#gingervitus

Paul watched Emma as she whirled around his kitchen in a quiet fury. Boxes of pasta on the bottom shelf in the cabinet next to the fridge, up on the furthest tips of her toes to slide the cereal onto the top shelf. Paper towels went under the sink and she shoved the door closed possibly harder than she’d meant to, he realized, because she winced slightly at the slam as it reverberated around the room. This was his kitchen, Paul reflected, but she honestly seemed more at home in the space than he did. When did that happen?

He chewed on his bottom lip with concern as he wandered a little further into the kitchen. “Uh, Em, did you need some help?”

She spun back around on him from where she had been all but throwing the fruits and vegetables into the fridge so quickly that he thought he saw her wobble a little on her feet. “Oh, it’s ‘Em’ now is it? What happened to ‘This is my friend, Emma’?”

Paul’s eyes narrowed with confusion for a moment before his brows shot up nearly into his hairline. They had been at the grocery store less than an hour before stocking up his house for the next couple of weeks and Emma, who had truthfully been spending more time there with him than in her own apartment, had come along, when he had run into Mr. Davidson and Carol. He stumbled through small talk with his boss when Emma had sauntered up behind him to drop a baguette into the cart. Her hand landed on his back, prompting him to look down at her. She had given him a bright grin that he couldn’t help but return when Mr. Davidson cut in, “Well who do we have here?”

“This is my friend, Emma,” he had replied, and he was beginning to think he had said the completely wrong thing as her beet red face and watery eyes stared him down from the other side of the kitchen. 

He shook his head to spur his brain into action, he took a few small steps toward her into the kitchen and she stayed where she was as she let the door to the fridge close softly. “I, um,” he started softly, “did I say the wrong thing?”

She barked out a laugh that clearly indicated that she didn’t think what he’d said was funny at all. “Friends, Paul?,” she asked him bitterly. “We’re not just friends and you fucking know it.” His heart seized in his chest before a hot blush began to creep its way up his neck. The pads of her fingers wiped under her eyes. “Fuck,” she whispered angrily. “Now I’m fucking crying.”

Paul took a few more hesitant steps further towards her. His heart beat hard and fast in his chest. He honestly felt like he could pass out at any point. “I know we’re not just friends. I didn’t say we were. I just,” he trailed off as he waved his hands around in a vague gesture between them. Paul’s voice trailed off into a near whisper. “You didn’t want to put a label on it.”

Her eyes snapped up to his own. The warm brown of her eyes traveled over his face for several seconds before she dropped her gaze and took a few steps of her own toward him. “Yeah, I know,” she muttered as she tapped the toe of her sneaker against the baseboard. “But that was months ago.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she brought her eyes back up to his. She shrugged at him with a tiny smile and he couldn’t keep a wide grin from spreading across his own face.

“Do,” he muttered as they each took more steps to close the gap between them. “Uh, do you want to put a label on it now?”

They were now mere inches apart next to the island in his kitchen and she tilted her neck back to look up at him. She searched his face for a moment or two before she practically drove herself into his chest. He grunted with the force of the contact and her arms wrapped firmly around his waist before she spoke directly into the material of his t-shirt. “I’d be open to it.”

Paul couldn’t hold back a chuckle and his heart swelled in his chest as she tightened her hold around his waist. “So are we going with boyfriend and girlfriend?,” he asked her curiously, hoping she couldn’t feel his heart beating wildly. 

He glanced back down when she pulled her face up and looked up at him with her chin pressed into his chest. She scrunched her nose up in a cute little grimace. “Are we fifteen? Partners, maybe?”

His grin grew almost impossibly wider. “Life partners? Or are we detectives?”