It fucking means something.
The week blurs together in a series of small kindnesses I don’t know how to receive.
Day two, Saul shows up with pillows.
“These are for you,” he says, holding up two absurdly fluffy pillows like he’s not casually rearranging my entire circadian rhythm.
They look expensive. They look like they’ve never known suffering. I want to climb inside them and scream.
I blink at them like they’re engagement rings. “You bought me pillows?” My voice sounds weird. Too high. Like maybe I’ve never been loved before and this is the first symptom.
“The ones in your bedroom are terrible. You need to sleep properly.”
“How do you know they’re terrible?”
He pauses and proceeds to say the most devastating shit of my entire week.
“I noticed. Yesterday. When I was checking the windows in there.”
He was in my bedroom for thirty seconds and noticed my pillow situation. I can’t get men to notice when I get bangs and this one clocked my lumbar support needs in under a minute.
“Saul, you didn’t have to…”
“I know.” He sets them on the couch. “But you need to sleep. It’s a safety issue.”
It’s not a safety issue. It’s a domesticity kink. I’m being courtship-pillowed like a 1950s housewife who just got brought home from Sears.
I take the pillows and sleep like I haven’t been feral and full of dread for a week straight. My body recognizes something has changed. Maybe I’m not just being protected, I’m being kept.
Day three, curtains.
“The streetlight shines right into your window,” he says, casually installing blackout curtains like we’re married and he’s finally fixing the thing I keep complaining about even though I haven’t said a word. “You’ll sleep better with these.”
I stare at the way his shirt stretches across his back as he reaches up, biceps flexing, and think,this is how it starts.This is how people end up pregnant from domestic gestures. I’m ovulating emotionally.
“How do you know the streetlight shines in my window?”
“I drove by last night. Noticed your light was on at 2 AM.” He finishes adjusting the curtain rod, turns to look at me. “You should be sleeping.”
He says it like it’s normal. Like this isn’t the part where my womb starts screaming “he cares!”
I think I black out a little.
“I was baking,” I say weakly.
“At 2 AM?”
“Anxiety doesn’t keep business hours.”
He gives me that smile again. Half-measured. I want the full thing. I want him to laugh for real while holding something I made him and then push me against the counter and say thank you.
Day four, coffee.
Good coffee.Sinfully good coffee.Beans with names like Mountain Revival and Midnight Reverie. Beans that smell like dark promises and orgasms in expensive cabins.
“The stuff I bought before was too weak,” he says, setting the bag on my counter. “This is what I drink. Figured you might like it better.”
He thought about my preferences. He used his beautiful federal brain to imagine my tongue and what it wants. He wentto a store and stood in front of coffee and picked one because he thought it might make me happy.
