” you say. “I know that now in a way I didn’t before. I went to LA for a week and I ate at a restaurant where the menu changes every week and I sat on a rooftop and looked at a whole city I’d never seen and went to a recording studio and I.” You shake your head. “I want to see things. I want to write about things that are bigger. I want to go to Manchester. I want to go everywhere.” Your voice goes quiet. “I want to be with him.”

Camille is very still beside you.

“I know that sounds insane,” you say.

“It doesn’t,” she says.

“We’ve known each other since February. In real life for like ten days total.”

“And?”

“And I love him,” you say simply. “I said it at the airport and I meant it and now I’m back here and my apartment is going to smell like my apartment and my job is going to be my job and he’s going to be in LA and I just.” You pull the blanket tighter. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

Camille puts her wine glass down and turns to face you properly.

“You don’t have to do anything with it tonight,” she says.

“I know.”

“Three weeks,” she says. “You said three weeks.”

“Three weeks,” you repeat. It sounds both close and very far from Camille’s couch at midnight.

She puts her arm around you and you lean into her and she rests her head against yours and you both look at nothing in particular for a while.

“For what it’s worth?” she says eventually.

“What?”

“I told you so.”

You laugh, properly, for the first time since the airport, and she laughs too, and the city hums outside her window, cold and loud and completely itself, and you think about a patio with terracotta pots and a lemon tree and a small yellow flower that wasn’t there the day before.

Three weeks, you think.

Just three weeks.

The first week is the hardest.

You know this about yourself, that you are bad at the transition back, but this time it catches you differently. It’s not jet lag. This is something else. A flatness that sits over everything, not sadness exactly, just the particular dullness of a life that was fine before and is still fine now but has the shape of something missing pressed into it.

Your apartment feels smaller than you left it.

You stand in it the morning after you get back, Sunday, coffee in hand, looking at your own familiar things, the bookshelf and the desk and the window with its view of the street, and it all looks exactly like it always has and that is somehow the problem. Everything is where you left it. Nothing has moved. The apartment waited for you patiently and you came back and it’s all exactly the same and you are not.

You go to work on Monday.

You sit through a briefing about a planning committee meeting scheduled for Thursday and you take notes and nod at the right times and afterward your editor asks how your trip was and you say really good, thanks, and move on before your face can do anything.

You write two pieces that week. They’re good, your editor says they’re good, but you sit at your desk and read them back and they feel thin in a way they didn’t used to, like something has shifted and you can’t quite find the focus.

Harry texts every day.

Not long messages, not always, sometimes just small things, the same way it was before LA, before any of it, back when you were just two people in different time zones exchanging pieces of their days. Except now you know what his kitchen smells like in the morning and the sound he makes when something is genuinely funny and the way he looks right after he wakes up, and the messages land differently because of that. They land in a specific place that didn’t exist before.

Harry: long one today

You: good long or bad long?

Harry: somewhere in the middle. you?

You: I reorganized my bookshelf.

Harry: that bad.

You: alphabetically AND by color. it’s a cry for help.

Harry: I’ll be there in two weeks.

You: I know. I know I know I know.

Harry: I know you know.

Some nights he calls.

Those are the best nights and also somehow the hardest ones. You lie on your couch with your phone propped against a pillow and his face on the screen and he’s usually just back from the studio, hair pushed back, tired but easy, and you talk the way you always have. But now there are pauses where you both just look at each other through the phone and don’t say anything and don’t need to.

One night he holds the phone up toward the speakers so you can hear a few bars of something unfinished, rough and quiet, and you lie there in your dark apartment in New York listening to him play something from a studio in Los Angeles and feel it somewhere deep and complicated.

“What do you think?” he says, bringing the phone back to his face.

“I think it’s really good,” you say honestly.

“Yeah?”

“It sounds like something that matters.”

He looks at you for a second through the small screen.

“That’s all I want,” he says quietly.

Another night you’re on FaceTime while you’re attempting to cook, which is a generous word for what you’re doing, which is mostly standing in your kitchen in his crewneck staring at a pan of pasta that is taking an unreasonable amount of time. You have your phone propped against the fruit bowl and he’s lying on his couch in LA and the time difference means it’s late for him but he called anyway, which you noticed and didn’t say anything about.

“Why is it taking so long?” you say at the pasta.

“Did you salt the water?”

You look at the pot.

“The water,” he says.

“I know what salting the water means.”

“Did you do it?”

“I’m going to do it now.”

“That’s a no.”

“That’s a now.”

He laughs and you grab the salt and put what is probably too much in and he watches you from the fruit bowl with that expression, the quiet amused one, and it is so ordinary and so not ordinary at the same time that you have to look at the pasta for a second so he can’t see your face.

“You’re wearing my crewneck,” he says.

“It’s warm.”

“It looks good.”

You keep your eyes on the pasta. “Stop.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I know what you’re saying.”

He smiles and doesn’t push it and you stand there stirring pasta at eleven pm on a Wednesday with him watching from your fruit bowl and think about how completely your life has rearranged itself around this person without you making any conscious decision to let it.

You text Camille things like:

You: is it weird that I can hear his voice in my head when I read his texts?

Cami: no that’s just love babe

You: don’t say it so casually

Cami: would you prefer I screamed it

You: yes actually

Cami: YOU’RE IN LOVE

You: thank you that’s better

The second week is easier than the first, which Camille promised it would be and was right about, which you don’t tell her because she already knows.

Work starts to feel more like itself. You pitch a story about a restaurant in the Bronx that’s been run by the same family for forty years and your editor says yes before you’ve finished the sentence and you spend a Thursday afternoon sitting across from a seventy two year old woman who tells you about her mother’s recipe for sofrito like it’s a love story, because it is, and you drive back to the office with your notes and feel that thing again, the small warm thing that reminds you why you do this.

You text Harry from the subway.

You: I interviewed a woman today who has been making the same sofrito recipe for fifty years. Her mother taught her. She cried telling me about it.

Harry: that’s a good story.

You: it’s a really good story.

Harry: see.

You: see what?

Harry: you love it. you were worried you didn’t anymore but you do.

You stare at the message on the train.

You: how did you know I was worried about that?

Harry: you went very quiet about work for a while there.

You: I didn’t think you noticed.

Harry: I notice everything.

You put your phone in your pocket and lean your head back against the train seat and close your eyes and think about five more days and try to let it feel as small as it actually is.

It almost works.

The third week arrives and something shifts. Not dramatically, just quietly. The days start moving at a different speed. You catch yourself doing math in your head at odd moments. In line for coffee. Mid sentence in a meeting. Lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling.

Six days.

Five.

Four.

You know it’s getting close when you start cleaning your apartment.

Not the regular kind, the Sunday kind where you run a cloth over the surfaces and call it done. The other kind. The kind where you find yourself on your hands and knees reorganizing the cabinet under your bathroom sink at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night because apparently that felt urgent.

Four days.

You sit back on your heels and look at the neatly arranged bottles and think about how completely ridiculous you are.

Your phone buzzes on the edge of the sink.

Harry: you’re awake late.

You look at the cabinet. Then at your phone.

You: reorganizing.

Harry: the bookshelf again?

You: the bathroom cabinet this time.

Harry: it’s eleven pm.

You: I’m aware.

Harry: four days.

You: I know.

Harry: you’re cleaning because of me?

You stare at the message for a second. There is absolutely no point in denying it.

You: a little bit yes.

Three dots. Then:

Harry: that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for their bathroom cabinet on my behalf.

You laugh out loud alone on your bathroom floor and the sound bounces off the tiles and you think about four days and decide the cabinet looks good enough and go to bed.

Three days.

Two.

One.

Then you find the coffee.

It takes a minute of quiet investigation. The beans are in a jar beside the grinder, which is on the counter next to the machine, all of it arranged with the logic of someone who takes their morning coffee seriously. You find the filters in the cupboard above. Mugs on the open shelf.

You move around his kitchen carefully, like a guest who has been given permission but is still conscious of the fact that everything belongs to someone else. The grinder is louder than you expect and you wince at the noise and glance toward the stairs and then relax when nothing happens.

While the coffee brews you open the fridge.

Eggs. Good ones, the kind in the cardboard carton with the farm name on it. Butter. Some cheese. Half a loaf of bread on the counter that’s still fresh enough. You think about what he said that first night, patience and butter, and decide that’s exactly what you’re going to do.

You find a pan. Low heat. Butter melting slowly, the way he showed you without meaning to, and you crack the eggs in and move the pan gently and try to remember the rhythm of it.

The coffee finishes. You pour two mugs and leave his on the counter and stand at the stove with yours and watch the eggs slowly come together in the warm morning light and feel, quietly and without making a big thing of it, completely at home.

You don’t hear him on the stairs.

The first thing you know is the warmth of him behind you, his arms wrapping around your waist from behind, his chin coming to rest on the top of your head. He does it the way he does everything, unhurried, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

You lean back into him without thinking about it.

“Morning,” you say.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just holds you there, looking over your shoulder at the pan on the stove, at the two mugs on the counter, at the morning kitchen that is his but currently feels like both of yours.

Then, quietly, his arms tightening slightly around you:

“I like this.”

You turn your head slightly. “The eggs?”

“You,” he says. “In my kitchen.”

You look back at the stove and feel your chest do that thing it keeps doing around him, that slow warm turn you’ve completely given up trying to talk yourself out of.

“Don’t make it weird,” you say, but you’re smiling.

“I’m not,” he says simply. “I just like it.”

He takes over the eggs in that last minute the way you suspected he would, nudging you gently aside with his hip and adjusting the heat without comment, finishing them with the patience and butter philosophy while you lean against the counter and drink your coffee and watch him.

“I was doing fine,” you say.

“You were doing well,” he agrees. “I just have opinions.”

“About eggs.”

“About eggs.”

You shake your head but you’re smiling and he plates them up without making a production of it and nods toward the back door.

“Outside?”

His patio is exactly what you would have designed for him if someone had asked you to. Wide stone tiles warm from the morning sun, terracotta pots clustered along the edges spilling over with things you can only half identify, jasmine climbing the back wall, a small lemon tree in the corner that looks like it’s been there for years. Two chairs and a low table positioned to catch the best of the morning light. The whole thing feels considered without being decorated, like it grew this way rather than being arranged.

You step outside and the warmth hits you immediately, that specific LA morning warmth that feels like a gift rather than a given, and you stand there for a second with your coffee and your plate and just breathe it in.

“This is obscene,” you say.

“The patio?”

“The weather. The patio. All of it.” You sit down and look up at the sky, wide and blue and completely unbothered. “It’s November.”

“I know.” He sits across from you, stretching his legs out, completely at home in the way people are in outdoor spaces they love. “That’s why I stay.”

You eat in the easy quiet of a morning that has nowhere to be. The eggs are, predictably, better than yours were getting to be. The coffee is good. A bird lands on the lemon tree and regards you both briefly before deciding you’re not interesting enough and leaving.

You watch it go. “Does that happen a lot.”

“Every morning,” he says. “Same bird I think. Or they all look the same. I haven’t worked it out.”

“Have you tried to work it out.”

“A little.”

You smile into your coffee. Of course he has.

The conversation moves the way it does between you without anyone steering it anywhere in particular. He asks about your editor and you tell him about the ongoing negotiation over what counts as enough bite in a piece, and he listens properly, asks a follow up, doesn’t just wait for his turn to speak. You ask about the album and he talks about it with the particular mix of pride and exhaustion that belongs to someone who has put a lot into something and is now in the strange waiting period before the world gets to hear it.

“Are you nervous?” you ask.

He considers it. “Not nervous exactly. Just aware. There’s a difference.”

“What’s the difference.”

“Nervous means you’re not sure it’s good. Aware means you know it’s good and you’re just waiting to find out if everyone else agrees.”

You look at him. “That’s a very confident thing to say.”

“It’s an honest thing to say.” He picks up his coffee. “There’s a difference there too.”

You laugh and he smiles and the morning sits around you warm and unhurried.

At some point he gets up without saying anything and disappears into the garden, crouching down near one of the terracotta pots along the far wall. You watch him from your chair, curious.

“What are you doing,” you call.

“Looking.”

“At what.”

“Come see.”

You get up and carry your coffee over and crouch beside him. Nestled between two large pots, half hidden by the jasmine trailing down the wall, is a small succulent you almost missed entirely. Except growing up through the center of it, improbably, is a single small flower. Pale yellow. Barely open.

“It wasn’t there yesterday,” he says.

You look at it for a moment. “You check every day?”

“Most days.” He sounds slightly sheepish about it. “I planted it when I moved in. Took a long time to do anything.”

You look at him crouching there in the morning sun in his t-shirt and sweats studying a small flower with genuine satisfaction and feel something move through you that you don’t have an immediate word for.

“That’s really nice,” you say quietly.

He glances at you. “Don’t make it weird.”

You laugh. “That’s mine.”

“Is it?”

“I said it thirty minutes ago.”

“Did you.” He looks back at the flower, perfectly unbothered. “Funny how that works.”

You stay out there longer than you planned, the way mornings do when they’re good enough. Second coffees appear at some point, he goes in and makes them without asking, and you sit back in your chair and tilt your face up toward the sun and think that if this is what November feels like in Los Angeles then New York has been lying to you your entire life.

“What do you want to do today?” he asks eventually, from across the table.

You think about it. The beach was yesterday’s plan that never happened. The market happened. The couch happened. You think about what you haven’t seen yet, what you don’t know about his life here, the parts that exist when no one is writing about them.

“Something I’d never think to ask for,” you say.

He looks at you.

“Show me something that’s actually yours,” you say. “Not a tourist thing. Something real.”

He holds your gaze for a moment, considering it, and then something settles in his expression.

“Finish your coffee,” he says.

The studio he takes you to is tucked down a side street in Hollywood, an unmarked door between a dry cleaner and a print shop, the kind of place you would walk past a thousand times without registering. He punches in a code and holds the door and you follow him into a dim corridor that opens up into something else entirely.

It’s bigger inside than the exterior suggests. A live room visible through thick glass, instruments arranged inside like a still life. Cables coiled neatly along the walls. A mixing desk in the control room that looks like the cockpit of something, all sliders and small glowing lights. It smells like coffee and old carpet and something electrical.

He moves through it the way he moves through his kitchen. Comfortable. Certain. At home.

“This is where you record,” you say. Not a question.

“One of them. The one I like best.” He runs his hand along the back of the chair at the mixing desk. “Spent most of last year in here.”

You wander slowly, looking at everything with the careful attention you bring to places that matter to people. There are notes pinned to a board near the window, handwritten, some of them just fragments. A few words. A line that trails off. You don’t read them closely but you notice them. You notice what kind of person leaves notes like that.

He pushes open the heavy door to the live room and holds it for you.

Inside it’s properly quiet, the kind of silence that has been engineered. A guitar on a stand near the corner. A stool. Microphone cables coiled on the floor. And along the far wall, a piano, dark wood, nothing ornate about it but clearly well used, the kind of instrument that has been played enough to have a relationship with the room.

You drift toward it naturally.

“Do you play?” he asks from behind you.

You laugh. “Absolutely not.”

“Sit down.”

“Harry.”

“Sit down,” he says again, a smile in it.

You sit on the bench, which is slightly too far from the keys, and scoot forward and look at the expanse of black and white in front of you with the specific helplessness of someone who has never learned.

He pulls up a stool and sits beside you, close, and reaches over and repositions your hands on the keys with gentle matter of fact fingers, your right hand first, finding the shape of it.

“Okay,” he says. “Just these five.” He points. “C, D, E, F, G.”

“That’s not a song.”

“It’s the beginning of one.”

He plays them slowly with his own hand first, five notes in a simple descending pattern, clean and unhurried. You watch his fingers.

“Now you,” he says.

You try. The first attempt is uneven, the timing off, one note barely sounding because you didn’t press hard enough.

“Again,” he says. Patient. Not unkind.

You try again. Better this time. The notes come out in something approximating the right order and at something approximating the right speed and he nods once, a small satisfied movement.

“There,” he says. “Very good.”

“That’s five notes.”

“It’s a start.”

He plays a simple accompaniment with his left hand while you repeat your five notes with your right, and the two things together sound, improbably, like something. Not a song exactly but the shape of one. The idea of one. The room holds it quietly and you play it again and again, finding the rhythm of it, and his left hand moves with you, adjusting when you speed up, following when you slow down, and it is the most gently attentive thing anyone has ever done with you at a piano which is a low bar but still.

You play it one more time. He plays it back. You play it together.

Then he turns toward you slightly and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear with one hand and kisses you softly, right there on the piano bench, in the quiet of the live room, and you stop playing but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He doesn’t pull back right away.

The kiss stays soft, unhurried, his hand still at the side of your face, and you lean into it and bring your hands up to hold his face the way you did that first night in the dark, your palms warm against his jaw, his skin slightly rough under your fingers.

He makes a small sound against your mouth, content and low, and kisses you a little deeper, nothing urgent, just thorough, like he has decided this is where he wants to be and sees no reason to rush.

You kiss him back properly, fully, your thumbs tracing slow along his cheekbones, and the live room is very quiet around you, just the faint hum of equipment somewhere and the sound of your own breathing.

Eventually you pull back.

Just enough to look at him.

He stays close, eyes still mostly closed for a second before they open and find yours, and you look at him in the soft studio light with your hands still holding his face and just let yourself actually look.

His eyes first. Green in a way that photographs never quite get right, warm and specific, the kind of color that changes slightly depending on the light and right now in here they are very green and very close and looking directly back at you.

Then the line of his nose, slightly imperfect in a way that makes his face make sense, that makes it human rather than constructed.

Then his mouth, still soft from kissing, the particular curve of his upper lip, and you think about the first time you saw his profile photo on a couch in Camille’s apartment and how none of this felt even remotely possible and here you are sitting on a piano bench in his recording studio with your hands on his face.

The heat moves up your neck before you can stop it.

You feel your cheeks go warm and you know without looking in a mirror that you are very visibly blushing, which is mortifying, which makes it worse.

You drop your hands from his face and look down at the piano keys.

“What,” he says quietly. There’s a smile in it.

“Nothing.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” He tilts his head slightly, trying to catch your eye. “What were you thinking about.”

“Nothing,” you say again, with great conviction.

He waits.

You look up at him.

“I was just looking at you,” you say finally, simply, because there isn’t a more dignified version of the truth.

He looks at you for a moment. Something in his expression goes very quiet and very warm.

He doesn’t say anything.

He just tucks that strand of hair behind your ear again, the same one as before, even though it doesn’t need it, and turns back to the piano.

“From the top,” he says softly. “C, D, E, F, G.”

You look at the keys.

Then you play.

He locks up the studio behind you and you walk back to the Range Rover in the warm afternoon, shoulders close, not quite touching. The street is quiet. Somewhere down the block someone is playing music through an open window and it drifts out into the air and disappears.

In the car he’s relaxed, one hand on the wheel, the playlist picking up where it left off, and you watch the city move past the window and feel the particular pleasant tiredness of a day that has already been full and it isn’t even three o’clock.

You’re almost back to his house when his phone buzzes in the cupholder. Then again. He glances at it briefly at a red light and something in his expression shifts just slightly, that specific flicker of someone remembering an obligation.

“I have a meeting,” he says. “I’m sorry. I forgot it was today.” He glances over at you. “It shouldn’t be long. An hour maybe.”

“Don’t apologize,” you say. “Go do your meeting.”

“You’re sure.”

“Harry. Go do your meeting.”

