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I told myself it was for water. I pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, took the stairs on the edges of my feet and stopped in the kitchen doorway.
Jess stood at the kettle in a vest top and tiny cotton knickers, curls piled up and falling down. Behind her, her washing hung on the radiator: bras, lacy thongs, a pair of red knickers drying in the warm like a shop window I wasn’t supposed to look in.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “Did I wake you? These walls, God. I swear I can hear you turn over.”
“I heard you,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Colour rushed up her neck and across her freckled chest. Then the dimple appeared. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough to need a glass of water.”
She laughed, big and helpless, and covered her face. Then she told me about Callum, the ex, who said she was too loud, too needy, too everything. “Say I’m not too much,” she said.
“You’re not too much.”
“Again.”
“You’re not too much, Jess.”
She stepped close. Her nipples stood hard through the thin cotton, and she smelled of coconut shampoo and warm skin. She laid her palm flat on my chest.
“Tom,” she said softly. “Your heart’s going like mad.”
She didn’t move her hand. I didn’t move away.