We don’t make a plan so much as we text each other the same idea. Two days after the ramen, he shows up at my apartment with a canvas tote that says Scream Queen on it and the kind of excitement you bring to a concert. I’ve dragged my couch closer to the TV. My coffee table is buried in bowls—popcorn dusted with seaweed, gummy worms, black-and-white frosted cookies I found at the bakery around the corner, a weird green punch I dubbed Lagoon Water that looks suspect and tastes like lime. He takes it all in and laughs, thoughtful, like he gets that I did this because it matters to me.

“Okay, first,” he says, pulling out a Blu‑ray like it’s a magician’s reveal. “Creature. Then Mothra. Then we see where the night takes us.”

“You say that like we’re clubbing,” I say, taking the case from him and feeling a little flutter at how ordinary this is. He toes off his shoes without being asked. He doesn’t comment on my mismatched socks or the fact that I put a blanket out like a grandma.

He sits at one end of the couch, leaving a question mark of space. I tug the blanket over both our knees anyway, like it’s nothing. It feels easy. I press play.

We don’t talk over the opening credits. He doesn’t narrate to prove he knows trivia. I don’t fill the quiet with jokes to keep things light. It’s just the sound of water and strings and the creature’s heavy breath. Every so often, he passes me a gummy worm without looking. Our fingers brush, and my brain notes it, then shelves it. His thigh is warm through the blanket. I let my head tip back on the cushion and breathe.

When the scuba scene comes on—the one that always makes my chest feel tight—he leans forward, elbows on knees, like he’s seeing it for the first time even though he’s not. I say, “This is the part,” and he nods like he knows which part I mean. He doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t make me explain how the longing in a monster’s gaze can feel like a mirror. The room is quiet in a way that feels chosen.

Halfway through, he reaches for the Lagoon Water and grimaces. “It’s so aggressively lime.”

“I added gummy fish and now it’s a craft cocktail,” I say, and he sips again, committed to the bit. He lets sugar stick to his lip. I hand him a napkin, and our fingers tangle longer than they need to. Neither of us points it out.

We break between movies to inhale popcorn and make a second snack plate. He moves around my kitchen like it’s a place he’s been before, opening the right drawer on the first try. He washes the mixing bowl without being asked. “You have a very organized spoon situation,” he says.

“Are you negging my utensil drawer?” I ask, bumping his hip with mine. He bumps back, gentle, like he’s learned my edges already.

When I tell him that the Mothra twins were my favorite because they made me feel less alone as a weird kid, he doesn’t tease. He tells me about building the cereal box Tokyo, and we end up perched on my counter, feet swinging, sharing the embarrassing art we made like it’s precious, not cringe. He looks at me when I talk, not past me. I don’t worry about how I look from his angle, if my mouth does that thing when I get animated. I just… am.

Back on the couch, our shoulders settle closer. I realize I haven’t checked my phone all night. I haven’t done that mental calculus of when to laugh, when to flirt, when to withhold. He laughs and claps a hand over his mouth and then lets it fall because he doesn’t need to be smaller. I let myself sprawl, socked feet tucked under his thigh. He doesn’t make it a thing. He just warms.

By the time the tiny singers appear, we’re both grinning like idiots, mouthing along to lyrics we only half remember. He sings the melody under his breath—off-key, earnest. My chest feels loose and open. When he looks over and catches me smiling at him instead of the screen, he smiles back, small and sure, and doesn’t look away too fast like he’s afraid of what it means.

We don’t kiss. We don’t do anything that would tip it into a different category. We sit through credits we’ve both seen and then let the menu loop because leaving the moment would mean naming it. He helps me stack plates. He threads his arm into his jacket and lingers at the door, like ending something this good should be done slowly. I want to say stay. I don’t. It’s nice that I don’t have to.

“Same time next monster?” he asks.

“Obviously,” I say, and it feels like choosing the easy thing for once. When the door closes, the room is quiet. I glance at my phone out of habit and realize I didn’t need it to make the night bearable. I didn’t have to distract myself with a game. I just let myself be in my own skin, with him sitting there, and it was enough.