He looks at you for a second like he’s checking, then nods and turns back to the road.

The house is warm and quiet when you come in. He disappears upstairs to take the call and you kick your shoes off by the door and drift into the living room and sink into the couch, pulling the throw blanket from the arm of it over your legs.

The afternoon light is coming through the windows at that long golden angle it gets around this hour, lying in warm strips across the floor and the cushions and you. The house smells like him. Outside a breeze moves through the garden.

You close your eyes for just a second.

Just to rest them.

The couch is ridiculously comfortable. The blanket is warm. Somewhere upstairs you can hear the faint low murmur of his voice, too far away to make out words, just the rhythm of it, steady and calm.

You think about the piano. About five notes and his hand moving alongside yours. About the way he looked at you when you pulled back and just looked at him, that quiet expression, the warmth in it.

The thought is still forming when you lose the thread of it entirely.

You become aware of warmth beside you before you’re fully awake.

Then the smell of him, close, and the faint dip of the couch cushion, and you surface slowly from sleep to find him sitting beside you, not close enough to crowd you, just there, his arm resting along the back of the couch above your head.

You open your eyes.

He’s looking at you with that quiet amused expression that means he has been watching you sleep for at least a minute and is not going to pretend otherwise.

“I was just resting my eyes,” you say immediately.

He laughs, low and genuine. “You were absolutely asleep.”

“I was resting them very deeply.”

“You made a sound.”

You stare at him. “What kind of sound.”

He makes a small soft noise that is a very gentle impression of snoring and you cover your face with both hands and he laughs again, properly this time.

“That is not what I sound like,” you say from behind your hands.

“It’s very close.”

“I hate you.”

“You were very peaceful,” he says, kindly. “Very cozy.”

You drop your hands and look at him, at the smile still on his face, easy and warm, and you think that you don’t actually hate him even slightly.

“How was your meeting,” you say, to change the subject.

“Fine. Done.” He tilts his head toward the stairs. “You should start getting ready. Reservation is at eight.”

You sit up and push your hair back. “What time is it.”

“Just after six.”

You look at him. “You let me sleep for two hours.”

“You needed it.”

“You could have woken me up.”

“I know,” he says simply, like that’s not the point.

You look at him for a second longer than you mean to. Then you push yourself up off the couch and fold the blanket back over the arm of it.

“Go on then,” he says. “Shower’s yours. Take your time.”

You pick up the little paper bag from where it’s been sitting by the door since yesterday morning, the tissue paper still neatly folded inside, the burgundy dress waiting, and head toward the stairs.

“Hey,” he says from the couch.

You turn.

He’s leaning back, completely relaxed, looking at you with that expression again. The quiet one.

“You do make a sound,” he says. “It’s a good one.”

You point at him. He raises both hands like he’s innocent.

You go upstairs smiling.

The shower is, as established, exceptional.

You take your time in it, partly because you’ve earned it and partly because the water pressure continues to be one of the best things about Los Angeles. You wash your hair properly this time, condition it, stand under the water for a few extra minutes just because you can.

When you get out you wrap your hair in one towel and your body in another and wipe the steam from the mirror and look at yourself. Pink cheeked. Hair wrapped up. Eyes bright in the way they get after a good sleep even an accidental one on someone’s very comfortable couch.

You crack the bathroom door open a few inches.

“Shower’s free,” you call down the hall.

Then you turn back to the mirror and start unpacking your makeup bag onto the counter, finding your routine in it, the familiar small order of things. Moisturizer first. Then primer. You lean close to the mirror and start working.

You hear him in the doorway before you see him.

You glance over your shoulder. He’s leaning against the frame with his arms loosely crossed, already dressed, a dark shirt, dark trousers, looking unfairly good for someone who has simply put clothes on, watching you with that patient unhurried attention he gives most things.

“I freed up the shower,” you say, turning back to the mirror.

“I know. I took one while you were sleeping.”

You look at him in the mirror’s reflection. “How long have you been standing there.”

“Not long.”

That is not a number.

You go back to what you’re doing, reaching for your foundation, and he stays where he is, not coming in, not leaving, just existing in the doorway in that comfortable way he has where he never seems to feel the need to justify taking up space.

You can see him watching you in the mirror.

“You can come in,” you say. “I don’t mind.”

He crosses the bathroom and leans against the counter a little way from you, close enough to talk, far enough to give you room, and watches you work with genuine quiet interest.

You dab foundation along your cheekbones and he tilts his head slightly.

“What’s that one,” he asks.

“Foundation.” You blend it out with your fingers. “It just evens everything out.”

He nods slowly like he’s filing that away.

You reach for your concealer next, tapping it under your eyes, and he watches the whole process with the focused attention of someone who finds it actually interesting rather than someone politely pretending to.

“And that.”

“Concealer. For under the eyes.” You glance at him. “You’re full of questions tonight.”

“I’m curious.”

You smile and reach for your blush, a warm rose, sweeping it over the apples of your cheeks, and he watches your hand move in the mirror.

“You’re pretty,” he says. Quietly. Just a fact he’s stating.

You feel the warmth move up the back of your neck.

“I’m half done,” you say.

“I know,” he says. “Still.”

You look at him in the mirror for a second, at the easy certainty of him leaning against the counter in his dark shirt, watching you do something as ordinary as putting on your makeup in his bathroom, looking at you like that.

You look back at your own reflection and reach for your eyeshadow and try to remember what you were doing.

“What’s that one,” he says.

“Eyeshadow.”

“What does it do.”

“Makes my eyes look bigger. More defined.” You tap the brush lightly and sweep it across your lid and he leans forward slightly to see better in the mirror and you laugh. “You’re very invested in this.”

“I’ve never watched someone do this before,” he says. “Not properly.”

You glance at him. “Really.”

“Really.”

You consider that for a second, then hand him the eyeshadow brush. He looks at it like you’ve handed him something delicate.

“It’s a brush,” you say.

“I know what it is.”

“You looked nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.” He hands it back carefully. “I just didn’t want to drop it.”

You laugh and turn back to the mirror and he settles back against the counter, arms crossed loosely, and goes back to watching you, and the bathroom is warm and comfortable and full of the kind of quiet that doesn’t need filling.

You’re midway through your mascara when it hits you.

You lower the wand and look at him in the mirror with narrowed eyes.

“Wait.”

He looks back at you, expression perfectly neutral.

“You know what all of this is,” you say.

He says nothing.

“Harry. You’ve had makeup done professionally. Countless times. You know exactly what foundation is.”

The corner of his mouth betrays him first. Then the smile breaks through, slow and helpless, and he drops his head slightly like he’s been caught, which he has.

“I just wanted you to explain it,” he says.

“You just wanted me to explain it,” you repeat.

“You’re very thorough.”

“You let me give you a whole tutorial on concealer.”

“It was a good tutorial.”

You point the mascara wand at him. “That is… something.”

He laughs properly now, that low genuine laugh, and you shake your head and turn back to the mirror trying to hold onto your indignation and failing completely.

“Unbelievable,” you say, but you’re smiling.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I was listening.”

“Oh I’m sure you were.”

You finish your mascara and step back and look at yourself in the mirror. Hair down now, dried and falling the way you wanted it to. Makeup done, warm and simple and right. You look like yourself, just a slightly more considered version.

You look at the burgundy dress hanging on the back of the door.

“Can you help me zip up?” you ask.

“Of course.”

You reach for the dress and then glance over your shoulder at him. He’s already turned around, facing the wall, hands clasped behind his back, a picture of patience.

You laugh. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I’m a gentleman,” he says, to the wall.

You slip out of your towel and into the dress, pulling it up, getting your arms through the straps, feeling the fabric settle against you. The fit is perfect, the kind of thing that only happens with vintage pieces that were made when people still cut cloth properly.

“Okay,” you say.

He turns around.

His eyes move over you once and something in his expression shifts, quiet and immediate.

He crosses the small distance between you without saying anything and you turn so your back is to him, gathering your hair over one shoulder, and you feel his fingers find the zip at the small of your back. He draws it up slowly, carefully, and you feel the dress close around you, fitting perfectly all the way up, his fingers grazing your back lightly as he finishes.

You turn back around.

He looks at you.

Really looks, the way he did on the piano bench, taking his time with it, and this time you let him because you feel, in this dress in this bathroom in the warm light, genuinely beautiful. Not in a trying way. Not in a hope this works way. Just actually, quietly, beautifully yourself.

“Well,” he says.

“Well,” you say back.

“The dress was a good idea.”

“It was your idea.”

“I know,” he says simply. Like that was always the point.

He tilts his head slightly, eyes moving over the dress one more time, and then he looks back at your face with that expression that is somehow both warm and completely unfair.

“Depending on how dinner goes,” he says, his voice dropping just slightly, “that dress is either ending up back on the hanger tonight or on my bedroom floor.”

The heat that moves up your face is immediate and total.

You open your mouth.

Nothing comes out.

He holds your gaze for exactly one second, perfectly composed, then turns and walks out of the bathroom like he didn’t just say that, like it was the most casual observation in the world.

You turn back to the mirror.

Your reflection is visibly, undeniably red.

You press both hands to your cheeks and stare at yourself.

He is so hot.

This is genuinely a problem.

You take one slow breath, pick up your perfume, apply it with the focused concentration of someone trying to remember how to be a normal person, and follow him out.

The restaurant is exactly what he described and nothing he described could have actually prepared you for it.

Small is the right word. Maybe ten tables, no more, each one lit by a single candle and spaced far enough apart that the room feels private without feeling empty. The walls are warm plaster, art hung without much system, the kind of place that has been the same for twenty years and has no intention of changing. A chalkboard near the bar lists the menu in handwriting that requires some interpretation.

The host greets Harry by name and leads you to a table near the window, a corner one, the best in the room, and you suspect it was always going to be yours.

You sit across from each other and the candle throws warm light between you and he looks, in the dark shirt with the restaurant soft around him, extremely good. You are aware of this in a way that is hard to think around.

The menus are single pages, handwritten, eight or nine options, everything sounding like something you’d choose.

He looks up from his menu. “Whatever you want,” he says, simply.

You smile. “Okay.”

The waiter comes and Harry orders with the ease of someone who has been here enough times to know what he’s doing. You order the pasta because the pasta sounds like the right decision, and a glass of something the waiter recommends when you ask, which turns out to be a very good recommendation.

The food comes and it is, simply, wonderful. The kind of cooking that doesn’t announce itself, just delivers, every bite tasting like someone made a series of very good decisions. You eat slowly, which is not something you always do, and he watches you try the first bite with that patient expression.

“Good?” he says.

“You have to stop asking me that.”

“I like the answer.”

“The answer is always yes.”

“That’s why I like it.”

You shake your head and take another bite and he looks quietly pleased with himself and the whole evening.

The conversation moves easily, drifting from one thing to the next without any particular end goal. He asks about a piece you mentioned earlier in the week and you tell him about it properly, the story behind the story, the part that doesn’t make it into the article, and he listens with his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be pointed.

Then he asks: “What do you think of LA so far.”

You consider it properly, looking out the window at the street, the warm night, the particular softness of the light here that New York never quite manages.

“It’s really amazing,” you say honestly. “It’s nothing like I expected. I thought it would feel more surface level somehow. But it doesn’t.” You look back at him. “It feels like a real place.”

“It is a real place.”

“I know that now.” You pick up your wine. “It’s your city. That probably helps.”

He looks at you for a moment.

“Wait until I take you to Manchester,” he says.

You look up from your glass. “Sorry?”

“Manchester.” He says it simply, like it’s already a plan. “I want to take you.”

You set your wine down. “You want to take me to Manchester.”

“Yeah.”

You look at him across the candle. At the complete absence of uncertainty in his face. Like this is just something he’s decided and is now telling you.

“I sometimes forget,” you say slowly, “that you don’t actually live here permanently.”

“I split my time.” He tilts his head. “Manchester. Here. Wherever the work is.” A pause. “But Manchester is home. Properly home.”

You think about that. About a whole other version of his life in a city you’ve never seen.

“What’s it like,” you ask. “Being home there.”

“Different. Quieter inside.” He picks up his glass. “Here I feel free. There I feel known.”

You sit with that for a second.

“Once you get to Manchester,” he says, “you’ll never want to leave.”

“That’s a big claim.”

“It’s an honest one.” He looks at you over his glass. “It does something to people. Especially people who pay attention the way you do.”

You look at him. “You think I’d like it.”

“I think you’d love it,” he says. “I think you’d find seventeen stories in the first week and not want to come home.”

You smile at that, at the specific accuracy of it, at the fact that he knows that about you, that he’s thought about it enough to picture you there.

“Okay,” you say.

He raises an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“Okay, take me to Manchester.”

Something in his face settles into something warm.

“Good,” he says.

He holds your gaze when he says it and the candle is warm between you and outside the LA night is doing its soft gentle thing and you think about Manchester in a way you never have before, which is to say you think about it with him in it, and that makes it feel like somewhere entirely new.

You pick up your wine.

“You’re going to have to warn me about the weather,” you say.

He laughs. “It’s going to be a shock.”

“After this.” You nod toward the window. “Absolutely devastating.”

“I’ll buy you a coat,” he says.

“You bought me a dress yesterday.”

“And it worked out well for both of us.”

You feel the warmth move up your face immediately, thinking about what he said in the bathroom, about the hanger or the bedroom floor, and you look back down at your pasta and he says nothing but you can hear the smile in the silence.

The restaurant empties slowly around you, the way good dinners do, and neither of you is in a hurry to be the first to move. You finish your wine. He has a little left. The candle between you has burned down considerably since you sat down.

Eventually the waiter comes with the check and Harry takes it before you’ve fully registered it’s arrived, which you’ve stopped arguing about, and you pull your wrap around your shoulders and wait for him by the door while he says something brief to the host on the way out, warm and unhurried, the easy familiarity of someone who means it when he says thank you.

Outside the night is soft and warm, that particular LA evening temperature that sits right at the edge of perfect.

He falls into step beside you on the pavement and glances over. “There’s a place nearby. Rooftop. Good view of the city.” He tilts his head. “If you’re not tired.”

You look at him in the dark shirt in the warm night air. “I’m not tired.”

The rooftop is reached through a hotel lobby that you walk through with the confidence of people who belong there, which in his case is always and in yours is borrowed but effective. The elevator opens onto an open air terrace strung with lights, the city spread out below in every direction, all of it glittering and wide and going on forever.

You step out and stop.

“Oh,” you say quietly.

He watches your face.

The view is Los Angeles in the way postcards try to be and almost never manage. The hills in the distance with their lights scattered across them, the grid of streets below, the warm amber glow of everything stretching out to the horizon.

You find a small table near the railing, away from the other people scattered across the terrace, and sit with the city below you and the night above and the string lights warm overhead. A waiter appears and Harry orders two glasses of something without making a big decision about it and leans back in his chair and looks out at the view.

“You’ve been here before,” you say.

“A few times.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It is.” He glances at you. “Better with company.”

You look back out at the city and let that sit where it lands.

The drinks come. You wrap both hands around yours and feel the dinner still warm in your chest, that good full feeling of a night that has been exactly what it needed to be.

You stay like that for a while. Easy and quiet. The city hums below. Somewhere across the terrace someone laughs and then it goes soft again.

You’re not thinking about anything in particular when it comes out.

“I leave in two days.”

He doesn’t respond immediately. Just shifts his glass slightly on the table.

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

Not I know. Just yeah. Like he’s been sitting with it the same way you have.

Neither of you says anything else for a moment. It just sits there between you over the warm city air, the thing you’ve both been not quite looking at all evening.

Then you both start at the same time.

“So I’ve been—”

“I just wanted to—”

You both stop. You laugh a little. He does too, quietly, and the laugh does something to the tension, loosens it just enough.

“You go,” he says.

“No, you.”

He looks at his glass. Looks back at you. “I don’t really know how to say it without it sounding.” He pauses. “I don’t know. Bigger than it needs to.”

“Just say it.”

He nods slowly. Takes a breath. “I don’t want this to just be a thing that happened. That you came to LA and it was nice and then you go home.” He glances at you. “I don’t want that.”

“Me neither,” you say. Quietly. “I’ve been thinking about it and trying not to think about it at the same time.”

“Yeah.” He exhales. “Same.”

A beat.

“I don’t know what it looks like,” you say. “Like logistically. You’re here and in Manchester and everywhere and I’m in New York and I don’t.” You pause. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” he says. “I’m not going to pretend I do.”

“Okay.”

“But I know I want to figure it out.” He looks at you properly. “I’m in New York in three weeks. And I want to see you. And after that I don’t know what comes next but I want there to be a next.”

You look at him for a moment.

“Yeah,” you say.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You nod slowly. “I want that too. I just.” You laugh a little at yourself. “I don’t know. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me.”

“It’s not just you,” he says. Simply. Clearly.

“Okay.” You breathe out. “Okay good.”

He laughs softly at that and you laugh too and it breaks the last of the awkwardness, the good kind of laugh that comes after you’ve said the real thing and it didn’t go badly.

You both look back out at the city.

“It’s going to be complicated,” you say, after a minute.

“Probably.”

“Like genuinely complicated. Not in a fun way.”

“I know.” He turns his glass in his hand. “I still want to try.”

You look at him in the warm rooftop light, at the honesty of him, at the fact that he didn’t dress it up or make it sound easier than it is, just said I still want to try, which is maybe the most straightforward thing anyone has ever said to you.

“Me too,” you say.

He reaches over and takes your hand on the table, loose and easy, and you let him, and you both sit there with the city spread out below you and the weight of the conversation settling into something that feels less like a conclusion and more like a beginning.

“Manchester though,” you say after a while.

He looks at you.

“That’s a long way,” you say.

“I’ll warn you about the weather.”

“You said you’d buy me a coat.”

“I’ll do both.”

It’s slow, the way waking up is when you’re not alarmed by anything, just easing back into consciousness. He shifts slightly, his arm tightening around you for just a second, and then he presses a kiss to your temple, his lips warm and soft, still mostly asleep.

“Morning,” he mumbles into your hair. His voice is rough with sleep in a way that does something deeply unfair to you.

You smile before you can stop yourself. “Morning.”

He’s quiet for a moment, still not entirely there, his breathing slow and even against your hair.

Then, without lifting his head, “Did you sleep okay?”

“Really well actually.”

A small sound of satisfaction. Like that matters to him. Like he was wondering.

You lie there for another comfortable minute before you shift slightly and he takes that as a cue, lifting his head, blinking at you in the morning light with an expression that is completely unguarded in the way faces only are before people have had time to arrange themselves.

“Shower?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say. “But you go first.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t want to run the hot water out,” you say.

Something in his expression shifts like he might argue, then he considers it, and nods slowly. “Fair point.”

He rolls back the covers and gets up, unhurried, and you watch him run a hand through his hair and stretch before he moves toward the bathroom. Then he stops at the edge of the bed and looks back at you.

He leans down and presses another kiss to your temple, gentle, still slow with sleep.

Then he pulls back, pauses, and says quietly, “Not enough.”

And then he kisses you properly, warm and soft and unhurried, his hand resting against the side of your face, and you reach up without thinking and kiss him back.

He pulls back after a moment and looks at you.

“Okay,” he says quietly. Like that settles something for him. 

Then he disappears into the bathroom and you lie back against the pillow and stare at the ceiling with the kind of smile you can’t do anything about.

You stay exactly where you are after he disappears into the bathroom. His pillow. His duvet. The morning light coming through the curtain in long warm strips across the bed. You pull the covers up a little higher and just lie there, looking at the ceiling, listening to the shower start up.

