The Second Cup

Anouk saw Orson before he saw her and forgot the sensible arrangement she’d made to meet him by the exit. She went straight through the waiting people, caught his sleeve and kissed him with enough force to make him drop his bag.

He laughed against her mouth, then stopped laughing and kissed her back.

“Hello,” he said when she let him breathe.

“I had a more dignified plan.”

“I prefer this one.”

She put both hands on his face. He was real, warm, a little rough at the jaw. For weeks she’d been touching a screen or the sleeve of his cardigan. Now there was skin under her thumbs and his arm around her waist, and she wanted to stand there until everyone else went home.

He picked up the bag without releasing her hand.

“Show me,” he said.

She did. The route from the station, the corner where the pavement narrowed, the bakery she’d described, the steep stairs to the room. He carried his own bag; she carried the absurd lightness of having him beside her. At the top she opened the door and stood back, suddenly nervous.

“It looks smaller with you in it.”

“I can stand diagonally.”

“Don’t be useful yet.”

He set down the bag. “What should I be?”

“Here.”

He came to her. The door closed behind them, and she pressed into him with a sound that was half laughter, half the release of a longing she’d kept making reasonable. He held her tightly because she asked him to, then eased his arms when she moved. His mouth found hers again, familiar and newly startling.

For a long time they did not discuss the room.

Later, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, he looked around and smiled.

“I like it.”

“You haven’t met the cupboard.”

“I’m withholding judgement on the cupboard.”

She showed him the clean space she’d made for his things. He put his book there, his folded shirts, the little washbag. Anouk watched the objects enter the room and felt the pleasure of making room rather than merely losing it.

They went out for supper before either grew too hungry to be kind. She took him somewhere simple, a place she could afford in an ordinary week, and let him see her order without making the evening a performance of expertise. He asked about things. She sometimes knew and sometimes didn’t.

“I thought you’d know every corner,” he said.

“I live in the ones I like.”

“That sounds familiar.”

She reached across the table for his hand. “Yes.”

· · ·Scene break

The next morning he woke to the sound of typing. Anouk was at the desk in his cardigan, bare feet tucked beneath the chair, hair pinned badly. He lay still for a moment, looking at her in the life she had described.

She wasn’t having an adventure. She was working, frowning at a page, drinking tea that had probably gone cold. The room held her habits as clearly as his house held his. He had known this as information. Seeing it unsettled something he’d been taking for granted.

She turned when he moved.

“I’m nearly done. A correction came in.”

“Take your time.”

“I don’t want to spend your four days at the desk.”

“I don’t want you to spend them worrying about the desk.”

She smiled. “Ten minutes.”

He got up quietly, found the kitchen and made tea. The cupboard did need attention. He left it alone. When he brought her cup, she looked at the clock and then at him.

“Twelve,” she said.

“I shall invoice.”

She sent the file, closed the laptop and turned fully towards him. “Now.”

“Now what?”

“Now I get you.”

The way she said it made him put his cup down. She rose, came into his arms and kissed him until the tea became irrelevant. He had expected reunion to soothe the wanting. Instead it made it more particular: this woman in this room, choosing to interrupt her own capable life for the pleasure of his company.

They did eventually go to breakfast. The chair was excellent. He said so, and she looked smug. Afterwards they walked through the town while she showed him things she’d saved: a painted doorway, a shop selling bowls so unlike his that he stopped for a long time, a little square where the benches caught the morning warmth.

They bought pears. Whole, firm pears, which became a joke neither needed to explain.

At a household shop she chose a small lamp because the desk light strained her eyes in the evening. Orson offered an opinion only when asked. She bought it with the satisfaction of someone improving her own life rather than borrowing one until something better happened.

“You settle more than you admit,” he said, carrying the boxed lamp after she handed it to him.

She stopped beside the shop window.

“I never said I didn’t settle.”

He heard the distinction too late.

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. You thought it was all temporary in the way a hotel is temporary.”

“Perhaps.”

She looked down at the box. “I buy lamps. I know people. I have days when I’m bored. The fact that I leave doesn’t make the days less real.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

“I don’t need you to love it. I need you to see it.”

He set the box on a low wall so he could take her hand.

“I am seeing it,” he said. “A bit late in places.”

Her expression softened, though not completely. She was allowed that. He picked up the lamp and they continued walking.

· · ·Scene break

On the second afternoon Anouk had an hour of work she could not move. Orson took the book he’d brought and went out alone. She offered directions to a café, then stopped herself halfway through explaining a route he’d already walked twice.

“You’ll manage,” she said.

“I expect so.”

“I want to show you everything.”

“I’d like to find one thing.”

She smiled, and he kissed her before leaving.

He found a place with three tables outside and ordered tea. The book remained closed. For the first time in years he was somewhere unfamiliar without feeling he had to decide whether the unfamiliarity suited him. He watched a man carry a stack of boxes into the shop opposite, drop one, look around to see who had noticed and laugh when Orson raised a sympathetic hand.