Two days later, my living room looks like a hardware store exploded. The box with the bookshelf has been a coffee table for months. Alex stands over it reading the instruction manual like it’s a sacred text, brow furrowed, mouth tilted in concentration. He rolled up his sleeves as soon as he walked in, and there’s something about forearms and purpose that shouldn’t be as distracting as it is.

“Phase one: we don’t die,” he says, tapping the page. “Phase two: we build your book empire.”

“Phase three: you carry it with one arm to show off,” I say, opening a bag of screws and immediately spilling three.

He catches them. Actually catches them, quick and easy. “Reflexes of a cat,” he says, dropping them back into my palm, warm fingertips against my skin for a second too long. He steps back before I can overthink it, kneeling to lay out planks. He sorts them by size, letter side up, his movements efficient, unshowy. It’s not performative competence. He just knows how to do stuff and does it without making me feel incompetent.

“You’ve done this before,” I say, watching him line up dowels along the edge of a board.

“I moonlight as an Allen key whisperer,” he says. “Also my sister moved three times in two years. I’ve assembled the same dresser so often I’ve given the parts names.”

He hands me the bag of wooden pegs and nods toward the holes he’s already measured. “You want to do those? Every other one.”

I sit cross-legged on the rug and press the pegs in, my knee bumping his. He glances at me, then keeps going, bracing a side panel between his sneaker and a stack of books. He hums under his breath. I recognize the Mothra song and bite down on a smile.

“Level?” he asks, holding a shelf while I squint at the tiny bubble on the tool.

“Decent,” I say. He adjusts a millimeter. “Better.”

He grins. “Decent to better with minimal drama. Look at us.”

We fall into a rhythm. He drills pilot holes without cracking the veneer. I follow with screws, turning my wrist in careful, even motions. He notices when I’m struggling but doesn’t take over. He moves closer instead, steadying the board with his palm, his body heat at my side. Sawdust clings to the hair on his forearm. I want to brush it off. I don’t.

“Screwdriver?” he says, holding out his hand without looking. I pass it. Our fingers slip along the same stripe of cool metal. When his skin touches mine, the sensation is immediate—a warm, bright flicker that shoots up my arm, quick and sharp, like stepping into sunlight. My breath hitches and I pretend it’s because I’m balancing a shelf.

He doesn’t react. He’s focused, leaning in to tighten the bracket with a calm strength that makes the muscles in his forearm tighten. I swallow, drop my gaze back to the instructions, and file the feeling under static electricity, or maybe under you haven’t touched anyone in a while and your nervous system is dramatic.

“You okay?” he asks, glancing at me.

“Yeah,” I say too fast. “Just reading step… twelve B. It’s really narrative.”

He smirks. “Character development for the screws.”

We both laugh, a little too loud. The moment passes. We keep building. He checks for wobble by rocking the frame with his knee, then fixes it with a small adjustment I wouldn’t have thought to make. He doesn’t brag. He just nods, satisfied, and it hits me again—that quiet competence is unfairly attractive.

He wipes his hands on his jeans and looks up at me from where he’s kneeling. “Ready for the big flip?”

“Is that a dance move?” I ask.

He grins. “Always,” he says, and we count to three and lift the frame together. His fingers press into the wood inches from mine. My palms are sweaty. It’s fine. It’s fine.

We settle it upright against the wall, both stepping back at the same time. The shelf stands, tall and even, waiting for weight. He exhales like he’s been holding something and smiles at me, open and proud.

“We did it,” he says.

“We are gods,” I say, maybe more breathless than a shelf deserves.

He leans to tighten one last screw at the base. “Almost,” he murmurs, then sits back on his heels and offers his hand without thinking. I take it. He pulls me up, steady and sure, and our palms slide against each other, warm. The spark is there again, a quick pulse under my skin. I tuck it away, neat and small, and reach for a stack of books.

The next afternoon, I sit across from a man named Lucas who introduced himself by handing me a business card for his personal brand. He’s the kind of guy who leans back with one arm sprawled on the banquette like he’s staking a claim to the entire coffee shop. He’s telling me about his morning routine in minute detail, which involves something called “mouth taping” and also, inexplicably, jump rope with weighted handles.

