Page 76 of Reckless
At minute nineteen, my phone lit.
Kelly:You can come up.
I put the phone in my pocket and headed upstairs.
Kelly opened the door before I knocked.
She’d changed into a softer top and her hair pulled up now in a loose, failing knot that left the back of her neck.
“Hi,” she said.
The word landed differently here.
“Hi.”
“You came up fast.”
“You texted.”
“Sixty seconds ago.”
“I was already at the stairs.”
Her face changed.“That sounds like a confession.”
“It’s a fact.”
She shook her head.“Facts and confessions are not mutually exclusive.”
“With you, they rarely are.”
She stepped aside to let me in.
Her apartment was warm.She had a table lamp lit.There were dishes in the sink.A cardigan thrown over the arm of the couch.A stack of papers on the coffee table with colored sticky notes protruding from all of them at once.A half-burned candle by the television.A framed photo of her with the girls on the shelf.Books in small unstable piles that looked lived with instead of arranged.
The door clicked shut behind me.
Kelly moved past me toward the kitchen.“I made tea.”
My heart beat faster as I gaze at her.“You made tea?”
She gave me a look over her shoulder.“You say that like I just announced a felony.”
“I’m adjusting to the cultural theft.”
“It’s black tea.You can’t own leaves.”
“I can judge how they’re prepared.”
“You can judge from the couch.”
I sat.Mostly because if I stayed standing in her kitchen, watching her move around in her own space while my body was watching her moves and gazing at the simple sight of her neck, this evening was going to transition both our lives.
There was a blanket half folded over one arm and a book turned facedown on the side table that looked like she’d been reading it until life had interrupted.Her apartment smelled like coffee, tea, lavender, and faint vanilla I couldn’t place.
I found her home more intimate than the penthouse had ever been.
Kelly came back with two mismatched mugs and handed me one before settling into the opposite corner of the couch, one leg tucked under her.
