“No,” I said honestly, but he kept stirring, not looking at me. “Don’t tell me that you’d care if you did.” He went really still then, then turned off the gas on the stove. He moved so he could lean on the counter, his arms over his chest in a mirror image of mine. If my mirror image was half a foot taller and had fifty pounds of pure muscle on me.

“I do care, because I want you to feel at home here.”

“That’s going to take time, Theo.”

He bit his lip, probably fighting the urge to order me to trust him.

“I’m honestly surprised you were up to letting them stay for dinner.” I said it before I really thought about what I was implying, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“I wanted to meet Julia. She’s your oldest friend.” I almost laughed at the way he said it, like he was informing me of the fact.

“She is.” I sipped from the can of seltzer, just to have something to do while he stared at me like he was trying to get right in my head. He kept gnawing on that lip while the string that had been pulling between us since the moment I’d walked in here this afternoon tightened by the second.

“Since New York,” he hedged, like we were doing a fill in the blank game for my life.

“Since middle school in Corona,” I clarified, and he nodded like I’d just confirmed a fact for him. “Why are you suddenly so curious about my life, Theo?”

It took him a while to answer, so long I didn’t think he would.

“Because I can be now.” He said it to go along with another one of those self-conscious shrugs. Because he could be...now? Like as opposed to before when he couldn’t because he didn’t give a fuck?

“Why didn’t you tell me about your book renovations?”

That surprised me. Surprised me so much that I stayed with the can suspended in the air, midsip, staring at him. “That’s a change,” I told him honestly, and he had the gall to look offended. “I seem to recall being told not to ever discuss personal business unless I was asked.” He winced at that, then rubbed a hand behind his neck.

“I can be an asshole.”

“Without breaks or lulls for three years straight,” I said deadpan, and that seemed to break the tension somehow. The sense that we were inside a balloon that was about to pop eased and I could take deep breaths again.

“How about this?” He pushed off the counter so that we were only a couple of feet apart. His eyes looked like gray marble, flecked with brown and black. He kept finding reasons to get closer, to push on the space between us and make it smaller.