On the second of October, Celia put on earrings with no one asleep against her shoulder and lost the back of one down the bathroom sink.
“Leave it,” Ruth called. “You have another pair.”
“They don’t go.”
“Neither will you, at this rate.”
Celia held a hand over the drain and considered taking the plumbing apart. The earrings were small green drops she had bought before Nell was born, imagining an occasion that now seemed both thrilling and too much trouble. Her black dress lay across the bed. The new bra beneath it felt unfamiliar, and her hair had a flat place where she had slept on it after the early feeding. For three minutes she had been a woman getting ready for a date. Now she was a woman with a screwdriver in her bathroom.
Ruth appeared in the doorway, holding the surviving earring.
“You won’t be able to hear him over all that glamour.”
“I can still cancel.”
“With him or the plumber?”
Celia laughed, and Ruth set the earring on the shelf above the sink. She had brought an apron from work, printed with enormous lemons, and left it hanging from the kitchen chair. She looked as if she might stay all night. That was not the arrangement. Celia had paid Mara to come at six, and Ruth was keeping her phone on in case either Mara or Celia needed her. It had taken three conversations for Celia to stop describing that as Ruth being on standby, which made her sister sound like a generator.
In the living room, Mara was humming to Nell while checking the small bag Celia had packed despite the fact that they would be in Nell’s own home. Everything the baby needed was already within ten feet.
“I know,” Celia said when Ruth glanced at the bag. “I did it anyway.”
“I’m going home. I’ll keep my phone on. You know all this.”
“What if she won’t settle?”
“Then Mara will try something else. She has met babies before.”
Celia could hear the steadiness in her sister’s voice, and beneath it the effort. Ruth had cut short a delivery to get here. Celia wanted to thank her without creating another conversation neither of them had time for, so she kissed her cheek and went to put on the dress.
The zipper stopped halfway up. She pulled the fabric together, felt a fierce, stupid pressure behind her eyes, then let go. Her body had made a person seven weeks ago. Still, for one selfish instant, she wanted the dress to have remembered her.
She changed into the dark blue one with the soft waist and came out holding two pairs of shoes.
“Those,” Ruth said, choosing the low red heels. “You bought them because they make you happy.”
At the knock, Celia looked down at her feet as if they belonged to someone capable of all this.
Adrian stood outside with his coat open and a small brown paper bag in his hand. He had shaved too quickly; a dark spot near his chin showed where he had caught himself. Seeing it helped. He looked at her for long enough that she forgot to move aside.
“Hello,” she said.
“Yes.” He looked down at the bag. “Hello. I brought you something completely wrong.”
“Already?”
“A pastry. For tomorrow. I thought bringing food to take you out to eat was fairly ridiculous, but I was passing the bakery.”
“Which pastry?”
“Pear.”
“Then it’s an excellent decision.”
He came in and greeted Ruth, then Mara. Nell opened her eyes when he leaned over her, a solemn inspection that made him straighten as though he had been asked for identification. Celia watched his fingers pause beside the baby’s hand. He did not scoop her up and restart everything. He let Nell catch one finger, stayed until she released it, then looked at Celia.
“Ready?”
She kissed the warm place above her daughter’s ear. Nell smelled of milk and clean cotton. For a second, leaving felt like stepping out of her own skin.
Then Adrian held her coat, and she put her arms into it.
Their table overlooked a slip of harbor threaded with white ferry lights. Celia could see the pale interior of another dining room reflected in the glass and, beyond that, black water. A candle stood in a shallow dish that looked as if someone had pressed their thumb into clay and decided it was enough.
She wanted the whole room. The dark ceiling, the voices that came no nearer than a murmur, the pleasure of somebody taking her wet coat without needing instructions about where to put it. Adrian sat opposite her with his cuffs turned back and read the menu as seriously as if it might contain an exam.
“What?” she asked.
“I had a plan.”
“For dinner?”
“It included saying something impressive about the fish. They’ve changed the menu.”
“Were you going to catch it?”
“No. That would have been less effort than memorizing the name.”
She laughed. He leaned back, looking pleased in a way that made her want to keep doing it.
When the server came, Celia pointed at a dish she could not quite imagine: black cod with ginger and a broth poured at the table. She usually chose something she knew she liked when a meal cost this much. Choosing badly would seem wasteful. Tonight she asked how it was cooked, listened, and ordered it.
Adrian asked for the same thing.
“You’ve stolen my dinner.”
“I was going to get the steak.”
“Get the steak.”
“Too late. You’ve made the fish sound better.”
They shared a first course and disagreed about which of the little crisp things deserved the last spoonful of sauce. Celia had a small glass of wine, taking her time over it. Her phone lay in her bag. She had checked it in the car and outside the restaurant and once while Adrian was speaking to the host; she had decided not to check again until the main course.
“I’ve wanted to bring you here since January,” he said.
She set down her fork. “You didn’t know me in January.”
“I knew you in January.”
“You knew I was rude about your shelving.”
“That’s a fairly intimate beginning.” He took a drink of water. “I came here with someone from work the week after we met. I kept looking at the chair opposite me and thinking you would hate the cushions.”
She shifted against hers. It was too deep. A person needed very long legs or a willingness to eat at shoulder height.
“I do hate the cushions.”
“I know.”
“You could have warned me.”
“I thought you’d enjoy being right more.”
The server brought the fish. Steam rose as broth slid around it, and Celia waited until the woman had gone before she said, “You did ask. I wasn’t ready.”
“After that I was working out how to ask again.”
“For five months?”
“I had other things to do as well.” He smiled, but his hand stayed still beside his glass. “You were starting a new job. You had a great deal happening. I couldn’t tell whether asking again was hopeful or selfish.”
“It was dinner.”
“It wasn’t going to be only dinner, if I could help it.”
