I came early the next day. Two plates waited on the counter; a bottle of red breathed quietly beside them.
He made pasta the way travelers do—simple and perfect. We told each other small truths. He spoke about meeting his wife at a dance in the late sixties, about listening to AM radio on long drives, about the practical romance of building a bridge that holds. I told him about the ache of living beside someone and feeling unseen.
“A person shouldn’t wait for their last chapter to allow themselves to feel,” he said.
When I stood to clear plates, he took my hand—not urgently, not carelessly—brought it to his lips, and kissed it. The room tilted. Nothing else happened that night. And everything did.
A few days later, while thunder moved over the hills, he opened the door before I knocked. He dried my hair with a towel, hands slow and careful. When he finished, he rested his palms on my shoulders. The house hummed. We kissed—tender, steady, unsurprised. It felt less like crossing a line and more like stepping into a room we’d both already furnished with unspoken truths.
Whispers on the Block
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