No Badge

Ash saw Delilah waiting by the river steps and wanted to kiss her before either of them could invent a useful question.

She had seen him too. She put her phone away, turned toward him and smiled without the cautious second look that usually followed. He forgot the route he had chosen for their walk. There had been a route. It seemed an extraordinary use of his afternoon now.

“You’re early,” she said.

“So are you.”

“I’ve had an unstructured day. It’s done terrible things to my punctuality.”

She was wearing the blue coat. The missing button was still missing. He liked that she had arrived with it undone, as if she expected the evening to stay warm enough for her.

“Did you finish?” he asked.

“My contract ended today. I handed over the queue and returned the pass.”

“How do you feel?”

“As if I should be checking an inbox I can’t use.” She looked at his empty hands. “You?”

“I chose a walk.”

“That sounds serious.”

“It has a bakery. I tried not to overcomplicate it.”

“Good. I might need something with sugar before I become fit company.”

She took his hand.

Ash had thought about the palm she had offered across a café table, about the cuff she had touched on Saturday, about all the times he had been close enough to her to do this. None of the thinking had prepared him for the immediate warmth of her fingers between his. He stopped walking before they had begun.

Delilah looked up. “Too much?”

“No.” He turned toward her. “Not remotely.”

The smile left her face slowly, without taking its welcome away. She stepped closer. He could hear the traffic behind them and the water below the steps, and beneath both the roughened sound of his own breathing.

“I would like that kiss now,” she said.

“So would I.”

He touched her cheek with his free hand. She leaned into it, watching him until he bent his head. The first kiss was warm and brief, her mouth soft beneath his, and he drew back far enough to see her smile return.

“Yes,” she said, almost under her breath. Then she caught the front of his coat and kissed him again.

He had known she could be direct. Knowing it was nothing like feeling her choose him with both hands, her fingers settling against his chest as he put his arm around her. She moved closer of her own accord. He could feel the small, unsteady laugh she made before he could hear it, and he wanted to know what had pleased her enough to interrupt herself.

“What?” he asked against her cheek.

“You were very calm in my imagination.”

“I wasn’t there.”

She laughed properly then. He rested his forehead against hers and laughed too, with the relief of a man who had spent days expecting pleasure to require an explanation. Her hand slid up to the back of his neck. He kissed the corner of her mouth because it was close, because she turned to meet him, because for once there was no better reason he had to find.

They stood together until the warmth had settled into something he could carry while walking. Delilah lowered her hands but kept one in his.

“The bakery,” she said.

“Still there, I hope.”

“We should check.”

He let her pull him into step. Nothing had called them apart. They could have stayed, and would have missed the last hour of sunlight on the river and whatever pastry she intended to buy. He liked having more than one good thing to choose.

The bakery had three tables outside and a tray of apple turnovers left behind the glass. Delilah chose one with the filling coming through the side. Ash took the smaller one beside it. She noticed.

“Do you actually want that one?”

“Yes.”

“You looked at mine first.”

“I was wondering how you were going to eat it without wearing it.”

“With confidence.”

She acquired a flake of pastry on her coat almost at once. He handed her a napkin without speaking. She held his gaze while she brushed the flake away, then stole a clean corner from his napkin because she’d already put apple filling on hers.

The table was too small for his knees. He shifted sideways and found hers against his. She left it there. Every time he reached for his plate, her knee pressed a little more firmly against him. The pleasure was absurdly distracting. He missed the beginning of her sentence.

“You aren’t listening,” she said.

“I am now.”

“I asked where you’d go if there were no route.”

He looked along the river. He had checked distances, opening times, whether there would be a place to sit. All useful facts. None told him what he wanted when she wasn’t depending on him to have arranged something.

“There’s a footbridge farther down. I like the view from the middle.”

“Then let’s go there.”

“The bakery was the extent of my plan.”

“I’m impressed by your recovery.”

He reached across and took the napkin from her fingers, folding it beside her plate. Then he kept her hand. She let him, her thumb moving once along the side of his.

“I like that you came,” he said.

“I invited you.”

“I liked that too.”

She studied his face. He had said something inadequate and apparently enough. He wanted to become better at leaving such things alone.

They followed the river past the crowded stretch of cafés, away from people eating early suppers at tables with reserved signs. Delilah told him about the cupboard in her flat that opened only if she first shut a drawer with her hip. Ash confessed that he had once repaired a chair and made it taller on one side.

“Did you keep it?”

“For six months.”

“What happened then?”

“A friend sat in it and asked why the room was moving.”

“You could have told him.”

“I thought he might not notice.”

