He has been the person she calls for eleven years. In eight weeks she leaves for Copenhagen.
For eleven years Felix has answered Nina's calls. Now he wants her to choose him before she leaves for Copenhagen.
Completed · 18 chapters · 1h 51m
WarmSensual tension; intimacy fades to black.Yearning · Tender
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Dear Maeve,
The man I call when something breaks came to my shop with a coat that could wait until morning.
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.
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It was nearly midnight. I had two boxes under the table, a conservation placement in Copenhagen and eight weeks before I had to leave. Felix looked at the boxes before he looked at the torn hem. I had told everyone else about the placement. I knew he would be glad for me, and I was afraid of what I wanted him to say after that.
For eleven years I have known which lamp he moves when I sew dark cloth and which evenings he will answer his phone. I have never asked what he puts aside when he comes. Last night he told me he has been very good at wanting only what I had room to give him. I didn’t know how to tell him I had mistaken his kindness for an endless supply.
I want to go. I want him to want me to stay. Those are two truths, and I am tired of making one of them a secret.
From Before We Call It Love
Read this if you want two old friends to risk asking for more.
Read this if you want the wait to have lasted eleven years before the first kiss.
Read this if you want longtime friends who finally name what they want.
Slow burns where the waiting is the point
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