The morning after the kiss, Noah was already in the kitchen when I came out of my room.

He stood at the counter with his back to me, pouring coffee into the same chipped mug he always used. The apartment smelled like the cheap ground beans we bought in bulk and the faint leftover rain that still clung to the windows. Sunlight cut across the floor in clean rectangles. Everything looked ordinary. That almost made it worse.

“Morning,” he said without turning around. His voice was carefully neutral, the same tone he used with the barista at the place downstairs when he didn’t feel like small talk.

“Morning.”

I moved...