Page 166 of Impulse Control
A pin dropped into my map a second later.
Not far.
Of course it wasn’t far.
I laughed softly at that — the universe having a sense of humor while I didn’t.
Come over.
She added.
No pressure. Just… you.
I stood up.
For once, I didn’t check my calendar first.
Her building was older, narrower, the kind with uneven steps and a door that stuck slightly when you pushed it open.
I hesitated in the stairwell, suddenly aware of how fast my heart was beating. Not nerves exactly — more like my body recognizing what I was doing.
I knocked.
The door opened almost immediately.
Kiara stood there barefoot, hair loose, wearing something soft and oversized that made her look like someone for whom being normal came effortlessly.
The sight of her cracked something open in my chest I hadn’t realized had been locked. Like my body had been holding its breath all evening and only now remembered how to exhale.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I replied.
No dramatic pause. No speech.
Just the quiet recognition between one person who had finally run out of excuses and another who had known exactly what those excuses were. She stepped aside to let me in.
Her apartment was small and warm and smelled faintly like something sweet — powdered sugar and vanilla and clean laundry. The kind of scent that suggested comfort without trying to impress.
Soft light glowed from mismatched lamps instead of overhead fixtures. There were framed photos on the walls — not professional, not curated — just moments. Friends mid-laugh. A beach somewhere bright. A blurry group selfie where everyone looked slightly drunk and very happy.
Books were stacked on the coffee table in uneven piles, spines cracked, pages dog-eared. A jacket was thrown over the back of a chair like she’d meant to hang it up and gottendistracted by something better. A half-empty mug sat by the sink, ringed with dried foam, next to a plate with the ghost of a pastry.
Nothing matched. Nothing was optimized.
It looked lived in. It looked real.
I stood in the middle of it and felt my throat tighten for reasons I didn’t have a word for yet.
Not jealousy. Not longing.
Just the strange, aching awareness of how rarely I let myself exist in a place that didn’t feel temporary.
“You okay?” she asked softly.
I shook my head, probably the most honest I’d been in forever. “No,” I said. “But I didn’t want to be alone with it.”
She nodded, like that made perfect sense.