Then you hear it.

Humming first, low and unhurried, barely audible over the sound of the water. Then words, just fragments, not performing anything, just a person singing to themselves in the shower the way everyone does when they think no one can hear. Except you can hear. You’re lying in his bed and you can hear him and it is doing something to your chest that you are completely unprepared for.

This is a normal thing, you think. People sing in the shower. This is not a significant event.

But it is, a little. It is, because it’s him, and because he doesn’t know you can hear, and because there is something about the private version of a person that gets you every time. The unperformed version. The one that hums over running water on a Saturday morning without thinking about it.

Your heart feels very full. 

You reach for your phone on the nightstand.

You: cami

You: CAMI

You: are you awake i need you to be awake

The three dots appear almost immediately.

Cami: I have been awake since 7am waiting for this text. talk.

You smile and sink deeper into the pillow.

You: okay so. I stayed. I didn’t get nervous and run away. 

Cami: I KNOW you stayed I could feel it spiritually. details. now.

You: we just slept cami. literally just slept.

Cami: and?

You: and his arm was around me the whole night apparently. and when he woke up he kissed my temple before he even said a word.

You stare at what you just typed and feel slightly insane.

Cami: I’m going to need a moment.

Cami: okay I’m back. continue.

You: he’s in the shower right now.

You: I can hear him singing.

You pause. Then type:

You: cami he’s just singing to himself over the water like it’s nothing and I am lying in his bed and I genuinely don’t know what to do with myself.

The dots appear and disappear a few times like she’s rewriting her response.

Cami: okay I need you to understand that you have to hold it together.

You: I AM holding it together. I’m texting you.

Cami: that’s the opposite of holding it together babe.

You laugh quietly into the duvet.

Cami: so what’s the plan for today

You: he mentioned a farmers market this morning. and maybe the beach after.

Cami: he’s taking you to a farmers market.

You: yes.

Cami: in LA.

You: yes.

Cami: that is the most romantic thing I have ever heard and I once watched a man propose on a rooftop in Venice.

You: it’s not romantic it’s just breakfast.

Cami: it’s absolutely romantic and you know it. you’re smiling right now aren’t you.

You say nothing. Which is its own answer.

Cami: I knew it. okay listen. have the best day. eat something good. let him be nice to you. and for the love of god text me everything tonight.

You: obviously.

Cami: also just so you know. I told you so.

You: I know.

Cami: I just wanted to say it out loud.

You: noted. goodbye cami.

Cami: 🫶🏼

You lock your phone and set it back on the nightstand and lie there for a moment, listening. He’s still singing, something slow, and you close your eyes and let yourself just exist in it for a second. The warmth of the bed and the sound of him through the wall.

Don’t make it a thing, you tell yourself.

But it already is, a little.

The shower cuts off and you set your phone face down on the nightstand and try to look like a person who has simply been lying here calmly, doing nothing, thinking about nothing in particular.

The bathroom door opens.

He comes out with a towel around his waist and another in his hands that he’s using to dry his hair, rubbing it back and forth absentmindedly, completely unbothered, like he hasn’t just walked out looking like that.

You look at him.

You can’t not.

The tattoos first, because there are a lot of them and they catch the light in a way that makes it hard to look anywhere else. Your eyes trace them without permission, the ones on his arms, his chest, the butterfly, the laurels, all of it familiar from photos but entirely different in person, in his bedroom, in the morning. Then the line of his stomach, the soft definition there, and that little trail of hair that disappears beneath the towel and you snap your eyes back up to his face immediately.

He is so pretty, you think. This is genuinely unfair.

He drops the towel from his hair and runs a hand through it, pushing it back, and glances toward the bathroom door.

“It’s all yours,” he says. “Left a clean towel out for you.”

You nod.

You get up from the bed and cross the room toward the bathroom, pulling his hoodie down over your shorts, feeling his gaze without quite meeting it. You’re almost at the door, fingertips just reaching the frame, when he speaks.

“Don’t act like I don’t know you were staring.”

You stop.

The heat that moves up the back of your neck is immediate and complete. You turn around and open your mouth and absolutely nothing comes out. Not a single word. Not a defense, not a deflection, not even a convincing noise. Just your mouth opening and closing while your face does something you have no control over whatsoever.

He looks at you with this expression, not a full smile, just the corners of his mouth pulled up, one eyebrow slightly raised, the face of someone who has made their point and is very comfortable letting it land.

He doesn’t say another word.

He doesn’t need to.

You turn back around and walk into the bathroom and close the door behind you and stand there for a moment staring at your own reflection, pink cheeked and completely unable to do anything about it.

Outside you hear him laugh quietly to himself.

You take your time in the shower, partly because the water pressure is still exceptional and partly because you need a few minutes to collect yourself after whatever just happened in that bedroom doorway.

You wash your hair with his shampoo again. You are not sorry about it.

When you come out he’s already dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed scrolling through his phone, wearing a simple white t-shirt and light wash jeans and looking completely effortless in that way that should be illegal before coffee. He glances up when you appear in the doorway with your towel, your hair damp, your bag of clothes in your hand.

You packed for a trip to LA. Not for a sleepover.

You look down at the options you’re holding. A going out top. Another going out top. A third going out top because Camille packed your bag with her and she had opinions.

“I don’t really have anything casual,” you say, mostly to yourself.

He gets up without a word and disappears into his wardrobe for a moment, coming back with a faded grey crewneck and setting it on the bed in front of you.

“That works,” he says simply, and goes back to his phone.

You look at the crewneck. Then at him. Then back at the crewneck.

It absolutely works.

You get dressed quickly, his crewneck over your going out shorts, which is not a perfect outfit but is somehow exactly right, and you pull your damp hair up and look at yourself in the mirror above his dresser.

“Ready?” he says from behind you.

You meet his eyes in the mirror. “Ready.”

The farmers market is ten minutes from his house, tucked into a wide open lot lined with white tents and wooden stalls, already busy even at this hour. The morning is warm and bright, that specific LA warmth that sits on your skin like something gentle rather than the aggressive heat you were expecting, and everything smells like fruit and fresh bread and something floral you can’t quite place.

He parks the Range Rover and comes around to your side and you fall into step beside each other without discussing it, close enough that your arms brush as you walk through the entrance.

Nobody looks twice at him, which surprises you, until you realize this is probably exactly why he comes here. A hat pulled low. Sunglasses. A neighborhood full of people who have learned not to stare.

“Coffee first,” he says, steering you gently left with a hand at your back.

“Obviously coffee first.”

The coffee stall has a line but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. You stand together in the easy quiet of two people who have run out of the need to fill silence, watching the market move around you. A woman arranging bunches of lavender. A kid eating a strawberry twice the size of his fist. An old man playing guitar near the entrance, soft and unhurried.

“I like it here,” you say, without really meaning to say it out loud.

He looks at you. “Yeah?”

“It’s very calm.”

“That’s why I come.” He looks back at the market. “Reminds me that most things are actually fine.”

You look at him for a second, at the easy way he said it, and place it away somewhere quiet in your mind.

The line moves. You get your coffees. He pays before you can argue and hands yours over and you wrap both hands around it and take the first sip and it is, predictably, exceptional.

“Good?” he asks.

“Really good.”

He nods like he knew.

You walk deeper into the market together, moving slowly, stopping when something catches your eye. He buys peaches from a stall run by a woman who clearly knows him, who asks how he’s been without making anything of who he is, and he answers her properly, not in the clipped polite way of someone trying to move on but like he actually wants to answer. You stand slightly back and watch him and think about what he said in the kitchen, weeks ago over text, about people who’ve known him long enough that he doesn’t have to explain anything.

You think you understand it better now, standing here.

He comes back with a small paper bag and holds it open toward you. “Try one.”

You take a peach and bite into it and it is so good, so immediately and completely good, that you make a sound before you can stop yourself.

He laughs.

“Stop,” you say.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You laughed.”

“Because you made a noise.”

“It’s a very good peach.”

“I know,” he says, satisfied, and steers you gently toward the next stall.

You drift through the market slowly, stopping at a honey stall where he spends three full minutes reading labels with the same focus he probably gives everything, and a bread stand where the samples are good enough that you circle back twice. He notices the second time and says nothing, just hands you another piece, which you appreciate.

Then you see the vintage booth.

It’s tucked between a plant stall and a candle vendor, a little crowded and slightly chaotic, fabric draped over wooden racks in no particular order, a handwritten chalkboard sign that says worn with love leaning against the front table. You slow down without meaning to.

“Give me a second,” you say.

“Take your time.”

You start flipping through the rack nearest to you, the familiar meditative pleasure of it, the rustle of fabric, the small thrill of not knowing what you’ll find. There are blouses and wide leg trousers and a leather jacket that you hold up and consider seriously before putting back. He wanders in behind you, hands in his pockets, looking around with mild curiosity.

You’re working your way through a second rack when you hear him say, “Hey.”

You look up.

He’s holding a dress.

It’s simple but it’s beautiful. A deep, warm burgundy, midi length, with a low back and thin straps and the kind of drape that means it was made well. The kind of dress that looks effortless and isn’t.

He’s looking at it, then at you, then back at it, with the quiet certainty of someone who has made a decision.

“This one,” he says.

You cross over and take it from him, holding it up properly. It’s even better up close. The fabric is soft and the color is deep and you can already tell it would fit like it was meant to.

“It’s really pretty,” you admit.

“It’s very pretty,” he says. “I’m getting it for you.”

You look at him. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“I don’t even have anywhere to wear something like this. I don’t have any events that warrant a dress that cute.”

He looks at you for a moment with that expression he gets sometimes, the one that’s considering something before he says it.

“Dinner tomorrow night,” he says simply. “Come to dinner with me. I’ll take you somewhere good.”

You blink. “Yeah?”

“Another favorite spot.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “You trusted me on the sushi.”

“That’s true.”

“So trust me on this.”

You look at the dress in your hands. Then at him. The morning light is warm on his face and he’s looking at you like it’s already decided, like he just needed to say it out loud, and something in your chest does that slow complicated turn it keeps doing around him.

“Okay,” you say.

“Okay.” He takes the dress from you gently and turns toward the woman running the stall before you can say anything else.

You watch him pay without making a production of it, the way he does everything, and the woman wraps the dress carefully in tissue paper and hands it back in a small paper bag and he takes it and holds it out to you and you loop it over your wrist and fall back into step beside him as you drift back out into the market.

“You didn’t even ask the price,” you say.

“Didn’t need to.”

“That is a very easy thing to say.”

He glances over at you, something warm in it. “Are you arguing with a free dress?”

You press your lips together. “No.”

“Good.”

You walk a little further and you can feel the shape of tomorrow already sitting there between you, easy and unhurried, another night in his city, another table in another room where it’s just the two of you.

You look down at the little paper bag swinging from your wrist and smile.

You spend another hour winding through the market, finishing your coffees, stopping at a stall selling handmade ceramics that you spend too long at and he waits patiently without once checking his phone. You buy a small bowl, cream colored with an uneven rim, the kind of thing that looks like it was made by someone’s hands and not a machine. He watches you wrap it carefully in your tote bag and doesn’t say anything but looks quietly pleased that you found something.

The morning does that thing where it stretches without you meaning to let it. One more stall. One more sample. One more slow loop back through a section you already covered because the light is nice and neither of you is in a hurry.

A couple of people stop him along the way.

The first is a man about his age, broad shouldered, who spots him near the juice stall and breaks into a wide grin and says his name like it’s a good thing. Harry stops immediately, no hesitation, no visible flicker of inconvenience, and they talk for a few minutes while you drift slightly to the side and study a display of dried flower wreaths with great dedication. You’re not trying to disappear. You just don’t want to hover. When you glance back over Harry is laughing at something, easy and genuine, and then he catches your eye and tilts his head slightly, pulling you back in.

“This is a friend,” he says, which is not an introduction exactly but feels like an offering, and the man nods at you warmly and doesn’t ask questions and you like him immediately for that.

The second time is a woman with a small child on her hip who recognizes him near the exit and stops with the particular look of someone trying to decide if they’re being polite or intrusive. Harry makes the decision easy. He smiles and stops and crouches slightly to say something to the kid, who stares at him with the profound seriousness of a toddler encountering a stranger, and the woman laughs and thanks him and moves on.

You watch him stand back up and brush off his jeans and he catches you looking.

“What,” he says.

“Nothing,” you say. “You’re good with people.”

He considers that. “I just try to be a person.”

You think about that the rest of the way to the car.

By the time you climb back into the Range Rover your feet are warm from the pavement and your eyes are doing that heavy pleasant thing that comes from fresh air and a morning spent moving slowly. You set your tote bag between your feet and lean back against the headrest and exhale.

He gets in beside you and starts the engine and lets it idle for a second.

“Beach?” he says.

You consider the beach. The sand and the effort of it and the walking and the sun.

“What about your couch,” you say. “Your very large and comfortable looking couch. And a movie.”

He turns to look at you.

Then he laughs, low and genuine, and puts the car in reverse.

“Sounds like a plan.”

You settle back into your seat, satisfied. The market disappears behind you as he pulls out onto the street and the city opens up again, wide and warm and golden in the late morning light.

He drives the way he does everything, easy and unhurried, one hand on the wheel. A few minutes pass in comfortable quiet and then he speaks, his voice taking on that looser quality it gets when he’s not saying anything in particular, just talking.

“We used to go to this market near my mum’s house,” he says. “Every Saturday. She had this whole system. Specific stalls in a specific order, same route every time, and if you deviated from it she’d look at you like you’d suggested something genuinely offensive.”

You smile without turning your head. “Did you ever deviate?”

“Once. I was maybe eight. Wanted to stop at the sweet stall first instead of last.” He shakes his head. “Never again.”

You laugh. “She sounds terrifying.”

“She’s five foot three,” he says. “And the least terrifying person alive. That’s what makes it worse somehow.”

You turn to look at him then, at the soft smile on his face, the way he looks when he talks about home. Unguarded in a specific way that’s different from any other version of unguarded you’ve seen from him.

His hand moves from the gearshift and settles on your knee, easy, like it belongs there, warm through the fabric of your shorts.

He keeps talking, something about his sister getting banned from the sweet stall for reasons he won’t fully explain, and you let the words wash over you, watching the city drift past the window, his hand warm on your knee and the little paper bag with the burgundy dress at your feet, and you think about tomorrow night and the way he said it, like it was already decided, like of course, there was never any question.

You close your eyes for just a second and let yourself have it.

All of it.

He pulls into the driveway and cuts the engine and neither of you moves immediately, the comfortable inertia of a morning well spent settling over the car. The street is quiet. The house sits warm and unhurried in the midday light.

Inside he drops his keys on the table by the door and disappears into the kitchen while you kick off your shoes and drift into the living room, sinking into the couch with the particular relief of someone whose feet have earned it. You hear the fridge open. The soft knock of cupboard doors. The quiet domestic sounds of someone who knows where everything is.

He appears a few minutes later with a bowl of cut fruit, some crackers and cheese, two glasses of water, all of it arranged without fuss on the coffee table like this is just something he does. You tuck your legs up and reach for a cracker and he drops down beside you, close, his arm finding the back of the couch behind you.

“You pick,” he says, nodding at the television.

“That’s a lot of trust.”

“I’ll survive.”

You find something easy, a film neither of you has seen, the kind that’s good enough to have on without demanding too much attention. He reaches over and dims the lights with a remote you didn’t notice, and the room goes warm and low and the city outside goes quiet.

You eat slowly. The fruit is cold and sweet. The cheese is good. There’s a comfortable looseness to it, the two of you passing things back and forth without asking, commenting on the film occasionally, laughing at the same moments without looking at each other to check.

At some point the food is mostly gone and you stop reaching for it and just settle back into the couch properly. He shifts at the same time, his arm coming down from the back of the couch to rest around your shoulders, and you lean into it without overthinking it, your head finding that space between his shoulder and his chest like it already knows the way.

On screen someone says something dramatic. Neither of you reacts.

His thumb moves slowly back and forth against your shoulder. Absent and warm, the way people touch when they’re not thinking about it, when it’s just instinct. You focus on the film. You try to follow the plot. You are only partially successful because his thumb keeps moving and the room is very warm and he smells like his shower and you are very aware of all of it in a way you’re trying to be subtle about.

Twenty minutes pass like that. Easy and soft. His hand eventually migrates from your shoulder to your hair, fingers moving through it slowly from the nape of your neck upward, and you feel your eyes go heavy in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with sleep.

You shift slightly without meaning to, turning just a fraction toward him, and his hand stills for just a second before it keeps moving, slower now, more deliberate.

Something in the room changes.

Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just a degree or two, the temperature of it, the quality of the quiet between you.

His fingers trace down from your hair to the side of your neck, featherlight, and you feel it everywhere. You keep your eyes on the screen. Your heart is doing something completely unreasonable.

“You’re not watching the movie,” he says.

His voice is low. Closer than you were expecting.

“Neither are you,” you say.

A beat.

“No,” he agrees. “I’m not.”

You turn your head to look at him and find him already looking at you, which you knew, which is exactly why you took so long to turn. His eyes move over your face in that unhurried way he has, taking his time with it, and the look lingers a beat past casual, a beat past friendly, a beat past anything that can be reasonably filed under just comfortable on the couch.

You don’t look away.

Neither does he.

His hand is still resting at the side of your neck, his thumb tracing a slow line along your jaw, barely there, and your breath has gone slightly uneven in a way you hope isn’t obvious and strongly suspect is.

“Hi,” he says softly.

“Hi,” you whisper.

You look at him for a second, at the quiet certainty of him, at the way he’s looking at you like there’s nowhere else he’s considering looking, and something in your chest just gives.

You close the small distance between you and kiss him.

It starts soft. Just a press of lips, warm and simple. His hand curves around your jaw and he kisses you back slowly, unhurried, taking his time with it the way he takes his time with everything. Your hand finds the front of his shirt and you feel him exhale against your mouth, slow and steady.

He pulls back just slightly. Not far. Just enough to look at you.

Then he kisses you again and this one has more behind it, intention building quietly underneath the softness of it, his hand sliding from your jaw to your waist, pulling you closer. You go, easy, shifting toward him on the couch, and the film keeps playing on the television and neither of you hears a single word of it.

His hand is warm through the fabric of the crewneck, moving slowly, and he kisses along your jaw and down the side of your neck and you tip your head back and stare at the ceiling for a second and think, distantly, that you are absolutely done for.

He finds his way back to your mouth. The kiss deepens, unhurried but unmistakable now, and his hands slide to your waist and he draws you closer still and you pull back just enough to look at him, both of you breathing slightly uneven, the afternoon light warm and low across the room.

He looks at you steadily. Patient. Waiting.

“Hi,” you say this time.

Something in his face softens. Then he lifts you gently onto his lap so you’re facing him, his hands settled warm on your waist, and you look down at him in the quiet of the afternoon and he reaches up and pushes your hair back from your face with both hands, just holding it there, looking at you like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it.

“You sure?” he says quietly.

“I’m sure,” you tell him.

That’s all he needs.

He leans up and kisses you again, deeper this time, his hands sliding slowly under the hem of the crewneck and warm against your skin, and you reach down and pull it off over your head yourself because you have run completely out of patience and the afternoon light is soft and warm and the couch is very comfortable and he is looking at you like that.

He exhales slowly, looking at you, and something in his expression goes very quiet and very serious and very warm all at once.

Then his hands move. 

