Okay... hair, face, teeth... don't need to eat, my mind ran down the list as I roamed the back few rooms. Um... sweater! Yeah. Keys, notebook, both socks... matching shoes, gloves? Nah. I rounded the corner to enter the kitchen and quite nearly sent him sprawling.

"Ooh, I'm— my,— Michael?!"

Shock. The absolute last person, Jim Morrison aside, that I expected to fly into first thing in the morning greeted me with an apology. Michael Bridge, in my house, probably having already eaten his portion of whatever my family was still working on in the dining room, and perhaps even more disarmingly handsome than ever for the fact that he was, indeed, the first thing I was really seeing on the morning when (I thought) I needed him least.
And he smelled incredible: clean and strong and calm, like soap and newspaper, or autumn.

"What are you doing here?" I willfully relaxed, sensing that I had recoiled on contact.

"Good morning, Marie." He kindly held his laughter. And then it disappeared, taking his smile with it. "Did I scare you?"

"Yeah." I dismissed it with a soft smile. "Don't worry about it though."

"Sorry." I hated it when he said it that way, hanging his head like a chastised pet. Sometimes I thought I hated him for doing it, but I didn't really. I couldn't. I mean, seriously, to see Michael was to like him, and to know him was to love him.

"I said don't worry about it, I'm fine." That came out a little harsher than I meant. I walked past him into the kitchen. "So," Awkwardness. "What's going on?"

"Oh, I, uh, just came to see how your reacclimation to home was progressing." Yes, he really talks like that. "Have you seen any of the others yet? Aside from, uh, Andrew, I mean."

"Yeah, actually." My answer came as I finished a glass of water. "I had dinner with the Delaneys last night."

"Serious?"

"Yep." The 'p' on that word always popped when I said it.

"How was it?" His eyes followed as I dug an apple out of the fridge and rinsed a small paring knife that had apparently been used to cut one earlier.

"It was good." I plied my words casually, not wanting to make him feel discarded, and wondered suddenly if Andrew had said anything about my weirdness with Michael. No one had mentioned him. And whoever had called Noah had overlooked him.

"Good." Michael nodded slowly.

"Apple?" I offered him the first piece on the end of the knife.