He had liked this once. He had not stopped liking it merely because he had wanted a kitchen of his own.

That was an uncomfortable discovery. It would have been easier if the old life had become entirely wrong for him. Instead, parts of it were still good. He had wanted something added, not everything erased.

When Anouk arrived, she stopped a few feet from the table and looked at him.

“What?” he asked.

“You look pleased with yourself.”

“I found tea.”

“A heroic achievement.”

“And this chair.”

“Is it good?”

“I’m keeping it.”

She laughed, pulled out the other one and sat. He didn’t ask whether she’d finished the work until she’d had a moment to arrive. When he did, she told him she’d sent it, and the satisfaction in her voice made him smile.

“I’ve brought you something,” she said.

From her bag she produced a postcard showing a building at such an unfortunate angle that it appeared to be falling over. On the back she’d written his address in Lanton Wick and, beneath it, a single sentence: I wanted to tell you about the person I had breakfast with.

He looked up.

“I bought it before you came,” she said. “Then I waited to write it. I wanted you to be the person.”

He put the card down because his hands had become unreliable.

“I am the person.”

“Yes.”

She said it without flourish. Around them people continued walking past, the boxes were carried inside, the tea cooled. He reached across the table and took her hand, not caring that he had no clever thing to say.

Later they walked back through a street neither had tried. It brought them to a dead end, which Anouk regarded as a personal insult to her sense of direction. Orson kissed her beside a blank wall and told her he’d found it worthwhile.

She pulled him close by the collar.

“Then we should get lost more carefully.”

He laughed into the next kiss, and the town became another place in which they had been happy without either needing to win an argument about how to live.

On the third evening they cooked in the shared kitchen. The other room was still empty, so they could spread out without apologising. Anouk had bought vegetables and bread; Orson made a dish from what was available, asking where things were and laughing when she confidently opened the wrong drawer.

“I’ve only been here six weeks,” she said.

“You knew where the shop was.”

“Priorities.”

They ate at the little table. Afterwards she put music on quietly, something without words that neither had to discuss, and held out her hand.

“I don’t dance well,” he said.

“Neither do I. We’ll be evenly matched.”

There was scarcely room between the table and the cupboard. That helped. They could do very little wrong while standing close and moving slowly. Orson rested his hand at her back. She leaned her cheek against his, and he felt her smile.

“This is ridiculous,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“I like it.”

“So do I.”

When she lifted her face, he kissed her. The music went on without them. She drew him towards the bedroom, stopping once to turn off the kitchen light with an impatient laugh at the interruption.

The lamp she had bought made the room warm. He watched her in it, wanting without the numb ache of the screen between them. She came to him freely, told him so in words when his expression grew too intent, and he answered just as plainly. They took their time. The pleasure was in attention, in the touch answered and the pause respected, in being able to feel the other’s happiness rather than guess at it.

Afterwards she lay across him, warm and drowsy, her fingers moving over his shoulder.

“Stay another day,” she murmured.

He went still.

She lifted her head immediately. “I’m sorry. I know you can’t. I meant I wish.”

“I wish too.”

The moment was small, but it opened the thing they’d been circling. She moved beside him so they could look at each other.

“Your classes,” she said.

“Yes. And the leave. I don’t have more now.”

“I know.”

He took her hand. “I liked being asked.”

“But?”

“But I can’t make my life into visits.”

She looked at their hands. The room that had held so much warmth felt suddenly fragile, though nothing in it had changed.

“I could stay longer next summer,” she said.

He heard the care in the offer. He also heard the year of absences surrounding it.

“I want more than a longer summer.”

She nodded, slowly.

“I don’t know whether I can give you that.”

“I don’t know either.”

They did not get up. Neither used the difficult truth as a reason to withdraw touch. He held her hand while they spoke, and when she needed a moment she took it without leaving the bed.

“I can love a place and go away from it,” she said. “I’ve always been able to.”

“I’m beginning to understand.”

“And you can love someone and still need them there.”

“Yes.”

The word love lay between them now, used generally enough to allow retreat, personally enough that neither could mistake it. Orson felt his pulse in his throat.

“I don’t want to ask you to prove something by becoming unhappy,” he said.

“I don’t want you to call loneliness a compromise because you want me.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “Then we have to keep telling the truth.”

She moved closer and rested her forehead against his.

“Yes.”

They slept badly for part of the night, then well. In the morning she made breakfast and he packed. The visit had not failed because it had revealed a problem. He repeated that to himself while folding a shirt, and found he believed it, though it hurt.

At the station she kissed him with both hands gripping his coat. There was no dignified version this time either.

“December third,” she said.

“I’ll be there.”

After he had gone, she walked back through the town she loved. The shop windows were the same, the route familiar. In the room his absence had a shape: the empty shelf she’d cleared, the second cup drying beside the sink, the place on the bed where he had lain.

She did not dismantle the lamp or pack the room in grief. She sat at the desk and turned it on. There was work to do, a life to live, and a question no calendar could answer for her.

She wanted him in more of her days.

Now she had to decide which days she was willing to change.