Chapter 1: Barefoot on the Couch
The light in Natalie’s apartment was always amber and soft, spilling from a fabric-draped floor lamp in the corner. It pooled on the polished hardwood, glinting off the spines of half-read novels stacked on the floor and warming the cream-colored couch where she sat curled up. The air smelled like her—vanilla lotion and the faint, clean lavender from the plug-in diffuser by the window.
Alex hovered near the arm of the sofa, his own apartment feeling sterile and empty in comparison. He’d come over under the pretense of fixing her laptop, which was now open on the coffee table, displaying a spinning wheel of doom.
“I swear it was working this morning,” Natalie said, her voice a familiar, warm sound. She tugged at the hem of her oversized oatmeal-colored sweater, pulling it over her knees. “Then it just started being… stupid.”
“They all do that eventually,” Alex murmured, his eyes not on the screen but on her feet, tucked beneath her.
This was the ritual, the agonizing, delicious preamble. He would stand there, his palms slightly damp, his mind a silent scream of want and shame, waiting for the moment she decided to get comfortable. It was inevitable. Natalie was always barefoot at home.
“Ugh, I give up.” She sighed, a contented sound, and stretched her legs out from under her. The movement was fluid, unconscious. She hooked the heels of her sandals with her toes, one and then the other, and slid them off. They dropped to the floor with two soft thuds.
Alex’s breath didn’t hitch. He had trained himself against those obvious tells. But everything inside him stilled, focusing with an intensity that shut out the hum of the refrigerator, the distant city traffic. The world narrowed to the space between the coffee table and the couch.
She wiggled her toes, a brief, casual flex, and then settled her feet on the low wooden table. They were perfect. Small, a narrow size five. Her soles were smooth and looked impossibly soft, the skin a shade paler than the golden tan of her ankles. The arch was high, elegant. Tonight her toenails were painted a soft, shell pink, each one a neat little oval.
He felt a familiar, dizzying rush of heat crawl up his neck.
“So, do you think it’s a virus?” she asked, leaning forward to peer at the laptop. The movement shifted her weight, pressing the balls of her feet more firmly against the wood. The delicate bones stood out for a second before relaxing.
“Maybe. Let me see.” His voice sounded normal, maybe a touch thick. He lowered himself to kneel on the rug, putting himself level with her feet. The scent of vanilla strengthened, mixed with the subtler, clean scent of her skin. He could see every detail: the fine lines on her pads, the dusting of almost-invisible blond hairs on the tops of her toes, the way the pinkie toe curled in slightly.
He forced his hands to the keyboard, tapping meaningless keys. The glow from the screen lit up his fingers.
“You’re a lifesaver, Al. Seriously. My whole life is on that thing.” She reached over and ruffled his hair, a gesture so sisterly it felt like a physical blow. The guilt was a cold stone in his gut, but it was instantly warmed, smothered, by the proximity of her feet. They were right there. Eighteen inches from his face.
He imagined what it would feel like to touch them. Not in the way he dreamed about at night, darkly, feverishly, but just a simple brush of a fingertip against her arch. Would the skin be as smooth as it looked? Warm? Would she jerk away, laughing, saying his hands were cold? Or would she just… let him?
The fantasy was so vivid his hands stopped moving.
“Hello? Earth to Alex?” Natalie wiggled her toes again, a playful, dancing motion that made his vision pulse. He dragged his eyes up to her face. She was smiling, her big brown eyes crinkled at the corners, completely unaware of the war raging inside him. “You zoned out. Long week?”
“Yeah. Classes.” He managed a weak smile and looked back at the screen, pretending to type commands into the terminal. He could feel the weight of her gaze on the top of his head, then it lifted as she settled back against the cushions.
“Tell me about it. I had a schnauzer with impacted anal glands today. You haven’t known true suffering until you’ve experienced that smell in a closed exam room.” She laughed, her feet twitching slightly with her amusement.
He swallowed, his mouth dry. “Sounds rough.”
“You have no idea.” She let out a long, contented sigh and stretched her arms above her head. Her feet arched beautifully, tendons tightening, before she settled again, one foot lightly rubbing over the top of the other. The whisper of skin on skin was the loudest sound in the room to him.
He worked in silence for a few minutes, the tension coiling tighter in his chest with each passing second. The obsession was a living thing, a second heartbeat. It murmured that he could lean forward, just a little, and press his lips to the inside of her ankle. It screamed that he was disgusting, a monster, for thinking these things about his cousin, about someone who trusted him completely.
He closed the laptop with a click. “I think it’s just a memory leak. A restart should fix it. You should be good.”
“See? A lifesaver.” She swung her legs off the table, her feet disappearing beneath her as she sat up. The moment was over. A sharp, painful relief mixed with crushing disappointment washed through him. “Stay for a bit? I was gonna order Thai.”
He should leave. He knew he should. “Sure. Yeah, that sounds good.”
He moved to the other end of the couch, putting a cushion between them. A safe distance. Natalie grabbed the remote, turning on some baking competition show, and curled back up, this time tucking her feet under his thigh for warmth. The casual, trusting contact was an electric shock. He could feel the shape of them through his jeans, a slight, warm pressure.
He didn’t move a muscle.
She chatted about work, about a new guy she’d met who seemed nice, about her plans to repaint the bathroom. Alex nodded, making sounds of acknowledgement, every atom of his being focused on the heat seeping into his leg.
Then, during a lull as two contestants frantically piped frosting, she pulled her feet out and examined them. “Man, I need a pedicure. This polish is chipped everywhere.” She rubbed her thumb over the big toe on her right foot, brushing away a flake of pink.
She glanced at him, her expression bright and open. “Hey, you’re the artsy one. What color should I get next?”
The question was so normal, so utterly innocent, it felt like a trap. He looked at her feet, now held up in her own hands as she studied them. His mind went blank, then offered a frantic cascade of answers: Clear. Bare. Don’t cover them. A deep red. A pale blue. Anything. Nothing.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, his voice rough. He cleared his throat. “Maybe like a… a neutral beige?”
“Boring!” she laughed, dropping her feet back onto his lap. “You’re no help. I’ll ask Sarah. She always has strong opinions.”
The Thai food came. They ate off the coffee table. She kept her feet tucked beside her, sometimes brushing against his leg as she shifted. Every point of contact was a brand.
When he left an hour later, the cold night air hitting his face was a slap back to reality. He walked to his car, his body humming with a frustrated, aching energy. The image of her feet on the table, the sound of her skin whispering against itself, the weight of them on his leg—it all played on a loop behind his eyes.
He fumbled with his keys, his hands unsteady.
As he drove the short distance to his own quiet, dark apartment, only one thought circled, clear and hopeless and relentlessly true: he would be back. He would always find a reason to come back. And she would never, ever know why.