Marcus looked at it through the kitchen window. I want to ask you something, he said. She looked at him. That lamp, he said, the one on the shepherd's hook. David put it there.
I put it there, she said. Here. After I moved in, I brought it from the old house. It was on our porch there. She paused.
So, yes and no. David bought it. I brought it. Why did you bring it? She was quiet for a moment.
Because it felt like something that should be at a home, she said. And I was trying to make this feel like one. Marcus looked at her. Has it worked? He asked.
She looked around her kitchen, at her table, at her tea, at him. It's working, she said. He nodded. And then because he was Marcus Reed and he said things when they were true and not a moment before. He said, I think I'm falling in love with you.
The kitchen went very still. Clare looked at him. She did not look surprised. She looked like someone who has been waiting for a thing to be named. And now that it has been named is deciding whether to be relieved or terrified.
She chose neither. I know, she said quietly. Is that okay? He asked. She held his gaze.
It's more than okay, she said. It's It's the most okay thing that's happened to me in a long time. Marcus let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. She reached across the table again. He met her halfway.
Their hands came together on the surface of her kitchen table. In the warmth of her kitchen, under the amber light of the lamp she had carried from one house to another because she needed something to make a place feel like home. And something in Marcus Reed, the last sealed thing, the final lock door let go. Not with drama, not with ceremony. Just released like a breath.
Like a window finally opened. Like a man who has been fixing other people's broken things for 4 years quietly understanding in a kitchen in November that he has been fixed and from down the hall from upstairs from the ordinary world that kept moving while two people sat in a kitchen and chose each other his phone buzzed. Darius tacos were good. Jordan's mom wants to know if Clare wants to come to Thanksgiving. Marcus stared at the text.