He is still looking at you like you are something he cannot quite believe he gets to see up close, his hands warm and steady where they rest on your waist, thumbs brushing slow circles against your bare skin now that the crewneck is gone.

You lean down and kiss him again, deeper this time, your fingers threading into his hair. 

He makes a low sound against your mouth, half sigh, half encouragement, and his hands slide up your back, tracing the line of your spine with reverent care. When his fingers reach the clasp of your bra, he pauses, checking in with a look. You nod, barely pulling back enough to breathe the word.

“Yes.”

He undoes it with gentle fingers, letting the straps slip down your arms. You shrug it off and toss it aside, and his gaze follows the movement before returning to your face, then lower, drinking you in like he is memorizing every detail. His hands follow, warm palms cupping you, thumbs brushing over sensitive skin until your breath catches. You arch into his touch, and he leans up to kiss the hollow of your throat, then lower, slow and unhurried, like there is nothing else in the world he would rather be doing.

Your hands move to the hem of his t-shirt, tugging it upward. He helps you pull it over his head, his hair falling messily afterward, and then it is your turn to look, really look, at the ink across his chest, the way his muscles shift under your palms as you run your hands down his torso. He is warm, solid, real in a way that makes your heart stutter. You lean in and press a kiss to the butterfly tattoo, then another just below it, and he exhales sharply, one hand coming up to cradle the back of your head.

He shifts beneath you, guiding you both so you are lying back against the cushions, him hovering over you with careful balance. His fingers hook into the waistband of your shorts, eyes meeting yours again in silent question. You lift your hips in answer, and he slides them down your legs along with your underwear, his touch lingering on your thighs, the backs of your knees, like he wants to touch every inch of you he can reach.

You reach for his jeans next, undoing the button and zipper with fingers that are not quite steady. He helps you push them down, kicking them off the end of the couch along with his boxers, and then there is nothing between you at all, just skin and warmth and the quiet hitch of breath in the sunlit room.

He settles between your legs, the weight of him grounding and perfect, and kisses you like he is pouring everything into it: the slow drag of his mouth, the way his hand traces down your side, over your hip, then between you. His fingers find you already slick and wanting, stroking with patient, knowing touches that have you gasping into his mouth, hips rolling up to meet him. He murmurs your name against your lips, soft, almost reverent, and you feel it everywhere.

When you reach down to wrap your hand around him, he groans quietly, forehead resting against yours. You stroke him slowly, matching the rhythm of his fingers, learning the way he likes to be touched by the way his breath stutters and his grip tightens on your hip. The tension builds between you like a slow wave, warm and inevitable.

“Please,” you whisper, and that is all it takes.

He shifts, positioning himself at your entrance, and pushes in slowly, inch by careful inch, until he is fully seated inside you. The stretch is perfect, the fullness of him making you both still for a moment, breathing each other in. His eyes stay on yours the whole time, dark and soft and full of something that feels bigger than this afternoon, bigger than the couch, bigger than words.

He starts to move, deep and unhurried rolls of his hips that press you deeper into the cushions. You wrap your legs around him, heels digging into the small of his back, and meet him thrust for thrust. Every movement draws quiet sounds from both of you, his low murmurs of your name, your soft gasps against his shoulder. His hand slides between you again, fingers circling where you need it most, and the pleasure builds in waves, steady and overwhelming.

You come first, clenching around him with a broken moan, your fingers digging into his back as the feeling crashes through you, warm and bright and all-consuming. He follows moments later, burying his face in your neck as he spills inside you, hips stuttering with the force of it.

For a long while afterward, neither of you moves. He stays buried in you, both of you catching your breath, his weight a comforting blanket. He presses soft kisses along your collarbone, your jaw, your temple, whispering something too quiet for you to fully catch but that feels like praise, like wonder.

Eventually he shifts, slipping out of you gently and pulling you close against his chest. The movie is still playing in the background, forgotten long ago. His fingers trace lazy patterns on your bare back, and you press your face into the warm skin of his shoulder, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

You stay like that for a long time.

His fingers keep moving on your back, slow and absent, and your cheek is pressed against his chest and you can hear his heartbeat, steady and even, gradually returning to its normal pace. The movie on the television has moved on to something else entirely. Neither of you acknowledges it.

The afternoon light has shifted, coming through the windows at a different angle now, warmer and lower, the kind of light that means time has passed without you noticing.

You trace a lazy line along one of his tattoos with your fingertip, following the shape of it without thinking about it, and he watches your hand move with half closed eyes.

You lift your head and look at him. His hair is thoroughly messed, pushed in every direction, and he looks completely unbothered by this, which tracks. There’s a softness to his face in the aftermath of everything that makes him look younger somehow. More like a person and less like anything else.

“What time is it,” you ask.

He glances past you toward the window. “Late afternoon. Maybe four.”

You drop your head back down onto his chest. “We’ve been on this couch for a while.”

“We have.”

“The movie is definitely over.”

“Most definitely.”

Neither of you moves.

His hand finds your hair again, fingers moving through it gently, and you close your eyes and let yourself exist in the warmth of him for another minute. The house is very quiet. Outside a car passes and then the street goes still again.

“Are you hungry?” he asks eventually.

You consider it. “A little.”

“I can make something.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know,” he says. “I want to.”

You lift your head again and look at him properly, at the easy certainty of that, at the way he says things like that so simply, like wanting to take care of you is just a fact he’s stating rather than something that requires fanfare.

“Okay,” you say.

He presses a kiss to your forehead before he shifts, reaching for his t-shirt from somewhere in the cushions, handing you the crewneck without being asked. You pull it back on and he stands and stretches and runs a hand through his hair like that’s going to do anything useful, and you tuck your legs up and watch him disappear toward the kitchen.

You hear the fridge open. The low sound of him moving around in there, unhurried, at home in the most literal sense.

You look at the ceiling.

You think about the farmers market this morning and the dress in the paper bag by the door and the way he said dinner tomorrow night like it was already obvious. You think about his hand on your knee in the car and his voice telling a story about his mum and a sweet stall and the way he laughed about it.

You think about all of it and the word that keeps surfacing, quietly and persistently, is easy.

This is easy.

Not simple, exactly. Not uncomplicated in the larger sense. But easy in the moment, in the day, in the specific texture of being around him, which is not something you were expecting and is maybe the thing that gets you the most.

Your phone buzzes on the coffee table.

You already know who it is.

Cami: it has been seven hours since your last update. I am filing a missing persons report.

You: I’m alive.

Cami: and??

You: and we went to the farmers market and he bought me a dress and we came home and watched a movie.

Cami: a movie.

You: a movie.

Cami: that’s all you’re giving me.

You: that’s all you’re getting.

Cami: I hate you so much.

Cami: wait he BOUGHT you a dress??

You: a really pretty one. burgundy. we’re going to dinner tomorrow night.

The dots appear and disappear three times.

Cami: I need you to understand that I am sitting alone in my apartment eating leftover pad thai and you are living my roman empire.

You: I’m sorry.

Cami: no you’re not.

You smile at your phone.

You: not even a little bit.

Cami: good. you shouldn’t be. I’m so happy for you babe. genuinely.

Cami: also the dress sounds stunning. send a photo tomorrow before dinner.

You: obviously.

Cami: 🫶🏼 now go enjoy your evening and stop texting me.

You lock your phone and set it face down on the coffee table just as Harry comes back from the kitchen, a dish towel over his shoulder, leaning against the doorframe.

“Pasta okay?”

You look at him. Messed hair. Bare feet. Dish towel. The afternoon light coming through the window behind him.

“Pasta is perfect,” you say.

He disappears back into the kitchen and you hear the sound of water running and something going on the stove and you pull the crewneck down over your knees and sink deeper into the couch.

Outside the light is going golden.

Tomorrow there is a burgundy dress and a dinner and a whole other night in his city.

You make a face before you can stop yourself. “I’ve actually never had sushi.”

The look on his face is immediate and theatrical. He sets your bag down at the foot of the stairs and turns to face you fully, hand pressed flat to his chest.

“Never.”

“Never.”

“Not once.”

“That’s generally what never means, yes.”

He shakes his head slowly, like you’ve said something genuinely devastating. “I flew you out here and you’ve never had sushi.”

“Those two things aren’t related.”

“They’re very related.” He picks your bag back up, starts up the stairs. “We’re going. Get your jacket.”

They’re a few minutes into the drive when he reaches over and changes the song without looking at the road, completely comfortable in the way people only are in their own city, and you watch him for a second from the passenger seat and think about how different he is here.

Not different like a stranger. Different like a fuller version. In New York he was present and easy but there was something slightly careful about it, like a person aware they are somewhere that isn’t theirs. Here he has both hands loose on the wheel of the Range Rover and the window cracked an inch and he knows exactly where he’s going without thinking about it.

“You’re going to love it,” he says.

“You don’t know that.”

“Just trust me.”

You look out the window at the city moving past, the wide streets and the palm trees and the particular golden quality of the light here even as it fades. It doesn’t look real. It looks like a backdrop.

He parks on a quiet side street and comes around to your side before you’ve fully gotten the door open. Not in a performative way. Just in the way of someone who was raised right and doesn’t make a production of it.

The restaurant is small and warm inside, the kind of place with no sign out front and maybe twelve tables. There’s a sushi bar along one wall and the whole room smells like something good. A host leads you to a table near the window and Harry puts his hand briefly at the small of your back as you follow and the warmth of it moves all the way up your spine.

He pulls your chair out. You sit. The menus are already on the table but he doesn’t open his.

“Do you know what you want?” you ask, opening yours.

“Always get the same thing.” He leans back in his chair, relaxed. “But we should get a few things for you to try. Start simple.”

You look down at the menu. It’s not as overwhelming as you expected but you also have no real frame of reference for any of it. You know the words. Salmon. Tuna. Yellowtail. You just don’t know what they mean yet in practice.

“Just order for me,” you say, closing it.

He looks at you for a second like he wasn’t expecting that. Then something in his face settles and he takes the menu from you and sets it on top of his.

“Okay.”

The waiter comes and Harry orders without hesitating, a handful of things you don’t catch all of, and then asks you if you’re allergic to anything and when you say no he adds one more thing to the order.

When the waiter leaves you lean your elbows on the table and look at him.

“So how did you find this place.”

“Friend brought me.” He picks up his water. “First month I lived here. I didn’t know anyone yet really and he took me around the city for a whole day, just eating. This was the last stop.” He sets the glass down. “Been coming back ever since.”

“That’s a nice memory.”

“It is,” he agrees, simply, without dressing it up.

The food starts arriving in small plates and he watches your face as you try the first piece, which you appreciate and also find slightly nerve wracking.

It’s good. Really good. Nothing like you expected, which you’re realizing is the theme of this entire trip.

“Well?” he says.

You reach for another piece instead of answering and he smiles and looks away.

The first piece sits on your tongue for a moment and you’re not entirely sure what to do with the information. It’s good. You think it’s good. But it’s also so different from anything you’ve eaten before that your brain is still catching up to your mouth, still trying to file it under something familiar and coming up empty. The texture is softer than you expected. The rice is warmer. There’s a clean, faint saltiness to it that you didn’t anticipate and underneath that something else you can’t name.

You chew slowly. Swallow. Sit with it.

Harry is watching you from across the table with the particular patience of someone who already knows the answer and is just waiting for you to get there yourself. He has his chopsticks resting loosely between his fingers and his elbow on the table and he looks completely at ease, the way he always does, the way that used to read as confidence and now reads as something quieter than that. Just comfort. Just a person who is okay wherever he is.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly.

“That’s fair.”

“It’s not bad. I just don’t know if I — “ you pause, searching for it. “I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

He nods like that makes complete sense, which it does, and reaches for one of the other plates without making a big thing of it. This one has something different on top, a small curl of something pink and soft, and he picks it up with his chopsticks and holds it out across the table toward you.

“Try this one,” he says.

You look at it, then at him. “What is it?”

“Crab.” He tilts it slightly so you can see. “Just try it.”

There’s something about the way he’s holding it, steady and patient, waiting for you to lean in, that makes your stomach do something that has nothing to do with the food. You hold his gaze for just a second and then you lean forward and take it from his chopsticks, your lips just barely brushing the ends of them, and you sit back and let yourself taste it properly.

It’s different. Immediately, noticeably different. Sweeter, somehow, and lighter, and there’s a richness to it that the first piece didn’t have, something that spreads warm across your tongue and makes you understand, maybe for the first time, why people love this. Why he’s been coming to this specific restaurant in this specific city for years just to sit at this table and eat this exact thing.

You look up and find him still watching you.

“That one,” you say.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Yeah?”

“That one is really good.”

He reaches for his own chopsticks properly now, settling into the meal, and something about the moment closes gently around the two of you, the warm light and the quiet room and the small plates arriving one by one and Harry explaining each one without making you feel like you should already know. He doesn’t perform the knowledge. He just shares it, the same way he shares everything, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be sitting across from you in his favourite restaurant in his city feeding you things off his chopsticks on a Tuesday night in Los Angeles.

You think about how four months ago you were sitting on your couch eating leftover pasta and watching Camille set up a dating profile for you on an app you’d never heard of, rolling your eyes at the whole thing, certain nothing would come of it.

You pick up another piece of crab and decide not to think about it too hard.

By the third plate you’ve stopped pretending to be undecided. You like it. You actually like it, not in the polite way you were prepared to deploy if necessary, the that’s really interesting, thank you for bringing me here way, but genuinely, actually like it. The kind of like that makes you reach for another piece before you’ve finished thinking about the last one.

“Okay,” you say, setting your chopsticks down with a small finality. “I like it.”

Harry looks up from his own plate. “Yeah?”

“I like it,” you say again, more certain this time. “I wasn’t going to just say it until I was sure but I’m sure.”

He looks quietly pleased in that way he has where it doesn’t spill over into anything excessive. Just a warmth that settles into his eyes and stays there. He doesn’t say I told you so, which you appreciate, and instead reaches for one of the last remaining plates and turns it slightly toward you.

“Try this one before you commit fully.”

You look at it. “What is this one?”

“Shrimp tempura roll.” He nudges the plate a fraction closer. “It’s different again.”

You pick it up with your chopsticks, which you’ve been using with varying degrees of success all evening and have made your peace with, and try it. It hits completely differently from everything else. Warm and a little crispy on the outside and soft in the middle and there’s a sweetness to the shrimp that makes you close your eyes for just a second without meaning to.

When you open them Harry is watching you with a small smile.

“That one,” you say, “is exceptional.”

“That one’s my favourite too.”

You sit back in your chair and look at the table, at all the small empty plates and the little dishes of soy sauce and the scattered remains of a meal you genuinely didn’t expect to enjoy this much, and you feel something warm and uncomplicated move through you. Pride, maybe. The quiet satisfaction of having said yes to something unfamiliar and been rewarded for it. You’ve been trying more of that lately. Saying yes when your instinct is to pull back. Flying to Los Angeles when your instinct is to stay home.

It’s been working out.

“I’m proud of myself,” you say, and mean it.

Harry laughs softly at that, not unkindly, just genuinely. “You should be.”

“I was very prepared to be polite about it.”

“I know,” he says. “I could tell.” He picks up his water glass. “I’m glad I brought you here.”

The way he says it is quiet and simple and it means more than the words themselves. Not just glad about the restaurant. Glad about the night. Glad you’re here, in his city, at his table, eating food off his chopsticks on a Tuesday evening like it’s something you’ve always done.

You look at him for a moment and then look away before you say something you’re not ready to say yet.

The waiter comes to clear the last of the plates and Harry asks if you want anything else. You’re about to say no when you spot the small chalkboard near the bar listing drinks and your eye catches boba tea and you point to it almost involuntarily.

“Can we get those for the road?”

Harry glances over his shoulder at the board and then back at you. “Obviously.”

He orders two without asking what flavor you want and when they arrive he slides one across the table toward you and it’s taro and it’s perfect and you don’t ask how he knew.

He pays without discussion, the card already out before the bill arrives, and you’ve stopped making a thing of it because you’ve learned it doesn’t go anywhere. He holds the door open on the way out and you step into the warm Los Angeles night with your drink in hand and the city spread quietly around you. He falls into step beside you back toward the car, close enough that your shoulders almost touch, and neither of you closes the distance or moves away from it.

He opens your door and you climb in and wrap both hands around your cup and watch him come around the front of the Range Rover and settle in beside you. When he starts the engine the same playlist from earlier picks up where it left off and he pulls back out onto the street and neither of you says anything and it’s the most comfortable silence you’ve been in a long time.

You’re maybe four minutes from his house when it comes on.

The opening is unmistakable, that low rolling guitar, and your whole body reacts before your brain catches up. You sit up slightly in your seat and turn toward the window and start singing under your breath without deciding to, the words just there the way they always are with songs you’ve loved long enough that they live somewhere below conscious thought.

You don’t even realize how loud you’ve gotten until Harry joins in.

His voice comes in low beside you, easy and unhurried, and you turn to look at him and he’s watching the road but he’s smiling and he knows every single word. Of course he does. You don’t know why you’re surprised. You look back out the windshield and something opens up in your chest and you stop holding back and just sing it properly, the two of you filling up the inside of the Range Rover with Fleetwood Mac on a warm Los Angeles night, boba tea in your hand and the city lights moving past the windows.

By the time it gets to the chain part you’re both fully committed. His voice is good, which is not surprising but is still somehow delightful to discover in this specific context, sitting in the passenger seat with your boba straw between your teeth. You point at him when his part comes and he glances over and grins and points back and it is so easy, so completely uncomplicated, that you feel it settle over you all at once.

The song winds down as he turns onto his street and you sink back into your seat and laugh quietly to yourself, the kind of laugh that comes from being genuinely happy rather than from anything being funny.

“I don’t remember the last time I had this much fun,” you say. You’re not performing it. You’re not saying it to give him something. It’s just true and it comes out before you can think about whether to say it. “Like actually. I can’t remember.”

Harry pulls into the driveway and puts the car in park and sits there for a second before he looks over at you.

“Me neither,” he says.

He says it the same way he says most things. Quietly and without decoration. But he holds your gaze when he says it and the car is very warm and very small and the song has ended but you can still feel it somewhere in your chest.

He gets out first and comes around to your door and you take his hand when he offers it without thinking about it, and he doesn’t let go when you’re standing, just keeps it loosely in his as he leads you up toward the front door, and you think about the ferry and the pizza and the streetlight in New York and how none of it felt like a beginning at the time and all of it obviously was.

He unlocks the front door, holds it open for you, and you step inside and the house wraps around you again, warm and quiet, exactly as you left it an hour ago. You stand in the entryway for a moment and breathe it in and it still does that thing where it feels like somewhere you’ve been before even though you haven’t.

“I’ve got a few things to sort out down here,” Harry says, setting his keys on the little table by the door. “Emails and stuff. Won’t take long.” He glances at you. “But if you want to shower and get comfortable you can. I’ll show you where everything is.”

You follow him up the stairs, down the short hall, into the primary bathroom, which is, predictably, beautiful in its simplicity. Big walk-in shower with stone tile. A double vanity. Good lighting that manages to be bright without being harsh. Everything clean and ordered without feeling sterile, the same quality the rest of the house has, like someone actually lives here and just happens to live well.

He opens the linen cupboard, pulls out a thick white towel, sets it on the counter without any ceremony.

“Shampoo and everything is in there,” he says, nodding toward the shower. “Use whatever you need.”

“Thank you.”

