Chapter 3: Morning After
The first sensation was the empty coolness of the sheets where his body had been. Hannah surfaced from sleep slowly, heavy-limbed and disoriented. The grey morning light seeped around the edges of the blinds. She stretched, a full-body uncoiling that met immediate resistance—a deep, pleasant ache in muscles she’d forgotten she had, a tenderness between her thighs. Memory returned not as a flood, but in specific, vivid flashes: the feel of his stubble against her palm, the solid weight of him, the look on his face in the lightning’s burst.
He was gone.
A sharp, familiar loneliness lanced through her, instantly souring the soft afterglow. Of course, she thought, closing her eyes again. One night of weakness, and now the morning-after walk of shame. Or in this case, the drive of shame. She pulled the comforter over her head, inhaling the scent of him that lingered on the fabric. It was better this way, probably. Cleaner. No awkward small talk over coffee, no fumbling for words. Just a return to the normal, complicated silence.
Then she heard it. A faint clatter from the kitchen. The low, resonant hum of her ancient refrigerator door closing. The sizzle of something in a pan.
Her heart did a funny little stutter. She pushed the covers back and sat up, wincing as her lower back protested. She found her silk nightdress on the floor and pulled it on, not bothering with the cardigan. She padded barefoot out of the bedroom, the plush rug in the hall soft under her feet.
He stood at her stove, his back to her. He’d found her one somewhat-presentable apron—a faded blue gingham thing—and tied it around his waist over his jeans. He was shirtless. The muscles of his back shifted under his skin as he deftly flipped something in a frying pan. The scene was so domestic, so profoundly unexpected, that she just leaned against the doorframe and watched.
The kitchen was warm and filled with the rich, salty smell of bacon and the earthy scent of frying potatoes. He’d already made coffee; a full pot steamed on the machine. He’d even found her tray—the one she used when she was feeling particularly sorry for herself—and was arranging a plate with a careful focus usually reserved for engine parts.
“I hope you like your eggs scrambled,” he said without turning around. “It’s the only way I don’t completely ruin them.”
“You’re cooking,” she said, the words coming out as a statement of pure astonishment.
He glanced over his shoulder, a soft, easy smile on his face. It was the same smile he gave her at work when he handed her a lighter box. “I’m attempting to. You were dead to the world. Figured you could use the fuel.” His eyes did a quick, appreciative sweep of her in the doorway. “You should sit. You’re making the kitchen look… distracted.”
She laughed, a short, surprised burst of sound, and slid into a chair at the small table. He brought over the tray first, setting it down with a flourish. On it sat a plate with perfectly golden scrambled eggs, a neat stack of crisp bacon, and a pile of home fries. A small glass of orange juice, a fork, and a folded paper towel as a napkin completed the arrangement.
“This is… insane,” she said, looking up at him.
“It’s eggs,” he shrugged, turning back to the stove to make his own plate. “Don’t give me a big head.”
But she couldn’t stop watching him. There was a quiet, unassuming competence in his movements that she found incredibly, disorientingly sexy. It wasn’t the hungry desperation of the night before. This was different. This was him seeing her empty fridge and figuring it out, washing a pan she’d left in the sink, taking care. She took a bite of the eggs. They were perfect—fluffy, buttery, seasoned just right.
He joined her, sitting across the small table with his own heaping plate. He’d pulled on his t-shirt, she noticed. A return to boundaries.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked, digging in.
“Like a rock. A very… well-used rock.” She felt a blush creep up her neck. “You?”
“Best sleep I’ve had in months,” he said, and the way he said it, matter-of-fact and sincere, made her believe him. He took a long drink of coffee. “So. Today’s Sunday.”
“Astute observation.”
“You know what I mean.” He met her gaze. “We don’t have to… figure everything out today. But we work tomorrow. I just… I don’t want it to be weird.”
“It’s going to be weird, Matt,” she said softly, not unkindly. “We made it weird.”
He nodded, accepting this. “Okay. But can it be a manageable weird? Like, we keep loading trucks. You still hate my music. I still steal your spare gloves when I can’t find mine.”
The normalcy of the image was a lifeline. “I can do manageable weird.”
A comfortable silence fell, broken only by the clink of forks on plates. He’d finished his food quickly and sat back, watching her eat with a satisfied expression. She was mopping up the last of the egg yolk with a piece of bacon when a sharp knock sounded at the front door.
They both froze.
Hannah’s eyes went wide. No one visited her on Sunday mornings. Matt’s posture shifted subtly, from relaxed to alert.
