“Let’s go inside, okay?” I asked softly.

“Yeah,” she agreed with a nod, staring into my eyes for a beat longer and then turning to open her door. I followed suit, rounding the hood and walking beside her to ensure she didn’t step on something that would hurt either of her bare feet.

My bag inconveniently still in my bike at the gym, I reached around the side of my door, behind the bush and pulled the hidden key out of its box before shoving it in the lock and opening the door.

With an extended arm, I suggested she go first, flipping on the switch for the light in the hall as I stepped in behind her.

“Just down and to your right,” I suggested, guiding her to the living room.

When she got to the opening, she hesitated.

Her eyes found mine as she asked, “Do you think I could take a quick shower? I’m sticky from the chalk and the rain kind of—”

“Of course.” I cut her off before hearing the rest. It didn’t matter why, other than meaning it needed rectifying.

“Come on,” I said. My hand fit directly in the slight hollow of her lower back, and her steps, though her legs were much shorter than mine, matched me beat for beat.

I reached around the wall in order to flick on the light switch in the bathroom, pushing the door out of the way and standing back to let her enter. “There are towels under the sink, shampoo and stuff in the shower. Sorry if it smells like guy, but—” I hollowed my cheeks in jest, “that’s kind of how I like to smell.”

She smiled slightly and stepped into the space, but as I turned to leave she stopped me with a hand to my shoulder.

“Is this how it’s gonna be from now on?”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Awkward. Overly nice. Tiptoeing around one another?” she offered.

I only hid part of my smile. “For right now? Yeah, probably,” I admitted. “See, I’m a little skittish about running you off and you’re trying your best to convince me you can be something other than crabby.”

“Hey!”

I released the rest of my smile, letting it soar all the way to the tops of my cheeks and pull at the corners of my eyes.

And then I winked. “Don’t worry, though. Something tells me it won’t last.”

Her shoulders relaxed at the same pace as her face, draining her of tension and filling its void with understanding.

She’d still give me a hard time, and I was more than happy to give one back. There would never be a time when we didn’t yell, and no matter how right I was, she’d still fight me on admitting it.

But we’d get to fool around a little.

I, personally, felt like it couldn’t get much better than that.

“Go shower,” I instructed. “I’ll get you some clothes to put on.”

“Thanks,” she replied. Both of us knew she didn’t just mean for the clothes.

My bedroom just down the hall, I got a pair of shorts, boxers, and a t-shirt out of my dresser fairly quickly and headed back for the bathroom.

The water was on, but I knocked to make sure she was inside and not standing naked in the middle of the bathroom. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to be that way or didn’t want to see it, but I had a feeling she felt everything I was feeling times a million.

And to me, the whole day felt—

Surreal.

Before Nik had shown up a little over three weeks ago, I would have sworn up and down that unicorns shitting rainbows and giant cars made of candy were a more realistic possibility than me getting mixed up in some pseudo-forbidden romance with anyone, let alone my new coach.

Add in the fact that I knew I’d have to face questions about my behavior that day at some point—I lived with my parents for shit’s sake—and my head was reeling.

Spinning and spiraling to figure out the ups and the downs and how to make it all order itself into something that made sense. Something that fit in with the person I thought I was or proved irrefutably that I’d been wrong all along. I couldn’t settle on either scenario, my world stuck in the limbo in between. I’d never been in between two places before.

At least, it didn’t seem like it. I knew I had been, the impossibility of getting from one place to the other without passing through the area in between crystal cut. But I usually made moves with precision, a straight line of least resistance and notably lacking in traffic.

In some ways, I hadn’t traveled much at all, sticking to my comfort zone even if I pushed at my levels of adaptability within it. I’d never felt like I was truly losing something that I desperately wanted to gain.

And that fact left me somewhat inexperienced emotionally in addition to physically.

The smell of Nik’s shampoo had me nearly coming out of my skin as I massaged it into my hair, the memory of its scent lodged in my brain from the moment I’d put my eager searching hands into his hair. The wet from the rain revived the scent as we’d kissed, bleeding it into the air like a slow release valve for the air on your tires.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Yeah?”

It cracked open slowly, a low-pitched squeal just barely emanating from poorly oiled hinges.

“I’ll just leave the clothes here on the counter,” Nik said without preamble or waiting for a reply. The door shut behind him with a click, and my head followed it by sinking into my hands.

I had to laugh to myself as I stood there under the warm water, bathed in the lingering awkwardness of his delivery.

Nervousness seeped off of his normally confident figure in the way he moved and spoke and looked at me. He said all of the right words, plugged all of the right holes, and answered all of the right questions, but he felt just as lost as me.

And the beauty of that was it made me feel a little less lost after all.

It was a spin on the old, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

For me, for us, I couldn’t help but feel that those who wander aimlessly together, aren’t, in fact, aimless at all.

When the last of the shampoo rinsed from my hair and the last of the soap slipped from my body, I turned off the water and stepped out.

His towel was fluffy and new, and its scent suggested a fresh wash.

I’d noticed briefly on the way in that everything seemed tidy and thoughtfully placed too. I wasn’t sure if this was an insight into his personality or if he just hadn’t spent enough time here to mess it up, but I logged the information and stored it for later, just in case.

His clothes were baggy, but not by too much, the muscle tone of his athletic body more lean that meaty.

I finger combed the strands of my hair and left them loose, took one last look in the mirror and deep breath in my lungs, and stepped out into the quiet darkness of the hallway.

The utter silence was disconcerting, but I figured with the riotous mess my nerves were, there could be a full blown concert taking place in his apartment and I still wouldn’t have felt completely at ease.

A small beacon of light shone from the living room, so I padded along the dark, berber carpet to the opening he’d shown me before and peeked inside. I didn’t know quite what to expect from any of it. From him, from our intimate encounter, or if it would directly lead into more.

I felt torn, both wanting to pick up where we left off and anxiously unready at the same time. When I’d stormed out of the gym, I’d been lost in myself and my mind and the lingering effects of him. Now, fresh from my shower, I’d scrubbed some of my boldness away, shining the surface to a cautiously inhibited clean.

“Hey,” he greeted me immediately from his spot on the couch, dry clothes replacing his previously soaked ones.

“Hey,” I waved back, unsure of where we were supposed to go from here.