Nothing collapsed the next day. The world continued without rearranging itself.
from Chapter 23.
Nothing collapsed the next day.
I was tired.
Of course I was tired. What had started around eleven the night before as a photo session had somehow ended with neither of us getting much sleep.
But when Ken messaged me, he was still Ken.
He asked if I’d slept at all. I laughed and told him not much. He admitted the same.
And then we talked about work.
About our day.
About whatever our friends were doing.
The world had not rearranged itself overnight.
There is photographic evidence of this.
By the next night, I was back out with friends.
Ken was too.
We didn’t disappear from our friends afterward.
Wain was still Wain. Arya was still Arya. There were still clubs to go to, music to hear, and people doing ridiculous things in local chat.
Ken and I went back to all of it.
Except now I knew what it felt like to be alone with him.
Something between us had changed.
Or maybe it had been there and I had simply been the last person to notice.
A message from Ken wasn’t quite the same anymore. I knew what he looked like now. I knew I was attracted to him. And after Wednesday night, pretending there was nothing between us would have been ridiculous.
But he didn’t act as though what had happened entitled him to anything more from me.
He didn’t pull away either.
He was simply Ken.
I knew intimacy could change the rules quickly.
So I waited for something to change.
Nothing did.
We talked the way we had before. Shared music. Complained about work. Joined our friends. Sometimes we stayed up too late.
Wednesday wasn’t ignored. It just wasn’t turned into something we had to immediately define.
That was new for me.
Neither of us knew where this was going. And neither of us pretended we did.
At some point, Ken said it more simply than I could.
“I like what we have. I don’t want to rush it. I just want to be here with you.”
I liked what we had too.
That was enough.
We weren’t pretending Wednesday hadn’t happened.
We weren’t pretending we were only friends anymore either.
We just weren’t ready to tell everyone else.
Not yet.