“You are an optimist in very selective areas.”

“I have corrected the chair.”

“And kept the friend?”

“Yes. He checks before he sits down.”

She laughed, and Ash recognised that she had begun to expect him to be funny. At Sable he had made her laugh by finding something wrong with a sentence. He liked discovering he could do it with something wrong with himself.

On the bridge, she leaned beside him against the rail. The evening light reached the upper windows of the buildings behind them. A rowing boat passed underneath, its occupants disagreeing about a turn that had already gone badly.

“Do you come here often?” she asked.

“When I’ve finished something.”

“A reward?”

“More a way to keep from going home and starting the next thing.”

“Does it work?”

“For about twenty minutes.”

She turned her face toward him. “You’ll have to improve that. I meant what I said about dinner.”

He wanted to kiss her again. This time the want arrived without the familiar effort of keeping it behind his teeth. He bent toward her; she met him before he had quite reached her, one hand at his lapel. The kiss was slower now. He felt her hand relax and open against him, felt himself stop holding his shoulders as if he were waiting for a difficult question.

When she drew back, he let her. She kept looking at his mouth.

“I have been angry with you on this river,” she said.

“I remember.”

“I may be again. It seems fairly likely that you’ll say something infuriating.”

“I’d hoped to leave that until after dinner.”

Her smile tilted. “This is also real. I wanted you to know I know that.”

Ash looked down at their joined hands on the rail. He had been waiting for her happiness to become proof that Friday no longer mattered. Hearing her refuse that bargain was easier than pretending he hadn’t wanted it.

“I’m having a good evening,” he said. “I’d like to keep having it with you.”

“Then we should eat before you start qualifying that.”

They found a small restaurant on the road back from the bridge. Delilah read the menu, chose the dish she wanted and asked for a table before Ash could calculate whether the place was appropriate for a first proper date. He followed her in, grateful and slightly embarrassed to recognise himself.

Over dinner she asked him what he had wanted to do before he learned he was good at finding other people’s errors. He told her about repairing things, about the satisfaction of a cupboard that closed without complaint. She asked why that had never become work.

“I wasn’t very good at it.”

“The chair suggests ambition.”

“The chair suggests a refusal to measure.”

She offered him a piece of the roast potato she’d declared superior to his. He took it from her fork. It was, unfortunately, better. Her satisfaction was so complete that he gave her one of his just to see what she would say.

She chewed, considered him and said, “You can have another of mine.”

He loved the extravagance of being fed something she wanted herself. The feeling was too large for a potato and too new to name responsibly. He accepted another and asked what she had done with quiet evenings before she forgot how to have them.

“I used to go to films without reading anything about them. Whatever started next.”

“Was that wise?”

“Frequently disastrous. Once I watched three hours about a man who wouldn’t sell a boat. I remained in favour of selling it throughout.”

“Would you do it again?”

“The boat, no.”

“The next film.”

She set down her fork. “With you?”

“Yes.”

He knew she could hear their earlier conversation inside the question. He let her have it without making a joke of his own.

“Wednesday,” she said. “If you can.”

He could. He said so before offering her his diary as evidence.

They finished dinner slowly. Delilah did not reach for her phone; neither did he. They disagreed about whether a dessert could reasonably be called a pudding if it was cold, ordered one anyway, and discovered that sharing it required more generosity from him than the potato had required from her. She noticed his final look at the plate and pushed it toward him.

“Go on.”

“You’re sure?”

“Ash. It’s a spoonful of custard.”

He ate it. She watched him with open affection, and he had nowhere to file that except among the things he wanted again.

Outside, she asked him to walk as far as her street. The air had cooled. She buttoned the coat as far as it would go and slipped her hand into his coat pocket to find his. They walked more slowly than the distance required.

At her building she turned to face him. “I want another kiss before you go.”

He set his hands at her waist, over the blue wool, and waited for her to come close. She did, both arms around his shoulders this time. He kissed her until her fingers curled at his collar, then more softly, learning how she answered when he took his time. When she stepped back, his hands fell away at once.

“I’m going upstairs alone,” she said. “I’m going to enjoy how sorry I am about that.”

He laughed, though his voice wasn’t quite steady. “I’ll have a walk home to do the same.”

“Wednesday.”

“Wednesday.”

She unlocked the door, then looked back. “Don’t research the films.”

“I won’t.”

“Especially the boats.”

He was still smiling when she disappeared up the stairs. For a moment he stood with the warmth of her hands remembered against his neck. Then he turned toward home. He had an evening to look forward to, chosen before he knew how it would go. He intended to keep it.