Before We Call It Love

Near midnight, Nina Bell tells the man with a torn coat that she is leaving London for a six-month textile-conservation placement in Copenhagen. Felix Marr has been her safest person for eleven years: the carpenter who knows which light she needs to sew a dark seam, and whose workshop door she looks for on her way home. He is glad she got the place. He is also tired of calling everything he wants from her friendship.

They are old enough to ask before they take each other’s time. When a rail falls in Nina’s shop, she can save the work herself and let Felix keep the evening he set aside. When he offers a hand on a rainy walk, she can take it because she wants to. The changes are small enough to look easy until they have to make them again on a difficult day.

The placement has a date. Nina’s shop needs another pair of hands while she is away, and Felix has work and a father with a life of his own in London. They can spend eight weeks being careful with their friendship, or ask whether what has grown between them is worth choosing when the plane leaves. Neither knows how much of the old ease will survive an honest answer.