"Don't," I said. "Don't hide that."
The smile stayed. Smaller now, but it stayed.
I made breakfast. Eggs and toast and coffee, nothing fancy, because my culinary abilities peaked at "things that require a pan and a toaster." Mik sat at the counter and watched me cook, which was a reversal of our usual dynamic, and I caught him looking at my apartment with different eyes. Like he was seeing it for the first time as a place he was allowed to be in rather than a place he was visiting in secret.
"You need a new toaster," he said.
"That toaster is a veteran. Show some respect."
"It burned the bread."
"It toasted the bread aggressively. There's a difference."
He ate the eggs without complaint, which from Mik was basically a standing ovation. We drank coffee and talked, and the talking was different now. Lighter. Easier. Not because the heavy things had disappeared but because they'd been said, and saying them had made room for everything else.
He told me about a documentary he'd watched about Soviet hockey. I told him about the time Jonah got his head stuck in a jersey during a quick change and had to be rescued by two equipment managers. He told me about Katya's latest email, which included a detailed analysis of why Fitzgerald was better than Hemingway, and I told him that I'd never read either of them, and he looked at me with such genuine horror that I laughed hard enough to spill my coffee.
"I'm going to make you read Gatsby," he said.
"Is this a threat?"
"It is a promise. You will read it and you will understand why it matters."
"Will there be a quiz?"
"There will be discussion. Which is worse."
This was Mik happy. Mik happy was bossy and opinionated about literature and mildly appalled by my lack of cultural education, and I wanted every second of it for the rest of my life.
After breakfast, he went to the bathroom and I heard the water running and I started washing the dishes. Two plates. Two forks. Two mugs. I was putting them in the cabinet when I noticed that Mik's mug, the plain white one he'd brought over weeks ago without comment, was sitting on the counter next to the sink. He'd used it this morning. I picked it up and opened the cabinet and put it on the shelf next to mine.
His mug. My mug. Side by side on the same shelf.
I stood there looking at them for longer than was reasonable. Two mugs in a cabinet. It was nothing. It was everything.
Mik came out of the bathroom and found me staring into the cabinet like it contained the secrets of the universe.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing. Just organizing."
He looked at the cabinet. At the two mugs. At me. Something moved across his face that I couldn't read, and then he walked over and adjusted his mug so that the handles were facing the same direction as mine, and the precision of the gesture was so perfectly Mik that I felt my chest crack open.
"They should match," he said, as if this explained everything.
It did.
He kissed me. In my kitchen, in the morning light, with coffee on his breath and his hands on my waist and no urgency at all. Just a kiss because he wanted to. Because he could. Because the wall was down and the door was open and we were standing in the daylight for the first time.
The kiss deepened. My back was against the counter and his body was against mine and his hands moved from my waist to my hips and I could feel the shift in him, the moment the tenderness caught fire.
"Bedroom?" I said.
"Bedroom."
We made it to the bedroom in approximately twelve seconds, which was impressive given that we did not stop kissing during the transition and nearly took out a lamp in the hallway.
The mood was different from every time before. No desperation, no careful handling. Mik was laughing before we even got our shirts off because he got tangled in his sleeve and I tried to help and made it worse, and he said something inRussian that was clearly an insult directed at my shirt-removal technique.