Chapter Three — An Inch of Distance (continued)

By eleven ten, Asher had discovered two things about rain: it could find its way through a jacket he had been assured was waterproof, and it made the memory of Luna kissing his cheek considerably harder to ignore.

He had seen her safely onto her tram when the downpour finally weakened. Now his damp shoes stood on a towel by the door of his Philadelphia apartment, and the crooked paper lantern she'd insisted he take home sat on the kitchen counter. She had kept the yellow one. Their little diplomatic mission had survived, though his blue frame looked like it had negotiated a ceasefire with a lawn mower.

His phone lit up beside it.

Nico calling.

Asher answered on speaker. “Before you ask, no, the new record hasn't vanished from everyone's playlists in the past four minutes.”

“Before you ask,” Nico replied, “I am calling about the eight-second recording you sent me with no title and the sound of a car indicator in the background. Is this your next artistic statement, or did you butt-dial me in traffic?”

“The indicator has excellent instincts.”

“It's more rhythmically consistent than you. Play me the part you actually meant.”

Asher opened the voice memo he'd made after meeting Luna on Friday. The bright, quick little idea still worked. What had changed was everything he heard around it. The first time he'd imagined a stranger who could ruin his composure in a single conversation. Now he knew how Luna frowned at a crooked knot, how she pretended not to blush when he caught her looking, and how she could turn a broken toy into a government official.

He played the new sketch. Halfway through, he cut the audio.

“Too certain,” he said.

Nico waited. “That's inconvenient. You usually like being certain.”

“The singer keeps announcing he's won her over. That isn't the feeling.” Asher tapped two fingers against the counter. “It's that he thinks he's in control right up until she pushes back.”

“Then don't have him win at the beginning. Leave her room to answer.”

Asher moved a phrase later in the draft, leaving a little space where the singer had previously rushed to fill it. He tried the melody again. This time the response seemed possible, mischievous rather than guaranteed.

“Better,” Nico said. “Now explain the glass.”

Asher glanced at his notebook. Beside a rough outline of a crowded room, he'd drawn a water glass with an arrow pointing back across the table. In the imagined scene, a woman caught the singer watching her and slid his own drink back toward him without breaking eye contact. It was a tiny, devastating act of flirtation.

“It's an image,” Asher said.

“It's a suspiciously specific image.”

“She didn't do it.”

“Who didn't?”

Asher leaned against the counter. “Her name is Luna.”

There was an appreciative silence on the line.

“The library woman,” Nico said at last. “The one who identified a loose adapter and apparently shut down a significant percentage of your higher brain functions.”

“That's an aggressive interpretation.”

“Did Luna push a glass across a table?”

“No. We played pinball. She accused me of cheating. We ate fries. Tonight we made lanterns, got soaked, and she kissed my cheek.”

Nico made a small, delighted noise that Asher would ordinarily have turned into a professional disciplinary matter.

“Not the point,” Asher said.

“It's very much a point. Was the glass even there?”

“There was a glass at dinner, yes. It behaved itself.”

“An exemplary supporting character.”

Asher laughed, then grew serious. “The glass is what it felt like. That little movement where she looks straight at you and you realize she knows exactly what she's doing. I could describe every actual minute and still miss it.”

“Good,” Nico said. “Because if you make a documentary out of two dates, we'll have forty-seven verses about change machines and wet cardboard.”

“Don't threaten me with a deluxe edition.”

“I'm threatening you with craft. You've got a real feeling. Put it in a fictional room if the room makes it sharper. Just don't pretend you know what she thinks.”

That landed. Asher had written the imagined woman as effortlessly yielding to every provocation. Luna, who had set the terms of the first date, beaten him into earning an absurd pigeon, and chosen exactly when to touch him, would have hated it.

He struck out the easy surrender. He left her a choice.

Nico listened to the altered sketch and gave a short whistle. “There. Now he might actually be in trouble.”

“He is.”

For once, Nico didn't turn the admission into a joke.

Asher saved the private draft with a working title: Stuck on You. It was nowhere near a finished song. There was no completed recording to release, only a melody finding its shape, a few provisional images, and one decision he knew he would keep: whatever the singer claimed, the woman in this story would never be a prop.

“Don't send that to the distribution team,” Nico said. “Send it to me tomorrow when you've slept.”

“Since when do you believe in sleep?”

“Since I started getting calls about fictional tableware at eleven at night.”

The call ended. Asher glanced at the blue lantern on his counter and touched the place on his cheek where Luna had kissed him.

He didn't need the glass to have happened. He needed the song to make someone feel what that one small touch had done to him.