I want her love.
Her laugh at breakfast.
Her voice in my kitchen.
The way she steals my toast without asking and goes pink when she gets caught. Wanting to be the man she chooses when she is fully herself, not out of grief or proximity, just her, choosing.
I’ve wanted women before, but this is something else entirely.
And underneath the want, there’s the fear of being too much before she is ready.
She will set the pace. That is the only way this is going to be what it deserves to be.
I go inside, grab two cold beers, come back, sit beside her, and wait.
Memphis looks at me, at Sophia, and then looks back at me with the satisfaction of a dog who has been paying attention.
“Don’t.”
He puts his head back down.
She stirs about twenty minutes later and finds me sitting beside her. Something moves in her expression that she makes no effort to contain.
“Hey.” Still half asleep.
I hand her the beer. “Hey.”
She takes it and slowly sits up. She pushes her hair back from her face, looks at the beer, and then at me.
“It’s not even four.”
“Close enough.”
She laughs, takes a sip, and settles back. We sit in the afternoon sun, the pool glitters, and Memphis snores softly between the chairs.
Perfect.
Quietly, completely, entirely perfect.
This is what it could be.
And then underneath that, quieter, less welcome.Don’t get used to it yet. There’s still Mexico.
I push that away.
Not today.
Today is this.
***
Sophia cooks dinner.
Pasta with a sauce from scratch, moving through the kitchen with the unhurried ease she brings to everything. The smell of garlic and tomato fills the house, while I sit at the island and watch her.
She’d picked up bread from the bakery with Remy earlier in the week and froze it for exactly this kind of evening. That small, quiet planning of it moves through me in a way not expected.
She is building something here.