LOVE RENOVATED

EPISODE 3:THE SPACE BETWEEN US

In the dark, Mia could hear her heartbeat more clearly than she could see his face. It would take her a long time afterward to decide that was the most honest her body had been with her in weeks.

"Jonah." She repeated his name, just to feel it in her mouth. It felt wrong to enjoy it this much and this fast, especially with a man whose company had threatened to sue her just seven hours ago.

"I should find a flashlight," he said, but he didn’t move.

"I should let you."

Neither of them moved.

Lightning flashed in the kitchen for half a second, just long enough for her to see the exact shape of his face six inches from hers. They had drifted there in the dark, closer than either had planned, like water finding the lowest point in a room without asking. In that moment, she noticed his eyes weren’t on her mouth, as she expected. Instead, they were gazing at her as if he was trying to memorize something he feared he wouldn’t see again.

The darkness swallowed that image immediately, which felt, in some way, more cruel than not seeing it at all.

"For the record," he said, his voice low and rougher than earlier, "I came over to talk about subway tile."

"For the record," Mia replied, "I let you in because of your comment about the crown molding, not because you have an unfairly good jaw in the porch light."

"You think I have a good jaw."

"I think you have an unfairly good jaw. There's a difference, and I resent it."

He laughed, a real laugh that seemed to surprise him, like it had been stuck inside him for far too long. The warmth of it in the dark, so close, did something to the backs of Mia's knees that she chose not to examine.

She found her phone in her back pocket and turned on the flashlight. The sudden light made them both flinch, and they laughed again, softer this time. It was the kind of laugh that happens when two people realize they’ve been caught standing closer than they meant to.

"There," she said, a bit breathless, pointing the beam toward the hallway. "Working technology. Crisis averted."

But it was not over.

The first drop of water landed on her collarbone at the exact moment sarcasm from the universe reminded her she hadn’t suffered enough indignities that night. The second landed in her hair. By the third, they were both looking up at the ceiling above the kitchen doorway, where a dark stain had spread directly beneath the second-floor hallway. Right beneath, Mia realized with growing horror, the raccoon hole.

"That's not good," Jonah said as he began to move, shrugging out of his jacket like he viewed crisis and useful as the same instinct.

"That is really not good."

"Buckets. Now. Anything that can hold water...I don’t care if it’s a vase or a wedding...." he caught himself and glanced at her. He adjusted mid-sentence with clear effort, "....just anything."

She didn’t correct him. She was too busy running for the kitchen cabinets, the flashlight beam swinging wildly across the room. They both moved in the charged chaos of an emergency, leaving no time for self-consciousness.

They worked for the next twenty minutes like people who had done this together a hundred times instead of none. He brought the stepladder in from his truck without needing to be asked. She held the flashlight steady at angles she didn’t know her arms could sustain. When the bucket filled faster than they expected, Jonah grasped her wrist, warm and sure, guiding it half a foot to the left....here, hold it here....and the touch lasted just long enough to be significant without overstaying its welcome. After that, Mia spent the rest of the night adjusting to the warmth where his fingers had been.

At one point, steadying the ladder while he reached up into the ceiling panel, she found her palm resting flat against the small of his back. This was purely structural, to keep four hundred pounds of contractor from crashing through her good plaster. She felt his body go still beneath her hand for one breath before he continued working as if it hadn’t happened.

It had happened, and they both knew it, but neither said a word.

"Talk to me," he said eventually, his voice strained from the angle, the flashlight clamped between his teeth. "Distract me. I hate confined spaces."

"You're a contractor. You go inside walls for a living."

"I hate confined spaces with company. It’s different."

"Fine." She steadied the ladder, kept her hand where it needed to be, and told herself the heat rising up her arm was just adrenaline. "Ask me something."

"The dress." He spoke carefully, like setting down something fragile. "Why is it still in the car?"

Mia's whole body tensed, but his hands kept working above her, methodical and patient. They gave her a place to look that wasn’t at his face.

"Because if I bring it inside," she said, "it becomes part of the house. It becomes part of starting over. Right now, it’s still just… evidence. Of something that almost happened. I don’t know how to throw it away, and I can’t stand to hang it up, so it just rides around. Like I haven’t decided yet whether I can be done."

The ceiling panel clicked back into place. He didn’t come down immediately.

"My ex-wife kept the ring," he said, looking at the ceiling, not at her. "She sold it eventually. Used the money to buy out my half of the equipment we bought together for the business. So now I drive a truck I paid for twice, doing a job that used to have both our names on the door. And somewhere in this city, there's a stranger wearing the diamond that was supposed to show I’d done one thing right in my life." He climbed down carefully, the flashlight beam lighting up both their faces from below, casting them in gold and shadow. "So I don’t think you’re behind with the dress. I think some things just take the time they take."

Mia hadn’t expected to cry. She hadn’t really cried since the night Daniel told her in their kitchen. She had been too busy being fine, being gracious, being the woman everyone admired for how well she was handling it. But there was something about being handed someone else’s hurt at one in the morning, in a half-flooded kitchen, by a man who had just spent twenty minutes saving her ceiling without being asked, that broke something loose that weeks of dignity hadn’t touched.

He noticed before she could hide it. He didn’t look away, and he didn’t make it anything more than it was. He just reached out slowly, asking for permission with the speed of his own hand, and he brushed a tear from her cheekbone with his thumb, as if it was the most ordinary thing to do at one in the morning in a stranger's flooding kitchen.

His hand lingered there, cradling her jaw lightly, like he had half-forgotten to take it away.

The space between their faces had shrunk again. Smaller than the porch, smaller than the dark kitchen doorway. Small enough that Mia could feel his warmth and see the moment his eyes finally dropped to her mouth.

"Mia," he said again, lower this time, as if the name cost him something to say twice in one night.

Her phone, still gripped flashlight-up in her free hand, lit up brightly between them with an incoming call. The name on the screen, glowing in the six inches of air they hadn’t closed yet, was something they couldn’t miss.

"DANIEL".

1:14 a.m.

Neither of them moved. The phone kept ringing, illuminating both their faces with flashes of cold light. Jonah's hand was still on her jaw, and Mia couldn’t tell whether the look that crossed his face in that light was hurt, jealousy, or the kind of terrible patience of a man preparing to be left standing exactly where he was while she answered.