Noah
He looks up from his phone, caught, and for a second his whole face does something I've never seen it do before, something close to flustered, which might be my new favorite expression on him.
"I wasn't staring," he says.
"You were absolutely staring."
"I was thinking about something. My eyes just happened to be pointed at you."
"Sure." I go back to the cutting board before he can see how much that flustered look does to me, dicing peppers with more focus than the task actually requires. "Dinner's in ten minutes. Set the table or something."
He does, quiet, and dinner goes easy that night, easier than it has any right to given everything unspoken sitting between us at the table, and by the time we're both heading to bed I've mostly convinced myself the staring thing was nothing,
