Elian opened his door and looked at Tressa for long enough that she stopped preparing an apology for the dress.
“Hello,” he said.
“It has pockets.”
He looked down, then back at her. “A powerful opening argument.”
“I nearly wore the trousers again.”
“I’m glad the dress got an outing.”
He did not say she looked younger. He did not sound surprised that she had made an effort. He stepped aside, and she went into his flat with the fierce relief of somebody putting down a defence she had been carrying unnecessarily.
The front room had windows over a quiet row of shops. A pair of walking boots stood under a narrow bench; three books lay open on the floor beside the sofa, each with a different object marking the page. The room smelled of onions and warm bread.
“I brought nothing,” she said.
“As instructed.”
“It was difficult.”
“Did you get all the way here without buying a pudding?”
“There was a near miss.”
He kissed her, one hand resting lightly against her upper arm, and the kiss ended with both of them smiling. She could feel the seam of his shirt under her fingers. She had begun to collect these details without meaning to: the warmth of his cheek, the pause before he came close, the fact that he no longer made a joke every time he was pleased.
“Can I take your coat?”
She handed it to him. Her car was parked in the street below, the keys in her bag. She liked knowing she could leave whenever she wished. It made staying feel less like drifting into something and more like the decision she had come to make.
He had cooked a vegetable stew and put bread in the oven. While he set the table, she stood in the kitchen doorway and resisted the urge to pick up a tea towel.
“Would you like something to do?” he asked.
“No. I’m attempting to learn that.”
“There’s water in the fridge. You can pour your own if being completely useless is too much.”
“Thank you. A manageable first step.”
She poured water for them both, then sat. He had two mismatched plates, one with a chip on the underside that she found with her thumb. The table was small enough that their knees touched before either of them had settled properly.
“Sorry,” he said.
“I’m not.”
He looked up. She kept her knee where it was.
Supper took longer than it needed to because they kept stopping to talk. He told her he had rented the flat four years ago after the end of a relationship that had lasted six. She did the arithmetic without announcing it: he had been thirty-nine at its beginning, forty-five at its end. An adult life that had not been waiting offstage for hers.
“Was it terrible?” she asked.
“The ending? No. Which made it quite difficult to recognise. We were both good at being reasonable. We got very reasonable about never seeing each other.”
“I know something about that.”
“Your marriage?”
“The last part. We could discuss a new boiler for an hour. We couldn’t discuss whether either of us wanted to be in the same room.”
Elian broke a piece of bread and put it down without eating it.
“I don’t want to get good at that again,” he said.
She could hear the seriousness under the ordinary words. He was not giving her a warning about how to keep him. He was telling her where he had already been.
“Then you’ll have to tell me when you’re being agreeable instead of honest.”
“You’ll have to let me disappoint you occasionally.”
“You have terrible opinions about sea views. I’ve made a start.”
He laughed, but she touched his hand so he would know she had heard the other part.
After supper he took the plates to the sink. She carried the glasses. They washed up together because she wanted to stand beside him now, not because he needed help. He passed her a wet spoon and kissed the side of her head when she reached for the towel.
She went still.
He noticed and stopped.
“Too much?”
“No. Unexpected.”
“I can stop doing unexpected things.”
“Please don’t make that promise.”
She turned, the spoon still in her hand. He was watching her with a concern that could become caution if she let it. She put the spoon down.
“I liked it,” she said. “I liked not having to organise it.”
His face softened. He kissed her again, more slowly, and she lifted her hand to the back of his neck. There was water on her wrist. It ran into her sleeve and made her laugh against his mouth.
“What?” he murmured.
“Domestic hazards.”
She showed him. He found the towel and dried her wrist, then let her take it from him. The small practical interruption did not break what was between them. When she put the towel down, the wanting was still there, stronger for having survived a little absurdity.
They went into the front room. He sat at the end of the sofa and she sat close beside him, her dress falling over her knees. Outside, somebody pulled down a shop shutter. The sound gave the evening a border.
“I thought about this all afternoon,” she said.
“Coming here?”
“Being here. There’s a difference. Coming here required parking. Being here was rather less manageable.”
He brushed his thumb over her knuckles.
“I rearranged three books,” he said. “Then I put them back because I thought you’d notice the room had been prepared.”
She looked at the books on the floor. One was marked with a clean envelope, another with a receipt, the third with what appeared to be a flat wooden paint stirrer.
