“I hated being bad at math.”
“Same thing.”
“No. One is philosophical.”
She laughed again.
And there it was—that strange pause afterward.
Her eyes lingered on mine.
Not long enough for me to accuse her of anything.
Long enough for me to remember it later.
That night, lying in the guest room, I stared at the ceiling fan and told myself I was imagining things.
Michelle was older than me.
She was my mother’s friend.
She had known me when I was younger.
There were lines in life that reasonable people did not cross.
The next morning made those lines harder to ignore.
She was standing at the stove when I entered the kitchen, making eggs. Her hair was tied up carelessly, and she wore loose pajama pants with a gray tank top.
No makeup.
No jewelry.
Nothing calculated.
That somehow made her more distracting.
She glanced over her shoulder.