He looks at you for a moment in that way he does sometimes, like he’s about to say something and decides to let it sit instead. Then he gives you a small smile, pulls the bathroom door mostly closed behind him, and you listen to his footsteps move back down the hall, then down the stairs, until the house goes quiet.

You stand there for a second.

Then you turn to face the mirror and have a small, silent, completely internal crisis.

You are in Harry Styles’ bathroom. His actual bathroom, in his actual house, with his actual towel folded on the counter next to you, his actual products lined up along the vanity, his actual cologne sitting there like it’s nothing, like it’s just an object in a room and not the thing that has been driving you quietly insane since he hugged you at the airport and you got one devastating second of it before he pulled back.

You press both hands to your cheeks and look at yourself in the mirror.

Okay.

You go back to the guest room, unzip your bag, find your pyjamas, your toothbrush, your little travel bag of things, bring all of it back to the bathroom and set it on the counter with a practicality that makes you feel slightly more in control of yourself. You turn on the shower. The water pressure is excellent, which somehow makes everything worse, and you stand with your hand under the stream waiting for it to heat up, letting your eyes drift around the room.

You’re not snooping. You want to be clear about that, at least to yourself. You’re just looking. There’s a difference.

His cologne is on the counter, the bottle sitting simply among a few other things, and you pick it up before you’ve decided to, take the cap off, hold it close, breathe in. It is exactly what you remember from the airport, from the car, from every time he’s been close enough tonight that you caught the edge of it. Warm, woody, clean, something underneath that you don’t have a word for but that your nervous system apparently has very strong feelings about.

You put the cap back on, set it down exactly where it was.

His products are arranged neatly along the back of the vanity. A face wash. A moisturiser that you recognise as a good one. A hair product with a label you can’t quite make out. Nothing excessive, nothing performative. Just a person who takes care of himself without making a thing of it, which is, you are finding, a pattern with him.

The shower has steamed up the mirror by now, you strip down, get in, make a small involuntary sound at how good the water pressure actually is. You stand under it for a moment, just existing in the warmth of it, trying to get your heart rate down to something reasonable.

Then you reach for his body wash because yours is in your travel bag, you cannot be bothered, he offered you whatever you needed so it counts.

It is, genuinely, the best thing you have ever smelled in your life.

You’re not being dramatic. You stand there with the lather on your skin, the steam rising around you, the whole shower smelling like him, warm, clean, impossibly good, and you take much longer than necessary simply because you cannot bring yourself to rinse it off yet. You make a mental note to ask him what it is. You make a second mental note to not ask him what it is because there is no version of that conversation that doesn’t reveal too much about the last five minutes of your life.

You wash your hair with his shampoo too, because you’re already here, it smells just as good, and by the time you turn the water off you are clean, warm, smelling like him from head to toe, about to go downstairs and sit across from him and act like a normal person.

You towel off, pull on your pyjamas, brush your teeth, look at yourself in the now-cleared mirror, take one slow breath.

Okay, you think.

Okay.

You find him in the kitchen when you come back downstairs, laptop open on the island, reading something with the focused quiet of a person who actually works. He’s changed into sweats and a worn t-shirt and the sight of him like that, casual and unhurried in his own house, does something to you that the cologne on the counter probably started.

He looks up when he hears you on the stairs.

His eyes move over you once, quick, the way you might look at someone who has just walked into your space wearing your clothes and smelling like your shower, and then he looks back at his screen with the smallest smile you’ve almost missed entirely.

“Feel better?”

“So much better,” you say, which is true in every sense.

You climb up onto the stool across from him, tucking your feet up under you, and he closes the laptop without making a production of it, like whatever he was doing is finished or can wait, and reaches over to turn the small counter lamp on. The kitchen goes warmer. Softer. Outside the window the city is doing its quiet nighttime thing, just the occasional sound of something distant, nothing urgent.

“Do you want anything?” he asks. “Tea, water. I have that wine from earlier.”

“Tea would be nice actually.”

He gets up, fills the kettle, sets it on without asking what kind you want, which means he’s guessing again, and you watch him move around the kitchen in his sweats with his feet bare on the wood floor and think about how strange it is to feel this comfortable somewhere you’ve never been before. You’ve been in this house for a matter of hours. You should still be in the performing stage, the guest stage, the careful version of yourself you bring out when you’re somewhere new. Instead you’re sitting cross legged on his kitchen stool in your pyjamas while he makes you tea and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

He sets a mug in front of you a few minutes later. Chamomile. You smile down at it without meaning to.

“Good guess,” you say.

“Not a guess.” He wraps both hands around his own mug, settles back onto his stool. “You had it on the plane. You told me.”

You did. You remember now, some early conversation, you complaining about not being able to sleep on flights and him asking what helps and you saying chamomile tea and an eye mask and he had apparently filed that away without any fuss and here it is months later, chamomile tea on his kitchen counter at eleven o’clock at night.

You look at him for a moment.

“What?” he says.

“Nothing,” you say. “Thank you.”

He holds your gaze for just a second, then looks down at his mug, and the kitchen stays warm around you both.

He’s looking at you in that gentle way he has sometimes, the one that doesn’t demand anything, just offers, and when he speaks his voice is easy and low.

“If you want the guest room tonight that’s completely fine,” he says. “But if you’d like to sleep in with me you’re more than welcome.”

You look at him across the island, both hands wrapped around your mug. “What are you comfortable with?”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Snuggles never hurt.”

You laugh at that, a real one, surprised out of you, and he looks pleased with himself in the quiet way he gets when he’s said exactly the right thing.

You set your mug down. “I trust you,” you say simply. “I’ll sleep with you.”

Something in his face settles into something warm. He stands up from his stool, comes around the island, holds out his hand, you take it without hesitating, let him lead you up the stairs.

His bedroom is exactly what you saw briefly on the tour. Big bed, dark linen, the lamp on the nightstand throwing warm low light across the room. The window is cracked, the curtain moves slightly, the whole room smells clean, like the shower, like him.

He pulls the duvet back on one side and looks at you. “Get comfortable. I’ll be quick.”

You climb in, pull the covers up, listen to the bathroom door close softly, the shower start up, then reach for your phone because if you don’t tell Camille immediately you will actually combust.

You: are you up

Cami: unfortunately yes I have a 6am brand call kill me. why what’s happening

You: I’m in his bed

Cami: I’m sorry I have to ask you to clarify because if I scream and wake my entire apartment building that’s on you

You: his bed. his house. la. currently lying on his pillow as we speak.

Cami: okay I’m screaming internally. tell me everything right now.

You pull the duvet up higher, sink back into his pillow, start typing. You tell her about the airport, the Range Rover, the restaurant, the chopsticks, the Fleetwood Mac, the shower, the chamomile tea he remembered from a conversation months ago. The dots on her end appear and disappear several times, which means she is losing her mind in real time, which is exactly what you needed.

Cami: he remembered the chamomile tea

You: I know

Cami: that’s insane. men don’t do that. who even is he.

You: I genuinely do not know anymore

Cami: and the chopsticks thing?? he fed you off his own chopsticks??

You: it was very natural in the moment I promise

Cami: I’m sure it was. okay so what’s the situation right now is anything happening

You: he’s in the shower

Cami: and then???

You: and then I genuinely don’t know

Cami: yes you do babe

You: he actually offered me the guest room to be respectful

Cami: and you said?

You: that I’d sleep with him

Cami: as you should. okay I genuinely have to sleep but you are texting me everything tomorrow

You: obviously

Cami: I mean everything. I want a full debrief. don’t leave anything out.

You: goodnight cami

Cami: use the trip well 🫶🏼

You lock your phone, set it face down on the nightstand just as the bathroom door opens and Harry comes out in sweats and a soft t-shirt, running a hand through his damp hair. He moves quietly around to his side of the bed, lifting the covers, settling in beside you. Not close, not far. Just easy.

The room goes dark, just the faint glow of the city through the curtain, the sound of the breeze moving through the window.

“You warm enough?” he asks.

“Very.”

“Pillow okay?”

“The pillow is incredible actually.”

He laughs softly at that, the sound low in the room. “Good.”

He reaches over and turns the lamp off.

You lie there for a moment, both of you on your backs, the curtain moving in the breeze, the city outside doing its quiet thing. It doesn’t feel awkward. That’s the part that surprises you most. You’re in this man’s bed in the dark and it feels like the most natural place you’ve been in a long time.

“Are you glad you came?” he asks.

“So glad,” you say, without having to think about it.

“Good.” A pause. “I’m glad you’re here.”

You turn your head toward him in the dark. You can just make out the shape of him, the line of his jaw, his eyes open, looking at the ceiling. You lie there for a moment, then reach out slowly, your hand finding the covers first, then the warmth of his arm, then up, your fingers reading the edge of his jaw in the dark, turning his face gently toward you.

He goes still.

You lean in, kiss him softly. Just that. Warm, quiet, unhurried. His hand comes up to cover yours where it’s resting on his face, kissing you back the same way, gentle, like there’s no rush, like you have all the time in the world.

You pull back after a moment. His thumb traces slow along the back of your hand.

“Hi,” he says quietly.

“Hi,” you say back.

The room settles back into its quiet warmth around you. His hand stays over yours, loose, easy, neither of you moving away.

You lie there for a little while longer, his hand over yours, neither of you in any hurry to do anything about the quiet. At some point he shifts slightly, turning more toward you, and you can feel the warmth of him even without being closer.

“What do you want to do tomorrow?” he asks. His voice is low and unhurried, the way everything is with him at this hour.

“I don’t know. I don’t really know LA.”

“I know.” You can hear the smile in it. “I was thinking I could take you to the farmers market in the morning. There’s one not far from here, it’s good. We could walk around, get breakfast there.” A pause. “Then maybe the beach in the afternoon if you want. Nothing planned. Just see how the day goes.”

You think about that. Farmers market and the beach and a whole unscheduled day in his city with nowhere to be.

“That sounds perfect,” you say.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Good. Get some sleep then.”

You close your eyes. The curtain moves. The city hums its soft distant hum. His hand is still loosely over yours and you think about the ferry and the pizza and the streetlight and now this, his bedroom in Los Angeles, a farmers market tomorrow, and how none of it felt possible four months ago.

You’re passed out before you finish the thought.

From the floor beside your suitcase, Camille looks up at you with absolutely no sympathy.

“Most people are not packing to go visit Harry Styles,” she says. “That’s probably the disconnect.”

You glare at her while digging through your dresser.

“That’s not helping.”

“It’s not supposed to help,” she replies calmly. “It’s supposed to keep you psychologically and spiritually grounded.”

You hold up two sweaters.

“Which one.”

Camille squints critically.

“The darker one.”

“It’s eighty degrees there.”

“Right,” she says immediately. “Put both back.”

You drop dramatically face first onto the bed beside the pile of clothes with a groan.

“This is a mistake.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is,” you insist, your voice muffled by your comforter. “I’m flying across the country to spend time with a man I met on a dating app.”

Camille zips one side of your suitcase shut and looks over at you.

“You’re flying across the country to spend time with a man you genuinely like who also genuinely likes you back. The dating app part is honestly the least weird thing here.”

You roll onto your back and stare at the ceiling.

“This still feels insane.”

“That’s because your life was normal like two weeks ago.”

You point at her from the bed.

“Exactly.”

She stands up and walks over, taking the sweaters from your hands before tossing them back into the closet.

“You know what your problem is,” she says.

“I’m scared?”

“You’re trying to make this make logical sense.”

You sit up slightly.

“And it doesn’t?”

“No,” she says simply. “But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Let it happen.”

You look around the room again, the open suitcase, the clothes, your passport sitting on the dresser beside your phone charger.

It still feels surreal.

A few weeks ago your biggest concern was getting through another boring work week without thinking about your ex. Now you’re packing for Los Angeles because a man you met on Raya kissed you on a ferry and asked you to come see his world.

Your phone buzzes somewhere in the mess of clothes.

Camille grabs it first.

“Oh my god,” she says immediately.

You sit upright.

“What.”

She grins at you and holds the phone up.

“It’s your boyfriend.”

“He is not my boyfriend.”

“Mhm.”

You snatch the phone from her and immediately feel your stomach flip when you see his name.

Do you own sunscreen.

You blink at the message and laugh softly before typing back.

That’s your first concern?

The reply comes quickly.

You’re from New York. I don’t trust your preparedness.

You smile despite yourself.

I own sunscreen.

Another message appears.

Good. I’d hate for the tour guide to burn on day one.

You stare at the screen for a second longer than necessary, that warm feeling settling into your chest again.

Camille watches your face carefully.

“Oh,” she says quietly.

You glance up.

“What.”

“You really like him.”

You look back down at the phone in your hand, the open suitcase on the floor, your entire room scattered with evidence that this is actually happening.

And somewhere beneath all the nerves and the chaos and the complete insanity of it all is something much simpler.

“Yeah,” you admit softly. “I really do.”

By the time the sun goes down your apartment somehow looks even worse.

The suitcase is technically packed now, but not in a way that inspires confidence. One side is organized. The other side looks like you lost patience halfway through and started shoving things wherever they fit. Camille has given up trying to stop you from spiraling and is now sitting cross legged on your floor eating takeout noodles while watching you pace around the room for the fiftieth time.

“I don’t understand why you’re acting like you’ve never been on a plane before,” she says.

“I haven’t been on a plane for this before,” you reply immediately.

She points her chopsticks at you.

“That’s fair.”

Your phone buzzes on the bed beside you and both of you look at it instantly.

Harry.

Your stomach flips so hard it’s almost irritating.

Camille gasps dramatically. “Answer it.”

“I know how phones work,” you mutter, grabbing it.

You answer and press the phone to your ear as you walk into the hallway, mostly because Camille is already making faces at you from the floor.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he says, his voice warm and slightly quieter than usual. “Did I catch you mid breakdown.”

You lean against the wall outside your bedroom.

“Camille has described it as a ‘pre travel emotional event.’”

“That sounds super serious.”

“It is,” you say. “My room looks like a crime scene.”

You hear him laugh softly on the other end.

“Well, I called to make things slightly worse.”

“That’s concerning.”

“I wanted to go over tomorrow.”

You nod automatically even though he can’t see you.

“Okay.”

“You land at 1:40,” he says. “And I’ll pick you up at arrivals.”

You blink.

“You’ll pick me up?”

There’s a small pause before he laughs again, quieter this time.

“Yes.”

“I just assumed there’d be like… a driver.”

“A driver,” he repeats.

“I don’t know,” you say quickly. “You’re famous. I figured there’d be a system.”

“You thought I was outsourcing your airport pickup.”

“When you say it like that it sounds bad.”

“It does sound pretty bad,” he says, clearly amused now. “I’m picking you up.”

You press your head lightly back against the wall.

“In your car?”

“My terrifyingly normal Range Rover, yes.”

You laugh softly but it somehow makes you more nervous instead of less.

Because suddenly this feels even more real.

Not a fantasy version of this situation. Not black cars and assistants and distance.

Just him.

Picking you up from the airport like an actual person going to get someone they like.

“You’re making this seem weirdly human,” you tell him.

“That’s because I’m a human,” he replies easily. “I can do human things.”

You smile despite yourself, sliding down the wall slightly until you’re sitting on the floor now.

“I’m nervous,” you admit quietly.

There’s a brief pause on the line.

“About tomorrow?”

“About all of it,” you say honestly. “The flight. LA. Seeing your world. You.”

His voice softens a little when he answers.

“You don’t have to be.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“Not really,” he says. “I’m nervous too.”

That catches you off guard.

“You are?”

“Course I am,” he says. “I asked a girl I met on Raya to fly across the country and spend time with me.”

You laugh quietly.

“When you say it like that it sounds so much worse.”

“Probably because it is worse.”

You can hear movement on his end, like he’s pacing too.

“But I’m looking forward to it,” he says after a second. “I just want you here.”

The honesty of it settles somewhere deep in your chest.

You close your eyes for a moment.

“Okay,” you say softly.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” you repeat, smiling now. “I’ll get on the plane.”

“Good.”

You talk for another half hour after that, not even about anything important. Traffic. The weather in LA. A restaurant he wants to take you to. Camille yelling something intrusive in the background that makes him laugh hard enough you hear it through the phone.

By the time you finally hang up later that night, some of the nerves have settled into excitement instead.

Still, the next morning at the airport, they all come rushing back.

The terminal is loud and bright and crowded with people dragging suitcases behind them while announcements echo overhead every few minutes. Camille stands beside you near security holding an iced coffee and looking far too emotionally invested in your departure.

“You have your ID?”

“Yes.”

“Phone charger?”

“Yes.”

“Emotionally stability?”

“No.”

“That’s alright,” she says. “You never really had that anyway.”

You glare at her while adjusting the strap of your bag.

People move around you constantly, boarding passes in hand, families arguing quietly, someone nearby already eating airport fries at nine in the morning for reasons you deeply respect.

Your stomach twists harder the closer it gets to boarding.

This is happening.

You are actually doing this.

Camille notices your expression immediately.

“Hey,” she says, softer now. “You can still turn around if you want to.”

You look toward the security line, then down at your boarding pass in your hand.

And weirdly, the answer comes easily.

“No. I want to do this,” you say.

Because beneath all the nerves is something stronger.

You want to go.

You want to see him.

Camille smiles a little like she already knew that.

Then boarding gets called and suddenly it’s real.

She hugs you tightly before pulling back and gripping your shoulders dramatically.

“If Harry Styles breaks your heart,” she says very seriously, “I will become a supervillain.”

You laugh despite the knot in your stomach.

“I’ll text you when I land.”

“You better.”

Then you turn and head toward security, your suitcase rolling behind you while the airport swallows you up into its usual chaos.

The flight feels impossibly long and strangely short at the same time.

At first there is too much happening for you to really think. Security lines. Taking your shoes off. Putting your laptop in a separate bin even though you almost forgot it was there. Digging through your bag at the gate because you somehow convinced yourself you lost your headphones only to realize they were in your coat pocket the entire time. The airport keeps you moving in little bursts of stress and distraction until suddenly you are standing in the aisle of the plane waiting for people to finish lifting luggage into overhead bins while the flight attendant smiles with the exhausted patience of someone who has done this exact thing six hundred times.

You find your seat by the window and settle in slowly, sliding your bag beneath the seat in front of you before pulling your phone back out again almost immediately.

There’s already a message waiting.

Boarded?

Your stomach flips stupidly hard.

Just sat down, you type back.

The typing bubble appears almost instantly.

Proud of you for surviving the airport.

You smile despite yourself and glance out the window where baggage carts move slowly across the runway beneath the gray morning sky.

I almost got taken out by a businessman sprinting toward security.

Welcome to air travel.

You bite back another smile and type:

Are you still nervous?

There’s a pause this time. Longer than usual.

Then:

Yeah.

Something about how honest the answer is settles your nerves more than if he had tried to play it cool.

You lean your head back against the seat and type slowly this time.

Me too.

Another pause.

Good. That feels fair.

You laugh quietly under your breath just as the flight attendant starts the safety demonstration at the front of the plane. Around you people shuffle bags and pull out headphones and argue softly over armrests. The little girl across the aisle is already asleep against her mother’s shoulder somehow, which feels deeply impressive.

Your phone buzzes one last time before airplane mode cuts the conversation off.

Text me when you land, tour guide.

Your chest tightens warmly at the nickname.

Okay, tourist.

You lock your phone and slide it into your bag just as the plane starts to move.

And then there is nothing left to distract you anymore.

As the city shrinks beneath the plane and the clouds swallow everything outside your window, your thoughts finally catch up to you all at once.