“That one was a choice.”
“I couldn’t find a bookmark.”
“You had three opportunities.”
He smiled. She loved, though she did not yet use the word, the way his smile grew when he stopped trying to manage it.
She leaned across and kissed him. His hand came to her waist, and she moved closer until there was no gap they had to pretend was accidental. The warmth of his mouth at the corner of hers made her close her eyes. She wanted to stay there and also wanted more of him, more certainty, more time than a sensible Saturday supper was supposed to contain.
When he paused, she opened her eyes.
“Stay close,” she said.
“I’m here.”
“I know. I mean when I go quiet. It isn’t always because I want you to go away.”
He nodded, then waited while she found the rest.
She looked down at her hand against his shirt. She knew this hand: the vein standing over the knuckle, the pale mark from a kitchen burn, the ring she had bought herself after the divorce and finally stopped wearing as a declaration of anything. She had never hated it. Tonight she was afraid he would have to be kind to it.
“I don’t want to spend tonight wondering whether you’re being kind.”
Elian’s breath left him slowly.
“I am trying to be kind,” he said. “I’m also having considerable trouble remembering what I cooked.”
She laughed, unwillingly.
He brought her hand to his cheek. “You don’t have to make yourself easy for me to want. But I can’t keep proving I want you if you decide every time that I must mean something else.”
The words stung because they were neither flattery nor retreat.
She could ask him to bear her uncertainty. She could not ask him to become unreal so she would never have to risk believing him.
“You’re right,” she said.
“I don’t need to be right. I’d like you to believe me.”
She moved her hand along his cheek, feeling the roughness there. His eyes closed briefly. That small unguarded response did more than an argument could have done.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked.
He looked at her.
“That you’ll decide this has been enough. A nice evening. Something you were pleased to discover you could still do.”
She had been so occupied with the possibility of becoming a brief episode in his life that she had not considered he might fear being one in hers.
“Elian.”
“I know you haven’t promised anything. I’m not asking you to. You asked.”
She took his hand and held it between both of hers.
“I didn’t invite a demonstration. I invited you.”
He looked down at their hands. When he looked up again, the restraint in his face had loosened into something she wanted to be trusted with.
She kissed him without trying to be reassuring. The difference mattered. She let him feel how much she wanted it, and he answered with a closeness that made the room fall quiet around her. His mouth rested against her cheek, then just below her ear. She said his name softly and drew him nearer.
They stayed like that for a long time, kisses broken by a word, a laugh, the need to look at each other again. She could ask him to slow down and discover that the asking did not cool his affection. He could admit he wanted her to stay and hear her say she wanted that too.
Later, she sat with her back against him and his arm around her, the lamp still on. Her dress was creased. His shirt had lost the neatness it had when he opened the door. Nothing about the room had become a different kind of room; the books still lay where he had failed to disguise them. Yet she felt she had stopped visiting.
“I’d like a whole day,” she said.
“With me?”
She turned enough to look at him. “No. I’ve been considering the man from the bakery.”
“His cup collection is impressive.”
“With you, Elian. A day when nobody is waiting for either of us to finish supper.”
He was quiet for a moment, then reached for his phone to look at his calendar, asking before bringing it into the space between them.
They found the following weekend. She suggested a small coastal town two hours away that she had visited once for an afternoon. He liked walking; she liked the idea of a bay with a path and a hotel that served breakfast she would not have to prepare. They looked at the same hotel on separate screens and each booked a room they could cancel until Thursday.
“Separate rooms,” she said. “For now. I want to be able to choose without having arranged an expectation.”
“Yes.”
No change in his touch. She let herself believe that too.
“We tell Selwyn before we go,” she said.
“I was going to ask.”
“Tuesday. I’ll see him Tuesday. Then you can speak to him.”
Elian set down the phone.
“I won’t tell him anything about tonight that belongs to you.”
“And I won’t tell him what you said to me.”
They sat quietly. The happiness of making a plan had acquired its ordinary weight. She did not regret the plan.
When she left, it was late enough that the shops below were dark. Elian walked her to her car because she asked him to. He kissed her beside the open door, then stepped away so she could get in.
At home she hung the blue dress on the outside of her wardrobe. She had not stayed the night. She had not had to stay for the evening to count.
On Tuesday she would have to stop speaking about her life as though it happened only to other people.