The thought arrives cleanly, without warning, settling somewhere low in my chest before I smooth over it with a smile that comes just as easily as everything else I don’t want to examine too closely.
Across the table, Soren tears a piece of bread in half with his hands, ignoring the knife entirely, and there’s something about the way he does it that pulls my attention in without asking for it.
It isn’t messy, and it isn’t careless. It’s deliberate in a way that feels instinctive, like he doesn’t see the point in doing something differently just because it’s expected.
He dips the bread into the oil, his fingers steady, unhurried, and when he brings it to his mouth, he actually tastes it. Not distracted and halfway somewhere else, but fully there in the moment, like nothing else exists for the second it takes him to take the bite.
His eyes close briefly. “Fuck,” he says quietly. “That’s good.”
Something in my stomach tightens—a small, unexpected reaction that I don’t immediately understand, because it isn’t about the food. It’s about the way he allows himself to experience something without filtering it first, without checking how it might look.
I blink, looking away for a second before I realize I’ve been watching him too closely.
Most men I’ve been around lately don’t react like that. They explain things, or they turn them into something performative, something slightly removed from the moment.
Soren doesn’t.
He just exists inside it.
“You always swear at food?” I ask, my tone light, even though my attention hasn’t fully shifted away from him.
“Only when it deserves it.” He says it like it’s obvious, like there’s no reason to soften it or make it more acceptable, and something about that lands deeper than it should. There’s no adjustment in him. No awareness of how he might be perceived.
Or maybe there is.
Maybe he just doesn’t care.
I take a sip of the wine I didn’t order and didn’t question, and the realization lands a beat too late, because I usually check. I usually know exactly what I’m agreeing to before I agree to it, even in small, inconsequential ways.
For some reason, I didn’t this time.
The glass is cool in my hand, the taste clean and dry, and I swallow before I can decide whether I should be more cautious.
I shouldn’t be here.
The thought returns, quieter now but heavier, threading through everything else instead of interrupting it.
Not because of him.
Because of how easily I got here.
Because of how quickly I said yes.
“I’m glad you came,” he says.
I look up, and he’s already looking at me like he never stopped.
There’s something in the steadiness of his gaze that makes me more aware of myself in a way I wasn’t a second ago—of how I’m sitting, how I’m holding the glass, how much of me is visible across the table.
He doesn’t fill the silence after. Doesn’t soften the statement.
Just lets it sit between us.
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
It’s true, but saying it now feels different than it did earlier, like the meaning has shifted slightly without me fully understanding how.
A few hours ago, this felt like an out.