You are flying across the country to see a man you met on a dating app.

Not just any man. Harry. The man who you kissed outside a pizza shop and held you close on a ferry and looked at you beside the water like he was trying very hard not to say something bigger than either of you was ready for yet.

The thought should feel ridiculous.

Parts of it do.

But underneath the nerves and the disbelief is something steadier. Something that has been building quietly since the first time he messaged you back.

Trust.

Not complete trust. Not reckless trust.

Just enough to get on the plane.

A few hours into the flight the cabin settles into that strange suspended atmosphere flights always develop. Window shades half closed. The soft hum of engines underneath everything. People sleeping in uncomfortable positions they’ll regret later. Someone a few rows ahead watching a movie without headphones loudly enough that you can almost follow the plot.

You spend part of the flight reading and part of it staring blankly out the window while your thoughts drift. Every so often you catch yourself smiling for absolutely no reason and immediately try to stop doing that because it feels embarrassing even though nobody is paying attention to you.

At one point you pull out your phone just to reread your messages even though there’s no service in the air.

Camille texted you three separate times before takeoff.

DO NOT JOIN A CULT

Take photos

If he has a secret wife I need at least one warning sign before TMZ does

You laugh quietly to yourself reading them again before locking your phone.

Somewhere over the middle of the country, with clouds stretched endlessly outside your window and strangers sleeping around you, the reality of what you’re doing finally settles in completely.

You are about to step into a completely different version of someone’s life.

Not Harry Styles the celebrity. Not the public version people think they know.

His real life.

The thought is both thrilling and terrifying in equal measure.

By the time the captain announces the descent into Los Angeles, your stomach is in knots again.

The view outside the window changes first. Less gray. More gold. Endless stretches of roads and houses and palm trees slowly appearing beneath the clouds while sunlight floods the cabin so brightly people start blinking awake around you.

California.

You grip the armrest slightly as the plane lowers toward the runway, your heart beating harder with every passing second.

The second the plane touches down, the entire cabin seems to wake up at once.

Seatbelts click open before the plane has fully stopped moving, people reach for bags that are still three rows away from them, phones reconnect to service all around you in a chorus of notification sounds, and suddenly the calm, suspended feeling of the flight disappears completely.

Your own phone vibrates almost immediately in your hand.

One new message.

Harry.

Welcome to Los Angeles.

Your stomach flips so hard it’s almost annoying at this point.

You type back before you can overthink it.

Your city is very sunny.

The typing bubble appears instantly.

That’s one of the main attractions.

You smile to yourself while the plane slowly taxis toward the gate. Outside the window everything looks brighter than New York somehow. The sky is impossibly clear, palm trees visible in the distance beyond the runways, sunlight bouncing harshly off the concrete.

It doesn’t feel real yet.

Even standing up in the aisle afterward doesn’t fully do it. You move slowly with everyone else, waiting for the line to inch forward while people tug luggage from overhead bins and apologize every few seconds for bumping each other with backpacks.

Your phone buzzes again.

No rush. I’m here.

That message makes your nerves spike all over again.

Because now there’s no plane between you anymore. No airport. No waiting. In less than thirty minutes you’re actually going to see him.

You step off the plane into the terminal and immediately get hit with warm air that feels completely different from New York. Even inside the airport it feels softer somehow, less sharp, less rushed. People move slower here. Even the airport noise feels more relaxed.

You follow the signs toward baggage claim with your headphones around your neck and your heart beating way too fast.

Every few minutes you check your phone without meaning to.

Camille: LANDED??? ALIVE??? DOES HE LOOK HOT IN CALIFORNIA

You snort quietly to yourself while walking through the terminal. Just landed. Calm down. No ❤️

You shake your head, smiling despite yourself, and slide your phone back into your pocket just as you reach baggage claim.

The wait for your suitcase feels eternal.

You stand beside the carousel pretending not to be impatient while people around you grab bags and head out one by one. A little kid nearby is laying across three suitcases dramatically while his parents argue quietly over whose backpack is whose.

Your suitcase finally appears after what feels like a century and you grab it quickly, adjusting the strap of your bag on your shoulder afterward while your stomach twists tighter with every step toward arrivals.

This is the moment now.

No more planning. No more packing. No more airports.

Just him.

The automatic doors slide open and warm California air immediately wraps around you, sunlight spilling across the sidewalk outside the terminal so brightly you almost squint.

Cars line the pickup area in messy rows while people hug relatives and shove luggage into trunks and wave at arriving passengers from the curb.

Your eyes scan automatically before you can stop them.

And then you see him.

Leaning casually against a black Range Rover a little farther down the curb, sunglasses pushed up into his hair now, one hand in his pocket while the other holds his phone loosely at his side.

The second he spots you, his entire expression changes.

Not dramatically.

Just enough.

Enough that you can tell he’s been looking for you too.

Your heart stumbles painfully in your chest.

He pushes away from the car immediately and starts walking toward you while you stand there trying very hard to act like your brain hasn’t completely short circuited.

“You made it,” he says when he reaches you.

And before you can even answer, he pulls you into a hug.

It’s warm and immediate and grounding in a way you didn’t realize you needed after the flight. One of his hands settles against your back while the other wraps around your shoulders, and for a second the airport noise fades into the background entirely.

You breathe him in automatically, sunlight warm against your skin, his familiar cologne somehow making this whole thing feel real all at once.

When he pulls back slightly, he’s smiling at you in that soft way he does when it feels like he forgot to guard his expression first.

“You actually came.”

You laugh softly, still a little breathless.

“I did.”

He looks at you for another second like he’s still processing it himself before reaching for your suitcase handle naturally.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you out of the airport.”

You follow him toward the Range Rover feeling slightly disconnected from your own body, like your brain is still trying to catch up to the fact that this is actually happening.

The California sun is warm against your skin, bright enough that you immediately understand why everyone here wears sunglasses like a personality trait. Cars crawl slowly through the pickup lanes while people weave between them dragging suitcases and shouting directions to each other through open windows.

Harry walks a little ahead of you with your suitcase in one hand like this is the most normal thing in the world.

Not an assistant.

Not security.

Just him.

Every once in a while someone glances up in recognition as he passes, but nobody fully stops him. Maybe it’s the sunglasses, maybe it’s Los Angeles, maybe people here are too used to famous faces to react dramatically anymore.

Still, you stay a little closer to him instinctively.

He reaches the car first and opens the back for your suitcase before coming around to your side.

“There she is,” he says lightly, gesturing toward the Range Rover.

You laugh quietly.

“She’s very intimidating.”

“She’s actually very practical.”

“That’s exactly what someone with a luxury SUV says.”

He grins and opens the passenger door for you.

“Get in, tourist.”

You pause with one hand on the door.

“I’m the tourist now?”

“You’re in my city.”

“That feels unfair considering I literally gave you a tour. I’m the original tour guide.”

“Different jurisdiction,” he says easily.

You shake your head and slide into the passenger seat, immediately noticing how clean the inside of the car smells. Warm leather, faint cologne, sunlight heating the dashboard.

Harry closes the door behind you before walking around to the driver’s side.

And for some reason, watching him get into the car and settle into the seat beside you makes this all feel even more intimate somehow.

Not the airport hug.

Not the ferry kiss.

This.

Him reaching over to start the engine while asking casually, “Cold enough in here or should I turn the air down?”

You stare at him for half a second before answering.

“This is so weirdly normal.”

He glances over while backing carefully out of the pickup lane.

“You sound very surprised by that.”

“You’re Harry Styles.”

“And you’re acting like I was grown in a lab.”

You laugh despite yourself, leaning your head back against the seat as the airport starts disappearing behind you.

Traffic immediately surrounds you the second you pull onto the main road.

“Oh my god,” you say, staring out the windshield.

“Yeah,” he says calmly. “Welcome to Los Angeles.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon. Why are there this many cars?”

“There are always this many cars.”

“This looks so hostile.”

He laughs softly and reaches over to tap something on the screen between you, music filling the car a second later. Low and easy and familiar.

You glance over at him.

“You picked soundtrack music for my arrival?”

“I’m committed to the experience.”

You smile and look back out the window.

Palm trees blur past outside alongside billboards and endless rows of cars. Everything looks brighter here. Wider. The city stretches out instead of upward the way New York does.

For a few minutes you just take it all in while he drives, one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel.

Then he glances over at you briefly.

“How was the flight.”

“Long,” you admit. “I think I blacked out somewhere over Colorado.”

“Fair enough.”

“And I’m pretty sure the man behind me was watching an action movie without headphones.”

“That’s upsetting.”

“Thank you,” you say. “I felt very validated in my irritation.”

He smiles a little.

You settle deeper into the seat, relaxing slowly now that you’re actually here beside him instead of imagining it from three thousand miles away.

And weirdly, the nerves start fading almost immediately.

Because it still feels like him.

The same person from the bookstore and the ferry and the pizza shop.

Just in California sunlight now.

After another few minutes he glances over again.

“You hungry?”

You turn toward him.

“A little.”

“Good,” he says. “I have a plan.”

That makes you narrow your eyes slightly.

“Should I be concerned.”

“Probably not.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“It’s enough,” he says, smiling again.

You shake your head but can’t stop smiling too, watching the city pass outside your window while he drives you farther into his world.

You spend the next twenty minutes watching Los Angeles unfold outside the window while Harry drives through traffic with one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel. The city feels strange in the way places always do when you’ve only ever seen them through screens before. Familiar, but not personal yet.

Everything is wider here.

New York crowds you. It presses against you constantly with noise and movement and buildings stacked so close together they feel like they’re leaning over the street. Los Angeles stretches instead. Palm trees break up the skyline, sunlight floods everything, and even the traffic somehow feels slower despite the sheer number of cars surrounding you.

You glance over at him while he drives.

He looks comfortable here in a way he didn’t in New York. Looser. More settled into himself. The sunlight catches across his arm where it rests near the window, curls pushed back from his forehead by the warm air coming through the crack in the glass.

“This feels different,” you admit quietly after a while.

He glances over briefly.

“Being here?”

“Seeing you here,” you say.

His expression softens a little at that but he doesn’t immediately answer.

“I think New York lets people disappear easier,” he says after a moment. “LA doesn’t really do that.”

You look back out the window, watching rows of shops and restaurants blur past.

“You seemed happy there though.”

“I was,” he says. “I am.”

Something about the way he says it makes warmth settle low in your chest again.

The conversation drifts after that into easier things. He points out places as you pass them, little pieces of the city that matter to him the same way your bookstore and ferry mattered to you.

A studio where he worked on an album years ago. A diner that stays open late enough for musicians and exhausted people leaving parties. A neighborhood he likes driving through when he can’t sleep.

You listen more than you talk now, watching him as much as the city itself.

Eventually he turns down a quieter street lined with trees and low buildings covered in climbing vines. The noise of the main roads fades behind you.

“Where are we going?” you ask.

“Lunch,” he says simply.

A few minutes later he pulls into a small parking area tucked behind a white building half hidden by greenery. The patio is shaded with hanging plants and soft string lights even in the middle of the afternoon, the whole place feeling calm and tucked away from the rest of the city.

You look at him as he parks.

“This is pretty.”

A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.

“I thought you’d like it.”

He gets out first and walks around to your side while you unclip your seatbelt. When you step out of the car the warmth hits you immediately, softer than New York somehow, carrying the smell of citrus and grilled food from the restaurant patio nearby.

Harry reaches for your hand naturally as the two of you walk toward the entrance, like it’s something he’s been doing for much longer than a few days.

Your stomach flips again anyway.

The hostess leads you through the patio toward a quieter table in the back corner, tucked beneath climbing vines and partially shaded from the sun. It feels private without being hidden.

You slide into your seat and glance around while he sits across from you.

“This is very different from pizza at midnight,” you say softly.

“That was important.”

You smile slightly at that.

A waiter comes by with water and menus, but neither of you really looks at them much. The conversation keeps pulling your attention away.

You ask him about recording and he tells you about long nights in the studio where everyone loses track of time. He asks you about work and you tell him about stories you’ve covered that somehow became more meaningful than you expected.

At one point while you’re talking, he reaches across the table absentmindedly and brushes his thumb lightly against your wrist where your hand rests near your glass.

The touch is brief.

Small.

But it sends warmth all the way up your arm anyway.

You lose your train of thought for half a second and he notices immediately.

A quiet smile appears on his face.

“You were saying?” he asks softly.

You shake your head slightly, trying not to laugh at yourself.

“I forgot.”

“Mhm. I know.”

Your food arrives a few minutes later and the conversation slows while you eat, comfortable enough now that silence doesn’t feel like something that needs to be filled immediately.

At some point you glance away toward the patio entrance after hearing a burst of laughter from another table nearby.

When you turn back, he’s already leaning slightly across the table toward you.

Before you can even process what he’s doing, he presses a quick soft kiss against your mouth.

It lasts maybe a second.

Two at most.

But when he pulls back, your entire face feels warm.

You stare at him.

“That was sneaky,” you say quietly.

“I know,” he replies calmly before reaching for his water like he didn’t just completely derail your thoughts.

And that makes it even worse.

He reaches for his water like he didn’t just completely interrupt your train of thought and restart your heartbeat at the same time.

You shake your head slightly, trying to recover enough to take another bite of your food, but you can still feel the warmth of the kiss lingering there.

Across the table, he watches you for a second longer than necessary before his expression shifts subtly, something more thoughtful slipping in.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he admits.

You look back up at him.

“Why.”

He glances briefly toward the patio around you. A server passes nearby carrying drinks to another table while quiet conversation drifts through the warm afternoon air.

“Someone could’ve seen,” he says. “Taken a photo or something.”

The reality of that lands quietly between you for a second.

Not heavily. Just enough to remind you that his life works differently than yours does.

You study him for a moment.

“Are you worried about that?” you ask softly.

He thinks about it before answering.

“Usually,” he says honestly.

The word sits there for a second before he looks back at you again, his voice quieter now.

“But I couldn’t really help myself.”

Your stomach flips all over again.

He says it so simply too, like it’s not meant to impress you or charm you. Just the truth.

You glance down at your plate for a second, smiling despite yourself before looking back up.

“That’s a dangerous thing to say to someone who already got on a plane for you,” you tell him.

A soft laugh escapes him.

“Fair point.”

But there’s still something warm in his expression when he looks at you afterward, something softer than teasing.

And for the rest of lunch, every time his knee brushes yours under the table or his hand reaches absentmindedly toward yours again, you can feel the shift between you becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Lunch stretches longer than either of you plans for it to.

At some point the plates get cleared away and neither of you notices immediately because the conversation keeps drifting into new places before the old ones fully end. The afternoon sunlight shifts slowly across the patio, turning warmer and lower while people come and go around you.

Eventually Harry glances toward the sky and lets out a quiet breath through his nose.

“I should probably get you settled before traffic becomes fully apocalyptic.”

You smile slightly.

“sounds serious.”

“It is. LA traffic has ruined stronger people than me.”

You laugh softly and follow him back out into the warm evening air.

The drive feels quieter than the one from the airport, not awkward, just softer. The kind of quiet that settles naturally after spending an entire day around someone. Music plays low through the speakers while the city slides past outside the windows in gold evening light.

You rest your head lightly against the seat and watch the palm trees blur by.

Every once in a while he glances over at you at a red light, small looks that feel absentminded and affectionate all at once.

Eventually he turns down a quieter street lined with tall hedges and low modern houses tucked back from the road. The neighborhood feels calm in a way that almost doesn’t seem real after the constant movement of the city.

“This is you?” you ask quietly as he slows near a gate.

“This is me.”

The gate slides open slowly and he drives through before it closes behind you.

Your stomach flips.

Not because the house is huge or intimidating, even though it’s beautiful from what you can see in the fading light. It’s because this feels different again. More private. More real.

Harry parks in the driveway and kills the engine, the sudden quiet settling around the car.

For a second neither of you moves.

Then he looks over at you.

“You survived the flight and the tour,” he says.

“Barely.”

“That’s fair.”

You both climb out of the car and he grabs your bag from the back automatically before leading you toward the front door. Warm lights glow through the windows now that the sun has almost fully disappeared, the whole house feeling calm and lived in rather than overly polished.

He unlocks the door and steps aside so you can walk in first.

The inside somehow feels exactly like you expected and nothing like you expected at the same time. Warm wood floors. Soft lighting. Records stacked near a turntable. A couch that actually looks sat on. Books scattered on tables. It feels less like a celebrity house and more like someone’s real home.

You step farther inside slowly while he shuts the door behind you.

You turn in a small circle taking everything in before looking back at him with a smile.

“So,” you say lightly, “this is where the magic happens.”

He looks at you for half a second before a grin slowly spreads across his face.

“No,” he says, stepping a little closer as he sets your bag down near the stairs. “That’s the bedroom.”

Your breath catches immediately as he tilts his head slightly, eyes warm with amusement.

You, a person with a rich and mortifying history of overthinking everything from emails to eye contact, turned around in the middle of the street and ran back to kiss Harry Styles like you were possessed by the ghost of every bold woman who has ever existed in a romantic comedy.

You turn your head toward your phone on the nightstand.

It’s face down, silent, and somehow already smug.

You grab it anyway and unlock it too fast, opening your messages before your brain has a chance to remind you about pride, dignity, or the many cautionary tales that begin with a woman texting too soon after a good kiss.

His name is there now.

Not just a profile. Not just a conversation living inside an app. An actual contact in your actual phone.

Harry.

It shouldn’t feel intimate, and yet it does. More intimate, somehow, than the kiss. Like he has crossed over into the architecture of your real life.

You open the conversation and stare at the last few messages from the night before, thumb hovering over the keyboard.

You don’t want to be the kind of person who plays games.

You also do not want to be the kind of person who wakes up glowing and immediately texts a man before brushing her teeth.

This, you think, is how women end up with complicated feelings and a group chat dedicated to analyzing punctuation.

You set the phone on your chest and stare at the ceiling again.

This is new territory.

Not because he is famous, though obviously that part remains deeply absurd.

It feels new because nothing about him feels hard in the exhausting way. There is no weird energy to decode. No stale, performative banter. No sense that you are being sized up or handled or filed into some category. It just feels easy.

Which, frankly, feels suspicious.

Your phone buzzes against your sweater.

You sit up so fast you nearly headbutt yourself with it.

Harry: Did you make it home safe?

The smile arrives before you can stop it.

You type back immediately.

You: I did. Did you?

The typing bubble appears right away.

Harry: Yeah. Short walk.

You can picture him instantly. Coat on. Hands in his pockets. Head down against the cold. The same mouth that kissed you under a streetlight, now saying something unfairly casual like short walk.

You hesitate, then type:

You: I’m still thinking about that pizza.

His reply comes almost immediately.

Harry: I’m still thinking about you running back down the street.

You drop your head back against the headboard and let out a soft laugh, pressing your lips together like there is anyone here to witness you grinning at your phone before nine in the morning.

You: That was very out of character for me.

Harry: I am glad you did.

You stare at that one for a second.

There it is again, that warm little pull in your chest. The one that feels annoyingly sincere.

So, naturally, you decide to pivot before you say something reckless.

You: So what’s on the schedule for today, Mr. Tourist?

There is a beat before he replies.

Harry: I believe I was promised a tour.

You smile into your pillow.

You: That starts after coffee. I do not do anything before coffee.

Harry: That feels like important information.

You: It is. Some would say sacred.