The knock came again, more insistent. Rap-rap-rap.
“You expecting someone?” he asked, his voice low.
She shook her head, pushing her chair back. “Probably a package. They leave them next door sometimes.”
She went to the door, smoothing down her nightdress, and peered through the peephole. It wasn’t a delivery driver. It was Mrs. Gable from 2B, her septuagenarian neighbor, standing ramrod straight in the hall, her floral housecoat tightly belted. Her perm was a helmet of tight grey curls, her expression one of profound disapproval.
Hannah’s stomach sank. She opened the door a crack. “Mrs. Gable. Hi. Everything okay?”
The older woman’s sharp eyes darted past Hannah, trying to see into the apartment. “I heard a considerable amount of commotion last night, Hannah. During the storm.” Her voice was thin and pointed. “A man’s voice. And… other noises. The walls in these units are paper, as you know. I was concerned there was some sort of… distress.”
Heat flooded Hannah’s face. She was acutely aware of Matt, just out of sight in the kitchen, listening to every word. “Oh. No, no distress. Everything’s fine. Sorry if we… if it was loud. The storm was bad.”
“We,” Mrs. Gable repeated, latching onto the pronoun. Her lips pursed. “I see. Well, given your… condition,” her eyes dropped meaningfully to Hannah’s stomach, visible through the thin silk, “I simply felt it my duty to check. One hears stories. You being alone and all. I wanted to ensure you weren’t being taken advantage of.”
The condescension was a physical slap. Hannah felt a surge of defensive anger, hot and bright. She opened the door wider, no longer trying to hide. “I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Gable. But I’m perfectly fine. This is my friend, Matt. He was just making me breakfast.”
As if on cue, Matt appeared. He didn’t crowd the doorway, but stood a few feet back in the living room, a solid, calm presence. He’d put the apron aside. He gave a small, polite nod. “Morning, ma’am.”
Mrs. Gable’s eyes swept over him—the tall, shirtless young man in her neighbor’s apartment the morning after a storm. Her disapproval crystallized into something colder, more knowing. “I see. Well. I’ll leave you to your… breakfast.” She turned on her heel, her slippers whispering on the hallway carpet. “Do try to keep it down in the future. Some of us require our rest.”
"Actually dear, since he is here. Would you mind asking if he helped me move a couple boxes over to the storage building?" Hannah looks at her then apologetically over to Matt who nods slowly agreeing. Mrs. Gable says to knock when they're there.
Hannah closed the door slowly, leaning her forehead against the cool wood. The humiliated flush was still burning her cheeks.
“Well,” Matt said from behind her. “That was subtle.”
A helpless giggle bubbled up in Hannah’s throat, born of sheer mortification. She turned around. “I’m so sorry. She’s a nightmare.”
“She’s worried about you,” he said, though his jaw was tight. “Her delivery needs work, but I get it. The ‘taken advantage of’ part stung a little.”
He comes over and gets the urge and feeling she wants a smooch, planting one, two, and a really good third. She covers for her neighbor again, before he heads out to go assist her.
She covered her face with her hands, the laughter dissolving into a groan. “I need to put on actual clothes before we do this.” She gestured vaguely at her nightdress. “Can you give me like, ninety seconds?”
“Take two minutes,” he said, heading toward the kitchen. “I’ll wash the pans. A guy should earn his keep.”
In her bedroom, she moved quickly, the soft cotton of a simple maternity dress a welcome armor after the silk. She brushed her teeth, ran a hand through her tangled hair. Her reflection showed flushed cheeks and eyes that looked brighter, less tired. She paused, a hand resting on the curve of her stomach. We made it weird, she’d said. But as she listened to him clinking dishes in her sink, the weirdness felt strangely, tentatively good.
When she emerged, he was at the door, slipping his shoes on. “Lead the way,” he said.
Mrs. Gable’s apartment was a mirror image of Hannah’s but frozen in a different decade. Doilies covered every surface, and the air smelled strongly of lemon polish and cat. Five medium-sized cardboard boxes were lined up by the door, each neatly labeled in a spidery script: ‘Photo Albums’, ‘Christmas’, ‘Dresden Figurines’.
“These are the offenders,” Mrs. Gable said, pointing a bony finger. “The storage unit is just at the end of building B. It’s not far.”
Matt crouched, testing the weight of the top box. “No problem.” He stacked the ‘Christmas’ box on top of ‘Photo Albums’, and then balanced ‘Dresden Figurines’ precariously on top of that, hefting the tower with a grunt. The muscles in his arms corded, but his hold was steady.