She looked at him across the little flame. His hair had fallen across his forehead. There were two creases at the corner of his mouth that deepened when he was trying not to smile, and she had learned to watch for them. He wasn’t smiling now.
“I’m glad you asked,” she said.
“So am I.”
The fish yielded under her fork. She tasted ginger and something bright she couldn’t name. It was delicious. She wanted him to taste hers, although he had exactly the same meal, and when she caught herself pushing her plate toward him she began laughing again.
His phone vibrated on the seat beside him.
He glanced down. The movement was quick enough that she might have pretended not to notice. He turned the phone over and reached for his fork.
“Go on,” he said. “You were telling me about the child with the atlas.”
She had not been telling him that tonight. It had been in a message two days earlier. Before she could say so, the phone vibrated again.
“I’m sorry. It’s Gavin.”
“Is something wrong?”
“A decision on the investor presentation. They were meant to have sorted it by five.” He read the screen. “It’ll take a minute.”
It was one of those sentences that asked permission after deciding. Celia saw him notice that a fraction too late.
“Do you need to?” she asked.
“Yes. I think so.”
“Then take it.”
He stepped away between two tables. She watched him turn near the door, hand at the back of his neck, then disappear into the lobby.
Her fish cooled. The server came to ask if everything was all right, and Celia said it was lovely. She checked her own phone. Mara had sent one photograph: Nell asleep, mouth open, one tiny fist against her cheek. All settled. Enjoy yourselves.
Across the room, a woman was laughing so hard she had to put her napkin over her face. Her companion looked delighted. Celia took another mouthful and tried not to keep measuring the empty chair.
It was seventeen minutes, not one. She knew because she looked at the time and disliked herself for looking.
Adrian returned with his face still arranged for another room. He sat, reached for his glass, then looked at her plate.
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that before you went.”
He stopped with the glass halfway to his mouth.
“I know.”
She waited for him to tell her how much money had depended on the call. He didn’t. He put the phone into his coat pocket, which was hanging behind his chair, and left it there.
“Did you fix it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.” She could hear how small the word sounded. “I don’t want to be mean about your work. I know it matters.”
“You can be annoyed.”
“I am annoyed. I paid someone so I could come here and look at you. Now I feel silly saying that.”
“Please don’t.”
“It’s not the restaurant. I could have eaten anywhere. I wanted this evening.”
He looked at the candle, then back at her. “So did I. I made a poor calculation.”
“You make it sound like a calculator betrayed you.”
He gave a short, unhappy laugh. “I made a poor choice.”
She believed he meant it. That did not warm the fish or return the part of the conversation that had felt so dangerously good.
For a few minutes they ate. Adrian asked the server for fresh broth, and Celia let him. She told him the cushions were still terrible. He said she ought to put that in a review under a false name, and she said she had no intention of protecting him from a cushion scandal. Their laughter came back awkwardly, but it came.
When he asked whether she wanted dessert, she looked out at the water.
“No,” she said. “I want to go somewhere.”
At the ferry terminal she bought two walk-on tickets before she could talk herself out of it. They had checked the return sailing and told Mara when to expect them. It would be a short journey, there and back, with no grand destination except a different view of the lights.
“You realize we could have ordered an extremely expensive dessert for this amount of enthusiasm,” Adrian said.
“You could still buy me something from a machine.”
“Now you’ve gone too far.”
The wind on the outer deck lifted her hair straight off her forehead. She caught at it and gave up. He stood beside her, their sleeves touching, while the ferry shuddered away from the dock. Light widened between the boat and the shore. She could smell salt and warm machinery and somebody’s coffee. The city that had seemed so close through the restaurant window began to gather into a glittering shape.
Adrian had bought a paper cup of hot chocolate. He offered it to her without making a joke, and she took a careful sip.
“Terrible,” she said.
“Yes.”
She drank some more.
A group of young people came through the door, took one look at the weather and retreated, laughing. Celia tucked herself closer to Adrian. His coat was rough wool under her fingers. She wanted to slide her hands beneath it, to feel the heat of him instead of all these sensible layers.
“I did want to hear about the atlas,” he said.
She looked up.
“At dinner. I was trying to get back to a conversation I’d already left. It came out wrong.”
“He wanted to know if there were libraries on every island.”
“Were there?”
“I said we’d find out. I’m learning to be less impressive at knowing everything.”
“I should try that.”
She rested her chin against his shoulder for a moment. On the black water, the boat’s wake opened white and vanished. She had been angry at an empty chair, and here he was, cold hand finding hers in the pocket of his coat.
“You still owe me some looking,” she said.
He turned until his back sheltered her from the wind. “Here?”
“It’s a public service. Distract me from the chocolate.”
His kiss was warm and slightly sweet. She gripped the front of his coat and pulled him nearer, laughing against his mouth when a gust rocked them. He laughed too, then kissed her more slowly. For a little while she forgot to count anything.
On the return journey they sat inside with a small packet of cookies between them. Celia took off one shoe under the table. Adrian stretched his leg out so she could put her foot on it, and the intimacy of that undid her more thoroughly than the candle had.
“I had a very good time,” she said.
“With a bad seventeen minutes.”
“Yes.”
He nodded. He did not try to argue it down to fifteen.
At her apartment, Mara gave them the quiet report of a person who had had an ordinary evening. Ruth had gone home. Nell had woken once. The world had carried on without Celia watching it.
When the sitter had left, Adrian stayed at the open door. He touched her cheek, his thumb just below the green earring Ruth had found a replacement back for in her purse.
“I’d like to do this again.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you decide where we go.”
She caught his hand before he lowered it. “I liked the restaurant too.”
He bent to kiss her, and she stood barefoot on her own floor, her daughter asleep a room away, and let herself keep him there a little longer.