it only takes one spark

When Amelia ends up in the hospital, she must fight to stay alive. But she soon discovers that it's not only her life that might be in danger – Toni might be at risk, too. And there's really nothing she can do.

The whole thing wasn't even planned. I needed groceries. You needed groceries. So we went together.

Not as a date, not as an excuse to spend time alone — though, truthfully, both of us had been guilty of that before — but simply because sometimes the fridge gets empty, milk runs out, someone finishes the last of the coffee, and life, with complete indifference to romance, demands groceries. And because I need to stop at Whole Foods is easily met with I'll come with you.

We didn't so much say it, but when we reached the parking lot, I think we'd made a silent agreement to behave like functional adults about it. Normal adults. People who could walk through a supermarket without constantly gravitating toward each other.

Which was funny, because we were failing at it almost immediately.

Not dramatically. We weren't making out in the pasta aisle or whispering scandalous things over the avocados. We were, technically, doing exactly what we came there to do. We each grabbed our own cart, for one thing, which felt like a solid commitment to independence and practicality. Separate lists. Separate groceries. Separate homes.

Very mature.

And yet.

Every few minutes one of us drifted toward the other without seeming to mean to. I would pause to compare brands of coffee and somehow notice you had appeared beside me. You would stop in front of the bread and a second later my hand would be resting on your cart handle while I pretended to inspect bagels. There were glances that lasted slightly too long, smiles that came too easily, not-so-accidental touches that should have been meaningless but somehow never were.

And the ridiculous part, the part I don't think I fully understood until that moment, was how much it affected me.

Not the intensity of us. Not even the part of us that still felt electric, because that had always been there in one form or another, even when we were young, even when we were making a spectacular mess of things.

This was different.

Quieter. Softer.

Things between us had been so intense for so long that some part of me, I think, had come to believe that romance — or love, or whatever terrifyingly wonderful thing this was becoming — had to be loud to be real. That it had to arrive in declarations, in longing, in aching and wanting and almost losing.

But no one tells you about this version.

No one tells you that intimacy doesn't always announce itself in grand moments. Sometimes it sneaks up on you while someone you're hopelessly falling in love with stands in front of a refrigerator, trying to decide between Greek yogurt and Skyr with the concentration most people reserve for life-altering decisions.