“Matt, be careful,” Hannah said, instinctively reaching out.
“I’ve got it,” he said, his voice slightly strained but confident. “You ladies grab the lighter ones.”
Hannah picked up a box labeled ‘Magazines’. Mrs. Gable took the final one, ‘Knitting Yarn’. They filed out into the breezeway, the morning air cool and damp from the storm. Matt walked ahead, his focus on the stacked load.
“He’s quite strong,” Mrs. Gable observed, not quietly, as they followed a dozen paces behind.
“He works in a warehouse,” Hannah said simply.
“I noticed he spent the night.” Mrs. Gable adjusted her grip on her box. “The Henderson boy in 4C, you know, the one with the motorcycle? He had a different girl over last weekend. The noise was disgraceful. I had to call the front office.”
Hannah kept her eyes on Matt’s retreating back. “Is that right.”
“And the new people in 3A,” she continued, undeterred. “They argue. You can hear every word. She says he doesn’t listen, he says she nags. It’s very tiresome.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t think they’re married.”
They reached the long, covered walkway that connected the buildings. Matt was already at the far end, setting the boxes down by a roll-up metal door.
“Your young man is polite,” Mrs. Gable conceded, as if bestowing a great honor. “He called me ‘ma’am’. You don’t hear that much anymore from people his age.”
“He’s a good friend,” Hannah said, the word feeling both true and utterly inadequate.
“Friendship is important,” Mrs. Gable said, with a weighty nod. “Especially now. You’ll need help. It’s not a sign of weakness to accept it, dear.”
The unexpected shift from gossip to something resembling kindness caught Hannah off guard. She looked at the old woman, really looked, and saw not just a busybody, but a lonely person in a housecoat, navigating boxes of memories. “Thank you, Mrs. Gable.”
Matt had the storage unit open. He stowed the boxes with efficient care, placing the figurines with particular gentleness. The task was done in less than five minutes. As they walked back, the dynamic had shifted. The silence was companionable.
Back at Hannah’s door, Mrs. Gable gave a stiff nod. “Thank you both. You’ve saved my arthritis a week of trouble.” Her eyes met Hannah’s. “The offer for the crib stands, whenever you’re ready.”
Then she disappeared into 2B, the door clicking shut with finality.
Hannah let out a long, slow breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. They were alone again, standing in the sun-dappled hallway. The mundane chore had somehow defused the earlier tension, grounding the surreal morning in the physical reality of cardboard and sore muscles.
“She’s not all bad,” Matt said, reading her thoughts.
“No,” Hannah agreed, unlocking her door. “She’s just… paying attention.”
Inside, the familiar scent of coffee and bacon still hung in the air, mixed now with the clean smell of dish soap. He’d washed everything. The kitchen was spotless. This simple, thorough act of care struck her with more force than any passionate gesture from the night before.
He lingered near the door, his hands in his pockets. “I should probably head out. Let you have your Sunday.”
The thought of her empty apartment, the entire quiet day stretching ahead, suddenly felt oppressive. The memory of the storm, and the way it had pushed them together, was replaced by the plain, sunlit reality of now. She didn’t want him to go.
“Or,” she said, the word tumbling out before she could stop it. “You could stay. We could figure out what manageable weird looks like. In practice.”
He looked at her, his expression unreadable for a beat too long. The quiet hum of her refrigerator filled the space. She immediately regretted the words, their neediness hanging in the air between them like the scent of the bacon grease he’d so carefully wiped away.
“Stay and do what?” he asked, not unkindly. He took a single step further into the room, away from the door. “Watch TV? Pretend last night was just a weird storm thing and then… what? Have another awkward breakfast tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, wrapping her arms around herself. The silk of her nightdress under her palms was a cold reminder of how it started. “Talk, maybe. Figure out if we just ruined everything.”
“We didn’t ruin it.” He ran a hand over his head, his gaze dropping to the worn carpet. “But if I stay in here with you, in this… cozy cave, we’re not gonna talk. We both know that.” He looked up, meeting her eyes. The hunger from the night before was gone, replaced by a frustrating, solid clarity. “The walls are paper. And I don’t want to be the noise Mrs. Gable complains about next week.”
Hannah felt a sharp sting of rejection. She turned toward the kitchen window, blinking fast. “Right. Sure. You should go.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” His voice was closer now. She could feel his presence just behind her, a warm disturbance in the air. “Your neighbor thinks I’m some guy taking advantage. If I hole up in here with you all day, that’s the story. For her. For us, maybe.”
