I reached for the cotton ball again, and Kael’s hand wrapped around mine, stopping it in the air. His touch was so unexpected that I thought I had spilled something on him, or the top had come off the polish. I looked up to his face and drank in his eyes, how far the corners of his pink lips were turned up, how set his jaw was. My fascination with him was all in the details. Nothing seemed wrong. I was confused.

Kael reached for the polish bottle. It was Marshmallow, a creamy white color from Essie. Their signature square bottle looked doll-sized in Kael’s free hand, the one he wasn’t holding mine with.

“Do you want me to do it for you?” he offered, and I let out a breath.

Blinking, I searched for a sign that he was teasing me but found nothing. I slowly pulled my hand from his and put them both in my lap.

“What?” he calmly asked, dipping the brush back into the small bottle.

I didn’t know what to say. It felt so binding, or like a big deal, but was it? Was the way my stomach danced because I couldn’t imagine any of the men in my life offering something like that? Or was it because the men in my life weren’t thoughtful and had firm ideas of gender roles? Kael lifted the brush, hurrying me along in my mental analysis.

“I have a steady hand. Technically trained, and you need to rest yours anyway. You use them for work every day and they’ve been bothering you.”

“My hands are fine. Have I said that they weren’t?” I wasn’t sure, honestly.

“You rub them all the time.” He nodded to my left hand that I just so happened to be slowly rotating in a small circle.

I froze and Kael smiled in a way that was both comforting and cocky. He was in a playful mood, it seemed. I wanted to savor his being here—the way he was making me feel—while I could; Phillip would come home, Elodie would have her baby, and Kael would be gone by this time next year. This companionship would not be mine for much longer.

My guard and boundaries tangoed with my rationality and reality as I looked at Kael. There they were again, those boundaries, after I was promising myself not to cross them less than ten minutes ago. I imagined them as big white doors inside my brain. I made sure to keep them away from my heart. We could choose Door A, where Kael paints my nails and I talk his ear off while we share dinner, or Door B, where I could keep my polish and my thoughts to myself and share a simple, friendly, drama-free meal.

“Just let me try it. If I suck as bad as you do, you can do it yourself.”