Chapter 27 Okay
I feel his hand sliding into my hair, fingers threading through the strands. The motion is slow, like it’s meant to remind me that I exist in his world right now.
His voice dips, sounding hesitant. “It’s the perfume my mum used to wear.... I still have the last bottle she bought. Half full.”
The words taste like memory and loss and something too soft to name. There’s softness in him I didn’t expect. Something tender that smells faintly of jasmine and old kitchens and afternoons I’ve never actually lived.
He goes on, and I can’t help the small, involuntary tilt of my head toward him. “I was scared to use it after she died, didn’t want it to end. So I bought two more bottles of the same. I still use it.”
I blink, and there’s a tug in my chest I can’t explain. Not just tenderness, not just curiosity. It's like he’s letting me into a piece of himself no one’s touched before.
Then he adds this small laugh to the memory, the kind that curls around the edges of sadness. “A classmate once told me I smelled like a cherry blossom bath bomb.... or something. I spent three days finding a masculine cologne that didn’t ruin the scent. One that balanced it out, you know?”
He pauses like he’s weighing my reaction. There’s something absurdly human in him in this moment, something entirely alive.
“I found one called ‘Iron Oak Thunder’,” he adds, almost teasing. “Because apparently, the perfume industry thinks a man’s cologne has to sound like it could tame a volcano.”
I chuckle softly, the sound feels like relief and something dangerously close to affection. Then he leans closer, the air shifting around me, and his voice drops near my ear, barely more than a whisper, “You okay?”
I can feel his warmth, his heartbeat. And I know I’m not okay. Not really. But in the quiet tension between us, in the scent that’s half memory, half Michael Foster, I want to be. I want to exist here, like this, suspended and exposed, just long enough to remember what it’s like to feel anything at all.
“Okay’s a strong word,” I tell him honestly. “But I feel a lot better than I did a few minutes ago.”
His response isn’t verbal. He tilts his head, just enough that his temple brushes mine. His hand moves up and down my back, the kind of touch that doesn’t rush toward comfort but lets it arrive on its own.
I wonder, distantly, if there’s supposed to be a timeline for hugs. A socially acceptable moment where one of us is meant to step back, clear our throat, reassemble ourselves into adults with boundaries. I hope there isn’t. Or if there is, I hope neither of us knows it by heart.
My arms tighten on their own.
“What happened,” I ask eventually, the words soft enough that they feel like they belong inside the space we’ve made. “To your mum?”
His hand stills. Just for a second. It’s subtle, but I feel the pause, the breath he takes like he’s choosing where to step next. Then the steady motion resumes again.
“An aneurysm,” he says quietly. “Sudden. No warning.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“She died in her sleep,” he adds. There’s no drama in it, just fact. “I take comfort in knowing she didn’t suffer.”
I let that sentence echo. As if those phrases are meant to soften the blow, to make loss more reasonable. As if the universe can be negotiated with if you choose the right words. My thoughts drift, uninvited, to the place they always go when death enters the room.
Is this life’s fault....or death’s?
Life, for giving up so easily. For loosening its grip without explanation. Or death, for its selfish hunger. For taking without asking. Without warning.
Michael had a mother one day.
And the next, he did not.
Just like that. One version of the world replaced by another overnight. It’s that abruptness that frightens me most. Not the sadness....sadness at least makes sense, but the way existence can simply revoke something essential. As if it were never guaranteed to begin with.
I think, as I always do, the thought that circles me when death gets too close....
Where is she now?
Not poetically. I mean literally.
Has she been reduced to something unrecognizable–matter, memory, echo? Did she simply just stop? Blink out like a light switched off mid-sentence? Or is she somewhere else entirely, rearranged into a form my mind doesn’t have the architecture to imagine?
Floating? Watching? Becoming part of everything and nothing all at once?
It’s the not knowing that unnerves me. The absence of answers where certainty should live. The way death refuses to clarify itself, leaving us to pace the perimeter with our questions like ghosts.
Michael’s hand keeps moving on my back, steady as a metronome. His presence tethers me, pulls me out of the spiral before it can deepen. Then he takes a small step back. The absence of him is immediate, noticeable in the way my body leans forward for half a second before I catch myself. He lifts a hand anyway, gentle as ever, and smooths my hair back into place, fingers lingering like he’s reluctant to fully leave the moment.
“If I recall correctly,” he says, voice lighter now, almost teasing, “I was promised a drink.”
I nod, just a little. “You were.” Then, after a beat, I ask, “Do you drink tea?”
His brows lift, just barely, like the question has surprised him. He considers it for a second, then shrugs, mouth curving.
“Of course I do,” he says. “I have a very committed relationship with tea. It's long-term, slightly co-dependent.”
That pulls a quiet smile from me. We move into the kitchen, there’s a small table tucked near the window. Three chairs around it. One is worn in a way that feels familiar, the other two look untouched. Their paint is unmarked, their edges too clean, like they were invited into a life that never quite needed them.
I watch Michael shrug out of his suit jacket, the fabric sliding off his shoulders with practiced ease. He drapes it over one of the newer chairs, and somehow that small act feels momentous. Like a blessing. Like proof of use. He loosens his tie next, fingers tugging it free as if he’s been holding his breath all day and has only just remembered how to exhale.
I gesture to the last untouched chair. It stands there patiently, like it's waited its whole life to be needed.
“Take a seat.”
Michael glances at it. Then at me. And then he ignores the chair entirely. He steps closer instead, closing the small distance I hadn’t realized I was already measuring. He shifts until he’s right there....warm, present, unavoidable....and says, like it’s a confession rather than a choice, “Unfortunately, I'm inclined not to waste this proximity while I have it.”
It lands warm at first...flirtatious even. Then my own mind turns it, sharpens it into something finite. A reminder I supply all on my own even though he doesn’t mean it that way.
I turn on the stove, letting the kettle begin its slow hiss and whistle. My hands reach up, pulling down two mugs from the cabinet. I can feel him watching, and when I glance over, his smile catches me off guard and I can’t help but return it.
Then my eyes drift to the chair, the one still waiting behind me. I feel a quiet tug of guilt, like it’s been left out, ignored, yearning for use. ‘I’m sorry’, I think, to the empty chair. It’s probably been lonely for too long.
But so have I.