I sip my latte and make an encouraging face because I’m polite when trapped. My phone vibrates on my thigh. I don’t have to look to know who it is, but I do anyway.

Alex: Did you end up going? Or did you fake your own death?

Me: I’m present in body. My soul left during the phrase “biohacking my circadian rhythm.”

I glance up. Lucas is describing his water filtration system. He says words like alkalinity like they’re proof he’s interesting.

Me: He brought a travel water filter. It looks like a grenade.

Alex: Please tell me it hisses.

Me: It gurgles ominously. He’s cradling it like a pet.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. Lucas is now walking me through his macros, which I didn’t ask about. He mentions that he doesn’t drink caffeine after 10 a.m., which is tragic because it’s 3 p.m. and he’s sipping decaf like a martyr.

“Do you have any allergies?” he asks abruptly, like he just remembered I’m here.

“Cats,” I say, because it’s true, and also because I’m allergic to this conversation.

“Ah,” he says, nodding gravely. “I’m a dog person.” He then pulls up photos of a dog he fosters but hasn’t committed to because he travels “for mindset retreats.”

My phone buzzes again.

Alex: Are you safe? Blink twice if he’s explained cryptocurrency.

Me: He’s getting there. He said “portfolio” like four times.

Alex: I’ll keep the line open. Remember your code word: Mothra.

I snort into my latte and cover it with a cough. Lucas smiles like he’s charmed himself. “So, what do you do for workouts?” he asks.

“I walk to my kitchen for snacks,” I say. He doesn’t laugh. He nods like he’s going to optimize that.

He tells me about his ex, then insists he never talks about his ex. He asks me one question about my job and interrupts my answer to say he prefers to work for himself because he can’t do “bureaucracy.” He says the word like it’s a disease.

Me: He just said he’s an “ideas guy.”

Alex: Oh no.

Me: He has a whiteboard where he writes “hustle” in all caps.

Alex: I’m coming in hot with a fake emergency—should I be your plumber? Your bookshelf has a leak.

Me: Tempting.

Lucas shows me a graph on his phone that represents his sleep quality and somehow also his personal growth. There’s a jagged line. He points at a dip like it was a betrayal. His hands are manicured and he keeps brushing crumbs off the table like they offend him.

“Do you meditate?” he asks.

“I tried once and fell asleep,” I say.

“You’re not doing it right,” he says immediately.

My chest tightens. Not because he’s a monster—he’s not. He’s just not for me. I look at his mouth moving and think about Alex handing me a screwdriver and letting me take the lead. I think about the way he laughed under his breath when he realized he hummed the Mothra song without noticing. I think about how easy it felt to just exist next to him without having to defend my methods for breathing.

I glance at the time. “Shoot,” I say, putting a hand to my bag like I forgot something important. “I just remembered I told my neighbor I’d—uh—let her dog out. She’s stuck at work.” My lie is so flimsy I cringe at myself, but Lucas only nods, already typing something into his phone, probably tracking this interruption on an app.

“No worries,” he says. “We should do this again. I want to tell you about my cold plunge.”

“Maybe,” I say, which is honest in the way that means no.

Outside, the air feels lighter. I pull my phone out and type fast.

Me: Operation Exit Successful. I blamed a fictional dog.

Alex: Heroic rescue. Does the dog have a name?

Me: Sir Waggington.

Alex: Strong choice. Do you want to come over later? I have leftover takeout and a documentary about stop-motion monsters that looks terrible in a good way.

I slow to a stop on the sidewalk. The answer is too easy. It sits in my chest without any friction.

Me: Yes. Please.

Alex: I’ll heat up the lo mein. And I promise not to talk about my macros unless they’re the pasta kind.

I laugh out loud, alone on the corner. I didn’t realize how much energy I’ve spent trying to make bad conversations feel meaningful. With Alex, I don’t have to do that. I put my phone away and head toward the train, relief settling over me like a blanket, warm and simple. I’m not pretending. I’m choosing. And I know exactly where I want to be.