Page 35 of Don't Go
He grinned at me sideways — slow, entertained, not the polished one. "Don't worry. You'll get there very soon, Sabrina."
We were at my stoop.
I didn't know we'd reached until I was at it. Three blocks had felt like one, and the world had gotten wider around me and quieter. I was in front of my building with Bonnie's bag on my shoulder and a man in a hoodie at the curb.
I went up the bottom step. I turned.
He was at the curb, one hand still in his hoodie pocket, looking up at me. The half-step difference put my face above his.
He didn't smile. "Are you okay?"
I blinked.
It wasn't the question I'd been preparing to volley. It was an honest thing in the middle of a banter exit, and I wasn't — I was very much not — equipped for honest things at the end of three blocks in a hoodie.
"Yeah." My mouth was a fraction slow. "I'm okay."
We stared at each other.
The street kept moving around us — a kid going past on a scooter, somebody yelling at someone half a block down.
I asked it back. "Are you?"
His eyes moved off mine. His mouth went thin. The shadow stayed less than a second, and then he covered it with a smile.
He was looking somewhere over my shoulder. "Now, why wouldn't I be okay?"
I had the urge to touch his cheek.
It wasn't a decision. It wasn't a thought I had. It was something my hand was already doing while my brain was busy elsewhere — busy at the front of the building, defending the entry — and my hand made it past the fence before any of the alarms went off.
We made eye contact as my fingers reached him.
The skin at the line of his jaw was warm and rough where he hadn't shaved. He held very still, as if a bird had landed on his wrist, and he didn't want to startle it.
The pharmacy bag began to slip from my other hand.
I caught it against my chest. He had moved at the same time — his free hand landed on the bag a beat after mine, and then his other came down too, and we were holding Bonnie's prescription with four hands stacked, and a second ago, I hadn'tbeen touching him, and now I was, very specifically, touching him.
Neither of us let go.
The bag was paper. It was small. It was pressed between my ribs and his palms. The warmth of his hands came through it. The bag moved with my breath.
"Cross."
His thumb sat on top of one of mine. "Yeah?"
"You can let go."
"I know."
He didn't. I didn't pull away.
His hand — one of them, the top one — came off the bag. Slowly. He didn't break eye contact while it moved. The back of his knuckles brushed the side of my jaw, light, deliberate, and I forgot to take the next breath.
He turned his hand.
His palm settled against the side of my face. His thumb sat at the corner of my mouth. He took his time.