“So what’s the alternative?” she said, her voice tighter than she intended.
He was silent for a moment. Then he let out a soft breath. “Then instead, why don’t we go take a walk, a longer walk. That way we’re less likely to be…‘bunnies.’” He said the last word with a deliberate, awkward flatness, making it clear he was quoting the old woman’s unspoken judgement.
A surprised laugh hiccupped out of Hannah. She turned to face him. “Bunnies?”
“You know. Multiplying. Making a ruckus.” A faint, embarrassed smile touched his lips. “It was the vibe she was throwing.”
The simplicity of it, the sheer normalcy, was disarming. A walk. People did that. Friends did that. It was daylight, out in the open, away from beds and sofas and listening ears. It felt like a lifeline thrown into the turbulent sea of whatever this was.
“Okay,” she said, the tension in her shoulders easing a fraction. “A walk. Let me get real shoes.”
The neighborhood under the Sunday sun was a different world from the one shrouded in last night’s storm. Puddles shimmered in potholes, reflecting a sharp, clean blue sky. The air smelled of wet asphalt and damp earth. Hannah led them away from the apartment complex, past the rows of identical balconies, toward a older grid of streets with wider sidewalks and stubborn oak trees.
They walked in silence for a block, the only sound the scuff of their shoes and the distant whine of a lawnmower. The space between them felt vast, charged with everything unsaid.
“I’m not sorry,” Matt said finally, his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets. “About last night.”
“I’m not either,” Hannah replied, watching a sparrow hop along a fence line. “But it complicates my already spectacularly complicated life.”
“Yeah.” He kicked a pebble. It skittered into the gutter. “The baby’s father… is he in the picture?”
The question was blunt. She appreciated it. “No. And that’s by design. It was a… transactional situation. He’s not a factor.” She glanced at him. “Does that matter?”
He considered this. “It matters that you’re alone. It doesn’t matter why. Just changes the calculus.”
“What calculus?”
“Of me being here.” He stopped walking, turning to look at her fully. The sunlight caught the gold flecks in his brown eyes. “I like you, Hannah. I liked you before the storm. I like working next to you, even when you’re giving me hell about my playlist. This isn’t some… rescue mission. But you’ve got a whole other person coming. That’s bigger than any… whatever this is.”
The words hung there, honest and terrifying. She’d expected desire, or regret, not this clear-eyed assessment. It was more intimate than anything they’d done in the dark.
“I know it’s bigger,” she said, her voice small. “I think about it every second. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know that yesterday, after that shitty day, the only thing that didn’t feel like a weight was you. And last night, for a few hours, I didn’t feel alone.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. He looked away, down the long, sun-dappled street. “I can’t be the thing that makes you not alone. That’s too much.”
“I’m not asking you to be.” She started walking again, forcing him to follow. “I’m just telling you what is. You asked about the calculus. That’s my side of it.”
They reached a small neighborhood park, mostly empty save for a man throwing a tennis ball for a dog. They sat on a bench that was still damp, the cold seeping through the fabric of her dress. She drew her legs up, resting her chin on her knees.
“What’s yours?” she asked. “Your side.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, watching the dog sprint. “My side is I’m twenty-eight. I drive a forklift. My five-year plan used to be about maybe becoming a shift supervisor.” He paused. “It didn’t include getting involved with a pregnant coworker. No offense.”
“None taken.” The truth was a cold, clean blade. It hurt, but it wasn’t messy.
“But,” he continued, the word heavy. “My side is also that I can’t stop thinking about you. And it’s not just from last night. It’s from weeks ago, months. The way you never ask for help moving the heavy stuff, you just figure it out. The way you hum along to the radio when you think no one’s listening. It’s you, Hannah. Not just… the situation.”
Her breath caught. The dog barked, a sharp, joyful sound in the quiet.
“So your calculus is a mess too,” she said softly.
“A disaster.” He finally looked at her, a wry, helpless smile finally breaking through. “I’m terrible at math.”
She smiled back, and for a moment, it was simple. Just two people on a bench, sharing a weak joke. The future receded, leaving only the present: the chill of the bench, the warmth of the sun on their faces, the undeniable pull between them.
“So what do we do with this mess?” she asked.
He stood up, offering her his hand. It was a large hand, familiar now. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet, not letting go immediately.
“We keep walking,” he said, his fingers lacing with hers. The contact was electric, a promise and a question. “We see where the sidewalk goes. And we try… really damn hard… not to be bunnies.”