You push the blankets back and stand, still texting as you make your way into the kitchen, hair a mess, heart a mess, life suddenly veering off in a direction that feels both cinematic and deeply inconvenient.

You: Meet me at eleven. I know a place.

Harry: I will be there.

You set your phone on the counter and start the coffee maker, leaning against the cabinets while it brews. The apartment is quiet, filled with that in between kind of morning where the world has started but has not fully committed yet. Light creeps across the floor. A truck rumbles somewhere below. A door slams in the building across the street.

Everything feels exactly the same.

Which is strange, because nothing is.

You wrap both hands around your mug and take one sip before grabbing your phone again and calling Camille, because some experiences are simply too unhinged to carry alone.

She answers on the third ring.

“Well,” she says, voice bright with the particular alertness of someone who loves drama when it is happening to other people. “You’re calling before noon. Somebody died or you got kissed.”

You start laughing before you can answer.

“Okay,” you say. “You have to promise to be normal.”

“No,” she says instantly. “That is not our relationship. Start talking.”

You pace into the living room, one arm folded over your stomach like you are trying to physically contain the nervous energy threatening to escape through your rib cage.

“I saw him last night.”

There is one beat of silence.

Then Camille screams so loudly you yank the phone away from your ear.

“You what?”

“He got in early,” you say, already talking faster. “He asked if I wanted to go for a walk and I said yes and then we walked through Central Park and then I took him for pizza.”

“The pizza place?” she asks, scandalized. “Sal’s pizza place?”

“Yes.”

“The one where the guy behind the counter looks like he has been personally offended by every customer since 1987?”

“Yes, that one.”

She lets out a strangled sound that is half laughter, half disbelief.

“You took Harry Styles to stress pizza.”

“I panicked,” you say. “I needed somewhere casual and familiar and not weirdly fancy.”

“No, actually, that is kind of perfect,” she says. “That is unfortunately very you. Continue.”

You sit on the edge of the couch, coffee in hand, suddenly shy in the face of your own memory.

“We were saying goodbye,” you say slowly, “and I started walking home.”

“And?”

“And then I turned around.”

Camille goes silent.

You stare at the floor.

“And then I ran back and kissed him.”

This time the scream is louder.

“You did not.”

“I did.”

“You fully ran back to him?”

“Yes.”

“Like in a movie?”

“I do not know what came over me,” you say, horrified all over again. “I think I temporarily lost access to my frontal lobe.”

“Oh my God,” Camille says. “That is the most romantic thing you have ever done. I need you to understand that I am obsessed with this version of you.”

“I don’t even recognize her,” you mutter.

“Did he kiss you back?”

You look down into your coffee even though it cannot help you.

“Yes.”

A beat.

“Was it a good kiss?”

You lean back against the couch and close your eyes for half a second, which is somehow enough to bring it all back. The streetlight. The cold air. The pause before he kissed you again like he had been hoping you would.

“Yeah,” you say softly. “It was.”

Camille exhales like she has just received life changing news.

“Oh my God,” she says again, quieter this time.

You sit in that for a second, both of you.

Then she says, “So what now?”

You drag a hand through your hair.

“I am seeing him today.”

There is immediate rustling on her end of the line.

“I’m coming over.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, you are not.”

“You are not dressing yourself for Day Two with Harry Styles. I refuse to let history judge me that harshly.”

“It’s not Day Two,” you say.

“It is the daylight sequel to a street kiss. It counts.”

You laugh despite yourself.

“I told him eleven.”

“Perfect,” she says. “That gives me time.”

“For what?”

“To save you from whatever deeply practical sweater choice you are about to make.”

“Camille.”

But she has already hung up.

You stare at your phone for a second, then at your coffee, then toward your bedroom.

Honestly, she is not wrong.

You are still standing in front of your closet pretending this is a normal amount of pressure for a Tuesday morning when your front door opens.

Not knocks. Opens.

“Hello?” Camille calls, already inside in the tone of someone who has never once considered herself a guest in your home.

“In here,” you call back.

She appears in your doorway a second later holding two coffees and a giant tote bag that suggests she has mistaken this for either a sleepover or a medical emergency.

She stops when she sees the state of your room.

Clothes on the bed. Shoes on the floor. You standing in the middle of it all in leggings and a tank top, staring into your closet like the answer to your future might be hidden behind your winter coats.

Camille takes this in and nods once.

“Okay,” she says. “Good. You waited for me before making any irreversible mistakes.”

“I wasn’t making mistakes.”

“You were standing three feet away from a striped button down.”

You glance at the shirt in question.

“It’s a nice shirt.”

“It is a shirt for accidentally running into your ex at a farmers market and wanting him to think you own expensive olive oil.”

You stare at her.

“That is alarmingly specific.”

She hands you one of the coffees and walks fully into the room, already scanning the options laid out on your bed with the focus of someone diffusing a bomb.

“Whats the plan?” she asks.

“I thought the bookstore on Bleecker, maybe the record store a few blocks down, and then the ferry. Order to be determined.”

She freezes.

Slowly, very slowly, she turns to look at you.

“The ferry?”

You take a sip of coffee like this is not a loaded subject.

“Yes.”

“The boat.”

“Yes.”

“The thing you specifically said would not be involved.”

You try not to smile into the cup. You fail.

“I may have adjusted the itinerary.”

Camille points at you like a prosecutor who has just been handed the final piece of evidence.

“You have to say it.”

“Say what.”

“The line. About how you said there would be no boats and yet, surprise, there is a boat. That is free material. People in movies would kill for dialogue that easy.”

“I am not crowd sourcing my flirting.”

“You are not crowd sourcing it,” she says. “You are being guided by a professional.”

“In what field.”

“Romantic instinct. Visual storytelling. female intuition.”

You snort.

She is already flipping through the hangers now, ruthless and efficient.

“You need to look like yourself,” she says. “But like the version of yourself who gets kissed on ferries.”

“I have never been kissed on a ferry.”

She pulls out a pair of jeans and tosses them onto the bed.

“You have now entered a new chapter of life.”

“I hate when you talk like that.”

“No you do not. It is one of my best qualities.”

She reaches farther into the closet and comes back with a sweater, soft and fitted in that way that feels effortless when it is very much not effortless.

“This,” she says.

You eye it suspiciously.

“That just looks like something I would wear anyway.”

“Exactly,” Camille says. “We’re not trying to make you look hot in an unfamiliar way. We are trying to make you look hot in a way that feels emotionally devastating because it appears natural.”

You blink at her.

“I would like you to know that sentence made me tired.”

She ignores you.

“Go put it on.”

You set your coffee down and change while she keeps talking, because silence has never once been her brand.

“Hair down,” she says. “But not too done. Makeup light. Shoes comfortable because if you start limping halfway through lower Manhattan, the romance will die right there on the sidewalk.”

“That feels dramatic.”

“It is not dramatic. Men cannot recover from a woman making bad shoe choices on a date. They do not know what to do with visible suffering.”

You pull the sweater over your head and turn toward the mirror.

Camille steps up beside you, studying your reflection with an expression that is almost annoyingly thoughtful.

Then she nods.

“Yeah,” she says. “That is it.”

You smooth a hand down the front of the sweater.

“It’s just jeans and a sweater.”

“Exactly. It looks like you.” She looks at you in the mirror. “Which is the point.”

Something in your chest softens a little at that.

Because underneath all the joking and the coffee and the light interrogation, that is the thing making your stomach feel tight. Not that he is Harry Styles, though obviously that remains absurd in a way your brain may never fully process. It’s that today is daytime. Today is real light and real hours and the version of you that exists outside of app messages and nighttime chemistry and one very cinematic street corner.

“I’m nervous,” you admit, quieter now.

Camille’s expression changes immediately. Softer. Less amused.

“I know.”

You look at yourself in the mirror again, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear, then undoing it because now it looks like you tried.

“What if today is weird?” you ask. “What if last night was just one of those perfect little moments that only works because it is night and cold and everyone is a little bit romantic when they are hungry and under a streetlight.”

Camille leans back against the dresser, folding her arms.

“Then it is weird,” she says. “And you survive. But you do not get to skip the part where something might be good just because there is a chance it could also be disappointing.”

You glance at her.

She shrugs one shoulder.

“Also,” she adds, “if Harry Styles asked me to get on a ferry with him, I would be so unbearable about it that our friendship would not survive. So I need you to go on behalf of the group.”

You laugh, which is exactly what she was aiming for.

She smiles a little and pushes off the dresser.

“Okay,” she says. “Shoes.”

By the time you are fully dressed, the nerves have settled into something more manageable. Still there, still alive, but less like panic and more like energy. Like the feeling right before the first drop on a roller coaster, when your body cannot tell the difference between dread and excitement and decides, generously, to make it both.

You grab your bag and your phone and do a quick sweep of the apartment for the usual things.

Keys. Wallet. Lip balm. Some remaining trace of sanity.

Camille is leaning against the kitchen counter watching you with the solemn expression of someone preparing to launch her only daughter into society.

“I am serious,” she says. “Act normal.”

“I am normal.”

She lets out one short laugh.

“No, you are not. You took him for pizza and then sprinted back down a street to kiss him. You have already left normal behind.”

You open your messages before she can say anything else and type before you can overthink it.

Meet me outside the bookstore on Bleecker at 11?

You stare at it for one second.

Then hit send.

Your stomach immediately drops and flips at the same time, which feels biologically unnecessary.

Camille watches your face.

“You sent it.”

“Yes.”

“You look like you just submitted a college application.”

“That is actually exactly what it feels like.”

Your phone stays stubbornly still for three full seconds, which is enough time for your brain to begin composing twelve separate rejection scenarios.

Then it buzzes.

On my way.

You look down at the screen and try to act like your pulse did not just spike for no reason at all.

Camille sees the smile anyway.

“Oh, you’re gone,” she says.

“I am not gone.”

“You’re a little gone.”

You slip your phone into your bag.

“I am just showing him around.”

She pushes off the counter and comes over to fix the collar of your coat, because apparently this is happening now.

“Okay,” she says. “Ground rules.”

“There are no ground rules.”

“There absolutely are. One, he is just a person.”

“I know.”

“Two, do not suddenly start talking about your job like it’s boring.”

You make a face. “I don’t do that.”

Camille gives you a look.

A very long look.

“You literally call your own work uninteresting every time a man with nice hair asks what you do.”

“I do not literally do that.”

“You metaphorically do it, then. Same problem.”

She smooths the front of your coat like she is finishing a sculpture.

“Three,” she says, “if he says something nice to you, do not make a joke or change the subject or act like he is confused. You say thank you like a stable adult woman.”

“That one feels pointed.”

“Because it is.”

You exhale, half laughing, half trying not to spiral again.

“It is just a day,” you say.

Camille opens your apartment door and gestures for you to walk through.

“You ran back and kissed him,” she says. “It has not been just a day for a while.”

You step into the hallway and she follows, pulling the door shut behind you. The two of you head down the stairs together, your footsteps echoing in the stairwell, your body suddenly too aware of itself in every possible way. Your hair. Your coat. Your face. The fact that you have hands.

Right before you reach the building’s front door, Camille catches your arm and turns you toward her.

“Hey.”

Her voice is gentler now.

“Just be yourself. That is clearly who he likes.”

The words land harder than you expect.

You look at her for a second, then down at the stairs.

“I do not really get why,” you admit.

Camille’s mouth softens.

“Yes, you do,” she says. “You just think there is supposed to be more to it.”

You swallow.

Then nod once.

“I will call you later.”

“You better,” she says, immediately back to herself. “I expect details. Specific details. Dialogue. Atmosphere. Emotional damage. Do not come home with a vague summary.”

You laugh and push open the front door.

The city meets you all at once.

Cool air. Car horns. A dog barking from half a block away. Someone dragging a cart over uneven pavement. People with coffees in hand and headphones in and places to be.

It looks like a completely ordinary morning.

Which would be comforting if your heart were not behaving like you are about to walk into an exam you forgot to study for.

You start toward Bleecker, shoving your hands into your coat pockets for warmth, and halfway down the block your phone buzzes again.

You pull it out.

Almost there.

That small smile is back before you can stop it.

Right. Fine.

Maybe you are a little gone.

You get to Bleecker a little early, which is both intentional and deeply uncool of you.

You tell yourself it is because you like being early. Because you are a calm, prepared person who respects time and enjoys a few quiet minutes to herself before meeting someone.

In reality, you just did not trust your legs to walk at a normal pace if you left any later.

So now you are here too soon, walking slower than necessary, pretending to look in store windows so you do not look like someone who arrived early to a date and is now killing time by examining a display of candles she cannot afford.

The street feels warm and awake in that late morning way where everything is moving but nothing feels rushed yet. A guy passes you carrying a tray of coffees like he is transporting something fragile and emotionally significant. Someone else is tying their dog to a bike rack while they run into a shop. Music spills out from an open doorway halfway down the block, something old and scratchy that makes the whole street feel like a movie set.

You slow down a little as you get closer to the bookstore, letting yourself take everything in instead of rushing straight to the door. You like this part of the city. You like that it still feels like itself, like it did not try too hard to become something shiny and new.

You spot him before he sees you.

He is walking toward you from the corner in sunglasses, hands in his jacket pockets, moving at an easy pace like he has nowhere urgent to be, which is probably the rarest luxury he has.

There is a strange, quiet moment where you just watch him for a second.

This is a very surreal thing, you think. To just casually recognize him from half a block away like this is normal. Like he is just a person you are meeting on a Tuesday and not someone whose face you have seen on billboards and magazine covers and the side of buses.

But then he gets closer, and he looks up, and he sees you, and he smiles a little.

And just like that, he is not a billboard anymore. He is just the guy who kissed you under a streetlight and texted you at nine in the morning to make sure you got home safe.

“Hi,” he says when he reaches you.

“Hi,” you say back.

There is no awkward hug. No weird pause where you both try to figure out what version of each other you are supposed to be in daylight. You just fall into step beside each other like you have done this before.

You gesture back toward the bookstore behind you.

“This is the first official stop,” you tell him. “Very important. Very historic. Very me.”

He looks up at the front of the building, at the old sign and the crowded window displays with little handwritten recommendation cards.

“What makes this one special?” he asks.

“It’s old,” you say. “Like actually old. Writers used to hang out here. They still do readings in the back sometimes. And if you walk all the way to the rear there is a wall with signed books from people who came through years ago. It just feels like New York in there. Like the version that existed before everything got so expensive and shiny.”

He looks back at the storefront again, like he is seeing it differently now that you said that.

“Alright,” he says. “Lead the way, tour guide.”

You push the door open and the bell above it rings softly as you step inside. The smell hits you immediately. Paper and dust and something like coffee from somewhere in the back. That very specific bookstore smell that feels like quiet and time and stories all mixed together.

He steps in behind you and slows almost right away, looking around at the tall shelves and the narrow aisles and the little handwritten staff notes tucked under certain books.

“You were not kidding,” he says quietly.

You walk slowly, not rushing him, letting him look at everything instead of dragging him from section to section like this is a timed event.

“This place survived everything,” you say. “Rent going up, the internet, big chain bookstores. It just refuses to go away.”

He runs his fingers along the spines of a few books as you pass, reading titles, occasionally pulling one out just to look at the cover before sliding it back into place.

You lead him toward the back where the store opens up a little, a few chairs scattered around and a table stacked with new releases.

“There,” you say, pointing to a wall covered in framed photos and signed book covers. “That’s what I was talking about.”

He walks over to it and studies it for a minute, hands in his pockets, leaning in slightly to read some of the names and messages.

“That’s really cool,” he says. “It is like a little time capsule.”

“Exactly,” you say. “That is why I like bringing people here. It feels like the city keeps parts of itself hidden in places like this.”

He turns and looks at you then, like he knows you are not just talking about the bookstore anymore.

“You really love this place,” he says.

“Yeah,” you admit. “I do.”

He nods once, then gestures toward the shelves.

“Alright,” he says. “If this is part of the tour, you have to pick a book for me.”

You smile slightly.

“That is a lot of pressure.”

“You picked the pizza,” he says. “I trust your judgment now.”

You walk slowly along the fiction shelf, scanning titles like you have done a hundred times before, until you find one and pull it out. You turn back toward him and hand it over.

“If you want to understand the city,” you say, “start with this one.”

He takes the book from you, looking down at the cover, then back up at you.

“Homework again,” he says.

“Education,” you correct.

He nods like he accepts that and tucks the book under his arm like he is actually going to buy it.

You keep walking, trailing your fingers lightly along the shelves as you pass, occasionally pulling a book out just to look at the cover before putting it back. When you glance over at him again, he is doing the same thing, but more deliberately. He picks one up, reads the back, puts it under his arm with the one you gave him. Then another.

“You’re getting a stack,” you say.

He glances down at the books in his arm like he forgot he was holding them.

“I like bookstores,” he says. “This feels dangerous.”

“Financially or emotionally,” you ask.

“A little bit of both,” he says.

You smile and turn down another aisle, not really paying attention to what he is picking up, just enjoying the quiet of the place, the way the city noise fades into the background in here.

At one point you double back toward the front and he slows near a table by the window.

“Give me one second,” he says. “I’m going to grab one more.”

You nod, distracted by a display near the counter, flipping one of the books over to read the back without really paying attention.

By the time he joins you at the register, he has a small stack in his hands. The one you picked for him and a few others. You recognize one of the covers but not all of them.

“You’re committing,” you say.

He shrugs slightly.

“I travel a lot,” he says. “Books make hotels feel less like hotels.”

There is something about that sentence that sticks with you for a second. Something a little lonely around the edges.

You pay for a small bookmark you absolutely did not need while he pays for his books, and you try very hard not to look like you are watching him do something as mundane as buying books like it is weirdly attractive.

When you step back outside onto the sidewalk, the street is busier now, the morning fully awake. Different people, different noise, the same steady hum of the city moving around you.

He steps up beside you again, tucking the bag of books securely in his hand.

“So,” he says, “where to next.”

You glance down the street, then back at him, a small smile starting.

“Now,” you say, “we are getting on a boat.”

He stops walking.

“We said there were no boats involved.”

You keep walking like this is not a big deal and he has no choice but to follow you.

“We might have said that,” you admit.

“You did say that.”

“But,” you continue, glancing over at him, “this one is important.”

“Oh, so now there is an important boat.”

“Yes,” you say. “This is not just any boat. This is a New York boat.”

“That does not explain anything.”

“You will see,” you say. “Have a little faith.”

He shakes his head, but he is smiling, hands in his jacket pockets as he walks beside you, the bag of books swinging lightly at his side.

“I should have known you were going to trick me into something.”

“You trusted the tour guide,” you remind him.

“I did,” he says. “This feels like a betrayal of that trust.”

“It’s literally a ferry,” you say. “Relax.”

The two of you walk the rest of the way like that, talking about nothing and everything, the bag of books bumping lightly against his leg as you weave through the city together, and you do not know it yet, but somewhere in that bag is a book he picked out for you. He saw it, thought of you, and added it to the stack without saying a word.

The ferry is already there when you get to the terminal, people moving in a slow, patient line toward the entrance while the boat hums quietly against the dock like it is bored of waiting.

You buy two tickets from the machine and hand him one before he can argue about paying, and the two of you fall into line with everyone else. Tourists with cameras. A woman with a stroller. A man in a suit talking too loudly into a headset. Normal life, just with a skyline in the background.

“You’re very calm about this for someone disgusted by men with boats on dating apps,” he says.

“It’s just a ferry,” you reply, “I didn’t say no ferries. That is a completely different sentence.”

