I reached for the cotton ball again, and Kael’s hand wrapped around mine, stopping it in the air. His touch was so unexpected that I thought I had spilled something on him, or the top had come off the polish. I looked up to his face and drank in his eyes, how far the corners of his pink lips were turned up, how set his jaw was. My fascination with him was all in the details. Nothing seemed wrong. I was confused.
Kael reached for the polish bottle. It was Marshmallow, a creamy white color from Essie. Their signature square bottle looked doll-sized in Kael’s free hand, the one he wasn’t holding mine with.
“Do you want me to do it for you?” he offered, and I let out a breath.
Blinking, I searched for a sign that he was teasing me but found nothing. I slowly pulled my hand from his and put them both in my lap.
“What?” he calmly asked, dipping the brush back into the small bottle.
I didn’t know what to say. It felt so binding, or like a big deal, but was it? Was the way my stomach danced because I couldn’t imagine any of the men in my life offering something like that? Or was it because the men in my life weren’t thoughtful and had firm ideas of gender roles? Kael lifted the brush, hurrying me along in my mental analysis.
“I have a steady hand. Technically trained, and you need to rest yours anyway. You use them for work every day and they’ve been bothering you.”
“My hands are fine. Have I said that they weren’t?” I wasn’t sure, honestly.
“You rub them all the time.” He nodded to my left hand that I just so happened to be slowly rotating in a small circle.
I froze and Kael smiled in a way that was both comforting and cocky. He was in a playful mood, it seemed. I wanted to savor his being here—the way he was making me feel—while I could; Phillip would come home, Elodie would have her baby, and Kael would be gone by this time next year. This companionship would not be mine for much longer.
My guard and boundaries tangoed with my rationality and reality as I looked at Kael. There they were again, those boundaries, after I was promising myself not to cross them less than ten minutes ago. I imagined them as big white doors inside my brain. I made sure to keep them away from my heart. We could choose Door A, where Kael paints my nails and I talk his ear off while we share dinner, or Door B, where I could keep my polish and my thoughts to myself and share a simple, friendly, drama-free meal.
“Just let me try it. If I suck as bad as you do, you can do it yourself.”
He was so convincing and made his little act of service feel so casual. I couldn’t come up with any logic that mattered more than how happy I felt in that moment.
“If you really don’t want me to—” Kael began.
“No. Go ahead. I mean, yes. You can try,” I blurted, wanting to say something before the offer was withdrawn.
He smiled at that. I couldn’t see Door B anymore; any trace of a boundary was gone.
“It’s not like I’mthatbad,” I teased.
He grabbed the towel I had brought out, unfolded it neatly, and placed it under my hands.
“Okay, so I’m not a professional. Just keep that in mind,” he cautioned, focusing intently on my thumb, with one hand holding the polish.
“My ma sometimes . . .” He brushed the pad of his thumb across the top of my bare nail and a warmth ran through me. It was sweet and felt like melted honey. “Sometimes her hands would shake, so I often helped her as I got older.”
I looked at Kael as he moved expertly from finger to finger. The image of him as a teenager, helping his mother paint her nails, made my heart want to explode. Of all the things Kael had told me about his family, I treasured this the most. He didn’t say much as he worked, and I mellowed, trusting him completely without any further protest. I just watched him, my eyes opening and closing, as we listened to the rain pick up outside, pounding softly against my roof.