Nothing else there 21

I’m still standing in the hallway with my hands against the wall when I hear his footsteps. Nick is in the kitchen doorway with the dish towel over his shoulder, and he looks at me and his expression shifts into concern without tipping into alarm.

“You okay?” His voice is careful, the voice he uses when he can see something on my face that I don’t know is showing.

“Yeah.” I drop my hands and wipe them on my jeans like the wall left something on them. “Just… thinking.”

About you. About the possibility of my feelings being mutual at least now.

Nick watches me for a second, doesn’t push, and the not-pushing is the thing I rely on most about him. He shifts the dish towel on his shoulder. “Lily’s asleep?”

“Took about thirty seconds,” I say. “Barely awake by the time I pulled the blanket up.”

“I see. Maybe then… you want to watch something?” He leans against the doorframe. “I found a movie earlier — something with subtitles and a lot of people staring at the sea.”

“That sounds terrible,” I say, but I’m already walking toward the couch with a small smile. “I’m in.”

“Nice. It won three awards, which usually means no one smiles for two hours.”

The movie is French, and within ten minutes there are three people smoking on a cliff and no one has explained why.

“What’s happening?” I ask, nodding at the screen.

“I think she’s leaving him,” Nick says.

“Which one?”

He considers this for a second. “All of them, maybe.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“It’s a French film. Helpful isn’t the point.”

The heating does something unreliable after midnight and eventually I pull my favorite blanket off the back of the couch, tucking my freezing feet under me.

Nick glances down at the blanket bunched over my legs. “Cold?”

“I’m fine,” I say, pulling the blanket tighterю

Apparently, it is the wrong answer because he reaches over and takes my ankles. He lifts them onto his lap and settles them there, his hand resting on the arch of my left foot, warm and heavy, like it’s nothing.

My breath stops and I can feel how my heartbeat is already raising.

It’s nothing. Just a friendly gesture. Don’t read much into it.

Then his thumb presses into the sole of my foot — a slow circle, as if this is something that just happens between two people on a couch. I don’t move because the warmth of his hands is moving up through my legs and my whole body is paying attention to it.

His hand moves from the arch to the heel and back, unhurried. I let my head fall against the cushion and look at the side of his face in the blue light. The strong angled jaw, the crease between his eyebrows, his full mouth.

Perhaps, I looked at his mouth for too long. I know I’m doing it, but I can’t stop.

“Nick.” He turns slightly. “We’ve known each other for fourteen years and I just realized I don’t know anything about you.” I shift my legs on his lap and his hand adjusts. “Why are you still single? Nine years in Sydney — no one?”

His thumb stops moving. He looks at the screen where the French woman is walking along the cliff, alone.

“There were people,” he says. “A couple of relationships. One that lasted about a year.”

“What happened?” I pull the blanket higher on my legs, my toes curling against his thigh.

“She was great. Smart, funny.” His hand rests on my ankle, still, his thumb against the bone. “But I’m a one-person kind of person, and my person was someone I didn’t think I could have. So everything else felt like I was just filling the seat.”

The apartment is very quiet, the movie is still playing but neither of us is watching.

“Someone you couldn’t have?” I say, and my voice comes out lower than I intended.

His jaw tightens, just barely. “Yeah.”

I can feel my pulse in the arch of my foot where his palm is resting. “Past tense?”

He turns his head and looks at me and his eyes are dark and steady and… he doesn’t answer.

The not-answering is another kind of answer and we both know it. My heart is doing something fast and uneven that I can feel in my throat and in the place where his fingers rest against my ankle.

I shift on the couch and his hand tightens on my ankle as I move closer. His eyes drop to my mouth and mine drop to his. I can’t tell when my hand finds the front of his shirt as I lean…

“Are you guys watching a movie without me?”

We both freeze.

Lily is standing at the end of the hallway in my old t-shirt, hair messy, squinting. She fills a glass at the kitchen tap and takes a long sip, watching us over the rim with an expression that is way too knowing for twelve.

“You two look like doves,” she says. “Just sitting there cooing at each other.”

“We’re watching a movie,” I say, and my face is burning.

“Uh-huh.” She glances at the screen where the French woman is crying on the cliff. “Looks really interesting, Mom.”

“Go to bed, Lily.” My voice is higher than normal and I’m gripping the blanket with both hands. “It’s really late.”

“Going.” She walks down the hallway and at her door she turns. “You know, you could just kiss him. I’m twelve, not five. I can handle it.”

The door closes and the apartment is silent except for the French woman crying and the blood pounding in my ears. Nick is looking at the ceiling and the muscle in his jaw is working.

He runs his hand over his face. “So. Your daughter just gave us permission.”

“She’s twelve,” I say, and I can hear my own voice trying to be normal and failing. “She doesn’t give permissions.”

He drops his hand and looks at me, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth despite everything. “She seemed pretty confident about this one.”

I pull my feet off his lap and sit up. My heart is hammering and I can’t look at him right now because if I look at him I’m going to do exactly what Lily told me to do. The part of me that wants to is so much bigger than the part of me that’s scared that the scared part barely registers.

But it’s still there. The fear of making a big mistake. Again.

“I need a little more time,” I say, pressing my hands against my knees. “With this. With… everything. I’m still figuring out who I am when someone isn’t telling me.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t close the space.

“Okay,” he says with no disappointment, no impatience, no carefully hidden frustration.

I look at my hands on my knees. “Okay?”

“Nothing changes unless you want it to, Aria.” He’s on the other end of the couch with one arm along the back and the movie light on his face. And he is completely, entirely still. “I’m right here. Always.”

I look at him — this man who has been waiting since the day he said ‘marry me’, who has been filling my mug and sleeping on the other side of a wall he never asked to open.

I stand up and the blanket falls off my legs. The cold air hits my feet and I already miss the warmth of his lap. “Goodnight, Nick.”

“Goodnight,” he says, voice is soft as I walk down the hallway and I don’t lock the door.