“Doesn’t have to be that,” he says.

“But it is.” I look at him. “We both know it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Do you want it to be that?” I ask, watching his reaction closely. “For there to be something to take slowly?”

He nods, and it’s as if his head is heavy, too heavy for his neck. “Yeah, I guess I do.” He sips. Stares out at the lake, which is lit only with slivers of moon behind a ripped blanket of gray fleece. “I said I like you. I meant it. Doesn’t mean it’s not weird, and scary. And hard. Doesn’t mean I know what the hell I’m doing. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t…feel what I feel. If you’re not ready, I get it. I can be friends. It’s all it is right now anyway, right? Coffee on the porch. A meal here and there. A walk around the lake. A drink of an evenin’.” Sometimes he sounds like he’s from a different millennium, an older time.

We drink whiskey over ice and listen to the crickets and the frogs, watch the last of the fireflies flitting on the fading warm evening.

“I like you too,” I whisper. So quiet, I wonder if he even heard me.

He did. His eyes slide across the space, to mine. Search me.

“You always hear that the first step is the hardest,” he murmurs, in his rough woodsmoke voice. “Maybe that one’s true.”

“Maybe it is,” I agree.

I finish my whiskey.

“Coffee in the morning?” He sounds hopeful.

And that does something very complicated to my belly.

“Yeah,” I say. “My porch. Six thirty.”

“Could you, uh, sometime, if you feel like it, could you make that bread with the little pieces of chocolate in it? That stuff was good.”

I laugh. “Pain au chocolat.” I’m glad he picked that one—I’ve never made it for anyone but him. “Yeah. I can.”

“I didn’t mean tomorrow morning.”

“I know.” I consider how long it would take. “We’ll have to see how early I wake up.”

I walk back home, and I feel him watching me. The sensation of being watched, looked at, seen—I don’t mind it. There’s no judgment in his eyes. No pity, either. Just warmth and understanding and the depths of a soul, which some part of mine seems to recognize.

Like when you meet someone, and it feels as if you’ve been friends before, if you were to believe in reincarnation. Similar to that, with Nathan. Only…far more complex.

I go to bed, and I’m thinking about Nathan as I drift off. That’s new.

It’s over coffee, the next morning.

I’ve made pain au chocolat, he’s made scrambled eggs and bacon in a huge cast iron skillet.