"Are you stalking me now?"
She said it with the specific lightness of someone attempting to redirect a conversation through humor, which was a technique Zeph had encountered before and which worked on people who were willing to be redirected.
"What was close," he said again.
She stepped back from the door and went into her apartment. The movement of someone buying a half-second to recalibrate. "I was returning the cups to the kitchen after you left. Almost dropped one." She said it with the easy delivery of someone producing a reasonable explanation. "That was all. You heard me startle myself."
Zeph followed her inside.
"I heard you say that was close with the specific tone of someone who had just survived something."
"I'm very attached to those cups," she said. "They were my grandmother's."
