“You got broader.”
I lifted my duffel bag. “Cafeteria food.”
“That’s not what cafeteria food usually does.”
She smiled and stepped aside.
“Come in.”
Her house smelled exactly as I remembered: vanilla, cedar, old books, and whatever candle she had burning near the stairs.
The familiarity should have relaxed me.
Instead, I became strangely aware of her.
The sound of her bare feet on the wood.
The way she tucked loose hair behind one ear while talking.
The warmth in her voice when she asked about college.
That first evening, we drank tea in the kitchen while sunlight faded gold across the tile. She told me about the gallery where she worked, a disastrous yoga class, and a local artist who had apparently tried to pay for a painting with cryptocurrency.
I told her about my classes.
She laughed when I admitted I was barely surviving calculus.
“You always hated math.”