“That is the same sentence.”

“It’s not,” you say. “It is technically a boat, but emotionally it’s a ferry.”

He laughs under his breath and shakes his head as the line moves forward and you both step onto the boat with everyone else.

Instead of going inside, you lead him up the stairs to the open deck. The wind hits you immediately, pushing your hair back off your face, the air colder out here, sharper, cleaner. The city stretches out around you in a way that makes it feel both enormous and very far away at the same time.

You walk over to the railing and lean against it, looking out at the water as the ferry slowly pulls away from the dock. The engines rumble under your feet, low and steady, and the skyline starts to shift, buildings moving past each other, the whole city rearranging itself from this angle.

For a few minutes, neither of you says much. You just stand there next to each other, watching the water, the wind loud in your ears, the boat cutting a steady path across the river.

“It’s different from out here,” he says after a while.

“Yeah,” you say. “That is why I wanted you to see it.”

You glance over at him.

“This is my favorite part of the city,” you add. “Out here it feels quiet even when it is not. Like the city finally stops talking for a minute.”

He nods, looking out at the skyline for another moment before he glances down at you. The wind immediately blows your hair straight across your face again and you try to push it back, half laughing.

“Okay,” you say. “The wind is ruining the mysterious tour guide image.”

He smiles and reaches out, his hand closing gently around your arm, pulling you a little closer to his side so you are tucked slightly into him, out of the worst of the wind.

It is such an easy movement, so natural, that you do not even react at first. You just let yourself stand there, close enough to feel the warmth of him through his coat, the fabric of his sleeve brushing yours every time the boat rocks slightly.

“Better,” he says.

“Much,” you reply.

You both look back out at the water again, the city stretching out behind you now, the sun reflecting off the river in bright, broken pieces.

After a minute, without really thinking about it, he leans down and presses a soft kiss to the top of your head.

It’s not a big moment. Not dramatic. Not the kind of kiss that belongs under a streetlight or at the end of a movie.

It’s small and warm and absentminded, like it is the most natural thing in the world to kiss you just because you are standing there.

And for some reason, that is the one that gets you.

You do not move away. You do not say anything. You just stand there, tucked slightly into his side, looking out at the water while something in your chest pulls tight in a way that feels a little like fear and a lot like something else you are not ready to name yet.

After a while, you look up at him.

He is looking out at the skyline, eyes focused somewhere far away, hair moving in the wind, his expression thoughtful in that quiet way people get when they forget to perform for a minute.

Up close like this, you notice things you did not the other night. The shape of his nose. The curve of his mouth when he is not talking. The way his eyes narrow slightly when he is looking at something far away.

He smells good. Clean and warm and a little like whatever detergent hotels use that always smells better than what you have at home.

And it hits you all at once, fast and a little terrifying.

You are in trouble.

Not the small kind. Not the casual kind where you go on a few dates and it fizzles out and you move on and it becomes a story you tell later like it was funny.

This feels like the kind where you look up one day and realize you fell without ever seeing the exact moment it started.

You are still looking at him when he turns his head and catches you staring.

For a second, neither of you says anything.

You probably should look away. A normal person would look away.

You do not.

“What?” he asks quietly.

You shake your head a little.

“Nothing,” you say, but you are still looking at him.

He studies your face for a second like he is trying to read something there, and then his hand shifts slightly on your arm, his thumb brushing once, absentmindedly, like he does not even realize he is doing it.

The boat rocks gently under your feet and the wind pushes your hair across your face again.

This time he reaches up and tucks it behind your ear, his fingers brushing your cheek for just a second longer than necessary.

Your heart is beating so loud you are almost sure he can hear it over the engine.

“This was a good idea,” he says quietly.

“The ferry?” you ask.

“The tour,” he says. “All of it.”

You swallow and glance out at the water for a second before looking back at him.

“I wanted to show you my version of the city,” you say. “Not the version everyone else sees.”

He nods slightly.

“I like your version better.”

There is a quiet moment that stretches between you then, the kind where something feels like it could be said, but neither of you quite says it yet.

Instead, he just looks at you for another second, then leans down and kisses you.

This kiss is different from the first one.

The streetlight kiss was all nerves and adrenaline and the sudden, reckless decision to run back toward someone instead of away.

This one is slower. Warmer. Certain in a way that makes your stomach flip.

Your hand comes up to the front of his coat without you thinking about it, holding onto the fabric lightly as you kiss him back, the wind and the water and the city all blurring into the background.

When he pulls back, he does not go far. His forehead rests lightly against yours for a second, both of you just standing there, breathing the same cold air, the boat moving steadily under your feet.

“Tour guide,” he says quietly.

“Tourist,” you reply softly.

And you both smile a little, still standing there with the entire city stretched out around you like something waiting to see what happens next.

The rest of the afternoon unfolds easily after the ferry, like the day has found its rhythm and neither of you feels the need to rush it.

You walk when you can, take the subway once, cut through side streets instead of avenues, and you make sure every place you take him feels like somewhere you would still go even if he were not there.

That feels important to you. That he sees your real places. Not the places you think he would be impressed by.

You point things out as you go, little facts and pieces of the city that most people walk past without noticing.

At one corner you point up at an old building and tell him it used to be a silent film theater before it became a pharmacy and then a bank and now it is a clothing store, and that New York buildings never really die, they just become something else.

On another block you show him a tiny park squeezed between two buildings and tell him it used to be where people kept actual horses a hundred years ago, and now it is where people eat lunch and pretend the city is not loud.

You take him into a record store where the floor creaks when you walk and the guy behind the counter does not look up when you come in, and you show him the section where they keep older records and tell him the store has been there since before either of you were born.

He flips through records for a while, occasionally pulling one out and showing it to you. At one point he hands you one and says, “This one,” and you buy it even though you do not own a record player, and when he gives you a look you just say, “I will figure that part out later.”

You walk across a small park where someone is playing saxophone near a fountain and you sit on a bench for a few minutes just listening, not talking, just existing in the same space while the music carries across the trees and people walk their dogs and kids run past with melting ice cream.

At some point you buy pretzels from a street cart and he burns his fingers because he does not believe you when you say they are hot, and you laugh at him and tear off a piece for him like that is a normal thing to do.

You tell him which subway lines are the worst and which ones are weirdly nice and which stations always smell bad no matter how many times they clean them.

You tell him which streets flood when it rains and which diners are open all night and which bridges have the best view if you walk across them at sunset.

By the time the afternoon starts to slip toward evening, you realize you have been talking and walking for hours without really thinking about it, the day stretching out in a way that feels both long and too short at the same time.

You end up down near the water again, leaning against a railing, the sun starting to drop lower so everything looks a little more golden and a little softer than it did that morning.

For a minute neither of you says anything. You just stand there next to each other, watching the water move slowly, boats cutting across in the distance, the skyline glowing faintly in the late afternoon light.

You turn your head and look at him.

“So,” you say. “What do you want to do now?”

He looks out at the water for another second before looking back at you, like he is thinking about the question more seriously than you expected.

“That depends,” he says.

“On what.”

He studies your face for a second before answering.

“On how much time you have left on this tour.”

You lean back against the railing slightly, crossing your arms.

“The tour is very flexible,” you say. “The tour can continue.”

He nods slowly, like he is deciding something, then he looks out at the water again for a second before speaking.

“Have you ever been to Los Angeles?” he asks.

The question catches you a little off guard.

“Once,” you say. “Very briefly. It felt like a place where everyone is either on their way to something important or pretending they are.”

He laughs softly.

“That’s actually a very accurate description.”

You glance at him.

“Why.”

He taps his fingers once against the metal railing, like he is trying to decide how to say something.

“I spend a lot of time there,” he says. “When I’m not in Manchester. Work mostly. Recording. Meetings. All of that. It’s not really home, but I am there a lot.”

You nod slowly.

“I’m going back in a few days,” he continues. “And I didn’t want to ask you this over the app. Or over text.”

There is that feeling again. The one where the air shifts a little and suddenly this does not feel like a casual end of the day conversation anymore.

“That is usually a sign that it’s either very good or very bad,” you say.

He smiles a little at that but he still looks a little more serious than he has all day.

“I don’t want this to just be New York,” he says.

Your heart does that annoying, painful, hopeful thing all at once.

You don’t say anything right away, so he keeps going.

“I know this is a little insane,” he says. “And I know my life is not normal. And I know this started on an app and we have only known each other for a few weeks and most of that was messages and late night walks and pizza.”

You smile faintly at that.

“But,” he says, looking at you now, “I like you. I like talking to you. I like being around you. And I do not want to get on a plane and have this just become a story about a girl I met in New York.”

Your throat feels a little tight suddenly and you look down at your hands for a second before looking back at him.

“So what are you saying,” you ask quietly.

He takes a small breath like he is just going to say it and not overthink it anymore.

“I want you to come visit me,” he says. “In LA. I want to show you my version of the city like you showed me yours.”

For a second the world feels very quiet, like the city noise dropped a level and it is just the two of you standing there by the water with this very big, very simple question sitting between you.

“You are asking me to get on a plane,” you say.

“I am.”

“You are asking me to come to Los Angeles.”

“Yes.”

“You are asking me to enter your world.”

He nods once.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I am.”

You look out at the water again, your mind moving a hundred miles an hour while your body stays very still.

Like two months ago you were going on bad dates and complaining to Camille and writing articles about zoning meetings and now you are standing by the water while a man who splits his life between Manchester and Los Angeles is asking you to get on a plane and see what his world looks like when it is not late night walks and pizza and bookstores.

You let out a small breath and laugh a little, shaking your head.

“My life was so normal like five minutes ago,” you say.

He smiles slightly.

“I know.”

You look back at him.

“This is a big ask,” you say.

“I know,” he says again. “You don’t have to answer right now. I just wanted you to know that I do not want this to stop when I leave.”

You study his face for a second, trying to figure out if he realizes how sincere he sounds right now.

“Harry,” you say softly, “this is a little crazy.”

“I know,” he says. “But I think some things are worth being a little crazy for.”

You do not answer right away.

You just stand there next to him by the water, the city moving behind you, the ferry from earlier crossing slowly in the distance, and the question sitting there between you, big and bright and a little terrifying.

And for the first time since this whole thing started, you realize this is not just a cute story anymore.

You look out at the water for a long moment before you answer, watching the way the light hits the surface and breaks apart every time a boat passes through it. Your mind is moving quickly, but the feeling in your chest is strangely calm, like some part of you already knows the answer and is just waiting for the rest of you to catch up.

When you finally look back at him, he is already looking at you, like he has been trying to read your face this whole time.

“Yeah,” you say softly. “I would love to.”

You watch his expression change, just slightly, like something in him relaxes that he was trying not to show was tense in the first place.

“And,” you add, “I appreciate you asking me. And letting me into that part of your life. Because if we are being honest, I am still kind of a stranger.”

He lets out a quiet laugh at that and looks down, shaking his head a little.

“You do not feel like a stranger,” he says.

“I kind of am,” you reply. “A few weeks ago I was just some girl whose friend gave her a Raya invite code and told her to get back out there.”

“Best friend,” he says. “Important distinction. She changed my life a little.”

You laugh.

“She will never recover if she hears you say that.”

“I will thank her personally,” he says.

“You absolutely will not,” you reply quickly. “She would make it her entire personality.”

He smiles at that, then leans back against the railing beside you, close enough that your shoulders brush lightly.

“I like how I feel when I am with you,” he says after a moment. “It’s … normal. And I don’t get a lot of normal.”

You don’t interrupt. You just let him talk.

“I feel like I can relax,” he continues. “Like I don’t have to be at a certain level all the time. I don’t have to match energy or be interesting or on or anything. I can just be there. And I really like that.”

You look at him for a second, something in your chest pulling tight in that quiet, emotional way that sneaks up on you instead of announcing itself.

“I’m glad,” you say. “I think everyone deserves a place where they get to just be a person.”

He nods slightly, then looks down at the bag of books he is still holding. He opens it and reaches inside.

“I got you something,” he says.

You blink.

“You did not have to get me something.”

“I know,” he says. “I wanted to.”

He pulls out one of the books from the bookstore, turning it over once in his hands before holding it out to you.

“This is my favorite,” he says. “Or one of them. I am not sure if you have read it.”

You take the book from him and look down at the cover, running your fingers lightly over the front.

“I have not,” you say, looking back up at him. “What is it about.”

He smiles a little, but it is not his usual easy smile. It is softer. A little more thoughtful.

“It is hard to explain,” he says. “It is one of those books that just kind of… stays with you. I read it the first time when I was younger and it made me feel less alone, I think. I have read it a few times since then, in a lot of different places. Tour buses, hotel rooms, planes. It always feels a little different every time.”

You look back down at the book again, then back at him.

“Why this one for me?” you ask.

He shrugs slightly, but he is still looking at you in that steady way.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I saw it on the shelf and I thought of you. Which felt like a good enough reason.”

You swallow, your fingers tightening slightly around the book.

“That is a lot of pressure for me,” you say lightly.

He smiles a little.

“It is not pressure,” he says. “It is just… a piece of me. In paperback.”

That lands somewhere deep in your chest and stays there.

You look down at the book again, then tuck it carefully into your bag like it is something fragile.

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

He nods once like that was the right response, then looks back out at the water, the sun lower now, the light warmer, the city starting to shift into evening.

You lean against the railing beside him, your shoulder brushing his again, and for a little while neither of you says anything.

You just stand there together, the city moving around you, the future suddenly this big, unknown thing sitting quietly in front of you.

It feels like the kind of moment you are going to remember later. Not because anything huge is happening, but because everything feels very still and very important all at the same time.

You glance over at him.

“So this is the part of the tour where I am supposed to say something profound about New York,” you say.

He smiles a little. “Do you have something profound prepared.”

“No,” you say. “But if I did, this would be the moment for it.”

He looks out at the skyline again, then back at you.

“I think I get it now,” he says.

“Get what.”

“Why you love it here so much,” he says. “It is loud and busy and a little chaotic, but then you find these quiet pockets. Bookstores and ferries and little parks and record shops. It is like the city is loud on purpose so the quiet parts feel more special.”

You look at him for a second.

“That was actually better than anything I was going to say,” you admit.

He shrugs a little. “I had a good tour guide.”

You smile and look back out at the water again, then let out a small breath.

“You know,” you say, “when Camille gave me that Raya code, I really did not think anything would come from it. I thought I would go on a few bad dates, get a few good stories, and then delete the app again.”

“Yeah?” he says.

“Yeah,” you say. “I did not think I would end up on a ferry with a man who lives in Manchester and spends half his time in Los Angeles asking me to get on a plane.”

He laughs quietly.

“When you say it like that, it does sound a bit ridiculous.”

“It is a bit ridiculous,” you say. “But not in a bad way.”

He turns slightly so he is facing you more.

“I’m really glad I met you,” he says.

The way he says it is so simple and so honest that it catches you off guard a little.

“I’m really glad I met you too,” you say.

For a second you both just stand there looking at each other, the kind of look that feels like a conversation all by itself.

Then you bump his shoulder lightly with yours.

“So,” you say, “logistically, how does this work now. Do I just get on a plane and hope you are not secretly a serial killer.”

He laughs.

“I guess there is a certain amount of trust involved.”

“Good,” you say. “I love making large life decisions based on vibes.”

“I’ll send you my address,” he says. “That usually helps with the serial killer concern.”

“Very comforting,” you reply.

He smiles, then reaches over and takes your hand like it is the most natural thing in the world. Like it has been there the whole day and you just did not notice until now.

You look down at your hands for a second, then back up at him.

“This is a little crazy,” you say again, but this time you are smiling when you say it.

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

You squeeze his hand once, lightly.

“Okay,” you say. “Then I guess I’m going to Los Angeles.”

He smiles at that, a real one this time, the kind that reaches all the way to his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “Then I guess you are.”

You stand there for a few more minutes, talking about small things again. Flights and how long he will be there and how you have never really seen Los Angeles properly and how he has never really gotten used to the traffic and how Manchester will always feel more like home than anywhere else.

Eventually the sun drops lower and the air gets colder and the light starts to fade out of the sky.

You push yourself off the railing.

“Alright,” you say. “The tour guide is getting cold and hungry, which means the tour is officially over.”

He looks at you.

“Best tour I have ever had,” he says.

“That is because I did not take you to Times Square,” you reply.

“Thank you for that,” he says seriously. “I don’t think I would have recovered.”

You laugh and start walking, and he falls into step beside you like he has been doing it for years instead of one day.

As you walk, your shoulder brushes his, then again, and then his hand finds yours again without either of you really acknowledging it.

By the time you get to the subway entrance, you both slow down a little, like neither of you is in a huge rush to be the one who says goodbye first.

“This is me,” you say, gesturing toward the stairs.

He nods, but he does not let go of your hand yet.

“I’ll text you,” he says.

“You better,” you reply.

He smiles a little, then leans down and kisses you. Not like the ferry. Not like the streetlight. Just a soft, warm, quick kiss that feels like a promise instead of a question.

When he pulls back, he presses his forehead lightly against yours for a second.

“Thank you for today,” he says.

“You are welcome,” you say. “Thank you for the book.”

He smiles.

“Read it on the plane,” he says.

You look at him for a second.

“Okay,” you say.

You squeeze his hand once more, then let go and step back toward the subway entrance. You walk down a few steps, then turn back around because apparently that is just who you are now, a person who turns around.

He is still standing there, watching you.

You lift the book slightly out of your bag and hold it up.

“I will text you when I finish it,” you call.

“I’ll be waiting,” he says.

He takes a sip of his drink and glances at you, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

“This is strange,” he says.

“Strange good or strange bad?”

“Strange like we’ve been talking for weeks but I’m only just hearing your voice in person.”

You laugh softly. “It is a little weird bringing the chat into real life.”

“That’s exactly it,” he says. “Feels like we skipped the awkward part.”

“You mean the part where two strangers pretend they’ve always liked the same music?”

“Exactly that.”

You tilt your head. “We did cover a lot of ground already.”

He smiles. “We did.”

There’s a small pause, comfortable enough that neither of you rush to fill it.

“So,” you say, turning slightly toward him, “how were the meetings today?”

He exhales softly, leaning back on the stool.

“Long,” he says. “A lot of people in rooms talking about the album like it’s a strategy.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It’s not terrible,” he says quickly. “Just strange sometimes. You make something extremely personal and suddenly it’s being discussed like a product.”

You nod slowly.

“I think that happens with writing too,” you say. “Just smaller.”

His eyes flick back to you.

“How so?”

You shrug slightly, tracing the rim of your glass.

“I’ll write something about a neighborhood or a person and suddenly people online are arguing about it who have never been anywhere near the place I’m talking about.”

He smiles faintly at that.

“Sounds familiar.”

“Does it bother you?” you ask.

He thinks about it for a second.

“Not always,” he says. “Sometimes it means people care. Sometimes it’s just background noise.”

You nod.

“That’s the exact balance.”

He studies you for a moment, curious in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive.

“You’re exactly how I imagined you’d be,” he says.

You narrow your eyes slightly. “That sounds like a dangerous thought.”

“Why?”

“Expectations.”

He shakes his head.

“Not expectations,” he says. “Just… familiar.”

You glance down at your drink to hide the small smile forming.

The conversation drifts after that. Not shallow, not heavy. Just steady.

You tell him about the bakery that almost closed and the neighborhood that rallied around it. He tells you about the strange quiet of studios late at night when everyone else has gone home.

At one point he leans his elbow against the bar and tilts his head slightly.