Adrian brought an overnight bag and left it in the car.
Celia knew because she watched him hesitate beside the passenger door before he came up the steps. He looked at the back seat, closed the door again and stood for a moment in the rain. She moved away from the window so he would not catch her watching, which seemed an absurd thing to be shy about when she had spent most of the afternoon wondering how to ask him into her bed.
They had talked about staying late. She had said she wanted a whole evening, and he had asked what a whole evening meant, and she had replied, “Dinner without looking at the time,” which was true but incomplete. She had meant to say more at the overlook last week. Instead they had kissed until Nell woke, then driven home with her need sitting beside them like another passenger.
Tonight was October sixteenth. Nell was nine weeks old. Celia had made her own choices about feeding and rest, spoken to the people she needed to speak to, and arranged for Mara to come in the morning so there would be an hour that didn’t begin with scrambling. Nobody had been invited to tell her when wanting could return. It had returned inconveniently early and then become shy whenever she tried to do something about it.
She opened the door before he knocked.
“You’re wet.”
“It’s atmospheric.”
“Come in.”
He put a bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and stood taking his coat off slowly, as though her small apartment required a different set of movements. Celia hung it beside hers. When she turned, he was looking at the bowl of oranges she had put out in an attempt to make the kitchen look casually plentiful.
“I brought those too,” he said.
“Good. We can open a stall.”
Nell lay awake in her little seat, watching the indistinct world with fierce attention. Adrian washed his hands and crouched beside her. The baby’s expression did not change, but one foot moved inside her sock. He looked up at Celia.
“Is that approval?”
“I think she’s considering it.”
He stayed there for another minute. Celia watched the damp patch spread across the shoulders of his shirt and wanted to press her face into it, which had nothing whatever to do with approval.
She had chosen pasta because it was easy. Then she had complicated it with a sauce she hadn’t made before and forgotten to buy one of the things it needed. Adrian inspected the ingredients without offering to have dinner delivered. He tasted the sauce with a teaspoon, thought about it and added some lemon.
“Better?” she asked.
“Different.”
“That bad?”
“It’s very enthusiastic.”
She hit his arm lightly with the dish towel. He caught it and pulled her toward him. The motion surprised them both. They stood in the kitchen with the towel stretched between their hands until he lowered his face to hers.
His mouth was cold from outside. Hers wasn’t. She kissed him with all the things she had been politely not doing while watching him read to Nell or help fold the stroller. He let the towel fall. One hand spread against her back, and she felt his breath change.
A small complaint came from the living room.
“There’s our supervisor,” Celia whispered.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I’ve had worse.”
They ate in shifts, which was not what she had imagined but worked better than getting upset about it. Nell needed feeding just as the pasta was ready. Adrian put a plate beside Celia and cut a piece of bread in half so she could manage it with one hand. When he asked whether she wanted him to wait, she said no, genuinely meaning it, then watched him enjoy the sauce so much that she forgave it herself.
He told her he’d run into the man with the wrong hotel presentation again. Celia remembered the swimming pool and began laughing before he could finish.
“He asked whether we’d ever found an investment for him. I said we were still making batteries.”
“You could have let him finish the presentation.”
“He offered. Forty slides.”
“Perhaps the beds came after the swimming pool.”
Adrian looked at her then. She hadn’t intended it as anything. Or she had, underneath the sentence, where she seemed to be doing all her talking tonight.
“Perhaps,” he said.
By half past nine, Nell was asleep. The dishes had been washed without a discussion of whose turn it was. Rain moved against the windows, and Celia’s bedroom door stood half open, the bedside lamp visible beyond it.
Adrian had one arm along the back of the couch. She sat beside him, close enough to feel his warmth without touching. She could hear every small sound in the apartment: the refrigerator, a car passing through water, his shirt moving when he shifted his shoulder.
“What would you like to watch?” he asked.
She looked at the blank television. “Nothing.”
“Music?”
“Maybe.”
He took out his phone, then put it away again. “You’re doing something with your hands.”
She was twisting the narrow tie at the neck of her blouse until it had become a rope. She released it.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Tell me.”
“I’m trying to work out how to say something without sounding like a person in a bad movie.”
“Which kind of bad movie?”
“The kind where somebody says, You don’t have to go.”
His smile faded slowly. Not with displeasure. She could see him taking care, and suddenly care was the last thing she wanted from him.
“You don’t have to make it easy,” she said. “I don’t mean you can just put your feet up for another hour. I mean I want you to stay.”
“Celia—”
“Don’t be noble. It will make me furious.”
He stared at her, then gave a short, startled laugh. “I wasn’t going to be noble. I was going to ask if you were sure.”
“I am sure. I’m also nervous, which is annoying.”
He moved closer. “I’m nervous.”
“About what?”
“At the moment? Choosing the next sentence.”
She laughed, grateful and embarrassed. He brushed a loose piece of hair away from her cheek, then let his hand rest against the side of her neck.
“I want to stay,” he said. “I wanted to stay when I parked the car.”
“I saw the bag.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “I thought I’d been subtle.”
“You stood in the rain looking at it.”
“There was a debate.”
“Who won?”
“You, apparently.”
She pulled him to her by the open collar of his shirt. His kiss had none of the caution of his first words. She could feel the force of what he had been holding back, and for a moment all her rehearsed fears fell out of reach. She was still herself in this small room. She could want fiercely enough to make a mess of the elegant answer.
When they stopped, his forehead was against her temple.
“I should get the bag,” he said.
“It’s going to seem very cold out there now.”
He kissed her again before he went.
She listened to the car door open and close, then checked Nell, who continued to sleep as though nobody in the next room had changed anything important. Celia adjusted the edge of the blanket and resisted the urge to touch her daughter’s cheek until she woke. She was allowed this. The permission felt astonishingly hard to accept, even when it was hers to give.
Adrian came in with the bag and a packet of something tucked beneath one arm.
“Toothbrush?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You bought a new toothbrush for this?”
“I didn’t want to arrive with the one from home, in case that implied I was never going back.”
She laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth. He put down the bag and began laughing too, and the last of her grand, solemn preparation collapsed.
In the bedroom she turned away to undo the zipper of her skirt and caught the lining. Adrian offered to help. Then he bent his head over the small jam with the concentration he had given the showcase proposal.
“Don’t break it,” she said.
“No pressure.”
“It’s my favorite.”
“Now there’s pressure.”
He freed it at last, with a tiny triumphant sound. His fingers rested at her waist. She turned inside his arms, suddenly shy again.
“I may need to go slowly,” she said.
“All right.”
“And I don’t want you watching my face all night as if I’m a difficult landing.”
His mouth twitched. “Can I watch your face for other reasons?”
She touched the small mark near his jaw where he had cut himself two weeks earlier. It had almost gone. She knew that mark. Knew which side of his mouth lifted first, the roughness of his voice when he was tired, the way he said her name when he was asking rather than deciding.
“Yes,” she said. “For other reasons.”
He kissed her, and she reached behind him to close the door.
In the morning his shirt was on the chair where she usually dropped clean laundry, and Celia spent a foolishly long time looking at it before she remembered why she had woken.
Nell was stirring. The gray square of the window had barely begun to lighten. Beside Celia, Adrian lay on his back, one arm flung above his head, looking sleepier and less distinguished than anyone ought to look after being responsible for so much happiness.
She touched his shoulder.
“Don’t get up. I’m just feeding her.”
He opened his eyes at once. “What time?”
“Early.”
“I can do early.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
He sat up anyway and passed her the robe from the foot of the bed. She took it, feeling suddenly exposed by the ordinary daylight, then remembered the night and smiled without meaning to.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a suspicious nothing.”
“Go back to sleep.”
She settled in the chair by Nell’s crib. Adrian brought water and went to the kitchen, where she heard him open three wrong cupboards before finding the mugs. She had expected to feel awkward afterward, to have to work out what kind of person she had become in the hours between closing the bedroom door and opening it again. Instead she felt tired and hungry and reluctant to let him move very far away.
He came back with coffee for himself and tea for her. Neither was quite right. He had used too much tea and forgotten that she took milk. She asked for it, and he went back, yawning.
“You aren’t allowed to be sorry about making me get milk,” he said when he returned.
“I hadn’t said anything.”
“Your eyebrows did.”
She smiled into the too-strong tea. Nell’s tiny hand lay open against her, nails pale as rice. Adrian sat on the floor beside the chair because the edge of the bed was out of reach, and Celia rested one bare foot against his thigh.
“How’s the floor?”
“A little hard. Very exclusive.”
“I’ll put it in the listing.”
He closed his hand around her ankle and sat quietly while she finished. That quiet felt different from the night. There was no performance left in it. His hair stood up at the back. She wanted to touch that too.
Mara came at eight as arranged, carrying the sort of calm that Celia privately suspected was partly coffee. Once Nell was settled with her in the living room, Celia led Adrian back to the kitchen and opened the pastry bag he had brought the night before. They ate standing up, sharing the last piece of pear with their fingers.
“I should go home and change,” he said reluctantly.
She looked at the shirt now hanging over his arm. A small milk mark showed near the cuff from the previous evening.
“You can leave that here.”
“I can take it.”
“I know you can. I have a washing machine.”
“I’ve heard of those.”
She took the shirt before he could make another joke, folded it badly and put it on the chair again.
“I like it there,” she said.
He looked at the shirt, then at her. For once he seemed unable to find a practical response. He crossed the kitchen instead and kissed her with his hands on either side of her face.
From the other room, Mara said something to Nell in a soft, cheerful voice. The baby answered with an indignant squeak. Celia smiled against Adrian’s mouth.
“Next time,” he said, “I’ll bring something that doesn’t need cooking.”
“There’ll be a next time?”
“I’d like one.”
She held his wrist as he lowered his hand. “Then ask me before you go.”
He asked. She said yes. Outside, the morning rain had stopped, and he left his shirt exactly where she had put it.