Nick’s idea of a walk involved a map. Mine involved being able to see a place that sold coffee from wherever we stopped.
“There’s a café,” he said, tracing the route with one finger.
“At which end?”
“The far one.”
“A serious flaw.”
He folded the map. “We can go straight there.”
“No. You’ve brought a map. We should let it have its moment.”
It was Sunday morning, bright enough to make the previous day’s rain seem like a rumor. We left his car beside the old coastguard cottages and followed a path above the water. The grass moved in long silver patches where the wind touched it. Far below, the sea broke against rocks too dark to look real.
For the first ten minutes, I talked too much. About the coat, about the rehearsal schedule, about a man on the bus who had eaten an entire boiled egg without looking ashamed. Nick listened, then stopped beside a gate and looked out over the water.
I stopped too.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s a good view.”
I looked. He was right. I had been walking past it while trying to make sure the morning went well.
We stayed there for a while. A small boat moved toward the harbor, white wake opening behind it. Somewhere in the grass a bird made a sharp, repetitive call.
“I used to come here with my dad,” I said.
“So did I. Mine made me walk too far and then bought chips as compensation.”
“That explains your whole system.”
Nick smiled. “It’s inherited.”
We went on more slowly. The path narrowed, and he walked ahead until it widened again, then fell into step beside me. Once, when the ground dipped, I caught his arm to steady myself. I left my hand there for a few steps longer than necessary.
He looked down at it but didn’t say anything. I liked that there were still things between us we didn’t immediately turn into jokes.
At the top of the next rise, a sheep stood squarely across the path.
Nick stopped.
“Well.”
“You’re bigger than it.”
“I’m aware. I’m also less certain of my intentions.”
The sheep chewed. I walked past it, close enough to see a burr caught in its wool. Nick followed with excessive politeness.
“Thank you,” he told it.
I laughed so hard I had to stop by the gate.
“It was guarding the path,” he said.
“It was eating.”
“We all have more than one responsibility.”
By the time we reached the café, I was hungry and happy in a way I had not anticipated. Not healed, not even close. But happiness had proved less obedient to the rest of my life than I expected.
We found a table outside. Nick bought coffee and two enormous slices of cake, then admitted he had chosen the walk partly because he knew about the cake.
“You could have opened with that.”
“I wanted to appear outdoorsy.”
“The sheep has ruined that.”
He passed me a fork. “A setback.”
The café overlooked a little shingle beach. Children were building a barrier across a stream with stones, arguing fiercely about engineering. I watched them for a while, enjoying the seriousness of their project.
Nick leaned back in his chair. In the sunlight I could see gray at his temples that the theater lights often hid. There was a little tiredness around his eyes. He was handsome, but not in the effortless way I had lazily assigned him. Up close, he looked like somebody who had lived through things and sometimes slept badly afterward.
“What?” he asked.
I looked at my cake. “Nothing.”
“That was a very sustained nothing.”
“I’m allowed to look at you.”
His face warmed with a pleasure so unguarded that I was glad I’d said it.
“Yes,” he said. “You are.”
I took another bite of cake to give myself something to do.
After a while he asked, “What did you think of me before?”
“Before what?”
“All this.”
He moved a hand between us. I understood.
“I thought you were entertaining.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“You asked.”
“Go on.”
I considered him. “I thought you were the person people wanted at dinner because nobody would have to try very hard.”
He looked at his cup.
“And now?”
“Now I think you work quite hard to make that happen.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes I wish people would invite me when I didn’t.”
The admission was small and plain. It made me want to touch him, not to comfort him exactly, but to let him know I had heard it.
I put my hand over his on the table.
“I would.”
He turned his hand beneath mine. His fingers closed around it.
Neither of us spoke until a waiter came to ask whether we wanted more coffee.
On the way back, Nick told me about a woman he had lived with years before. Erin, a sound designer. They had spent months in different towns and become so careful not to complain that they stopped telling each other anything useful.
“I kept saying I was fine with things,” he said. “Then being quietly furious that she hadn’t realized I wasn’t.”
“That’s efficient.”
“I thought so at the time.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Eventually. When it was no longer helpful.”
I looked at him. “Do you still do that?”
He took a moment before answering. “Less. I’d like to say never, but you might notice.”
I appreciated the answer and was a little frightened by it.
“I get very efficient when I’m angry,” I said.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Then I expect people to understand the difference between normal efficiency and the kind that means I may stab a cushion.”
“I’ll watch the cushions.”
I nudged him with my shoulder. He caught my hand and kept it.
We walked like that until the path narrowed again.
Near the car, I told him about Manchester. Not the whole hopeful shape of it, which I was still afraid to look at directly. Just the email, the six weeks, the work.
“Are you applying?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Why only think?”
“Because if I say yes and don’t get it, I’ll have to admit I wanted it.”
He looked at me. “Ah.”
“You recognize the technique?”
“Intimately.”
We laughed, and I felt the opportunity become a little less fragile once it existed outside my own head.
He drove me home with the windows open. At a red light, his hand found mine between the seats. I watched the houses go by and did not spend the moment imagining who might see us.
At my door he kissed me, slowly enough that I leaned back against the frame. His hand rested at my hip. I could feel the warmth of the day still in his shirt.
“I don’t want to go,” he said against my cheek.
I closed my eyes. “Then don’t yet.”
We went upstairs. I made tea neither of us drank, and we sat on the sofa with the window open to the street. For a while we talked. Then he kissed me again, and the conversation became something we could return to later.
I wanted him with a force that surprised me. It had been years since wanting felt like a discovery rather than a familiar arrangement. When I put my hands in his hair, he made the same small sound he had made in the wardrobe room, and I knew I would remember it when he was gone.
We stopped because I stopped, my forehead against his, breathing a little too quickly.
“Not today,” I said.
He nodded. His hand moved from my waist to the back of the sofa. It took both of us a minute to become people who could discuss tea again.
“It’s cold,” I said.
“A tragedy.”
“We neglected it.”
“I don’t regret it.”
I smiled and put my head against his shoulder. We stayed like that until the light shifted across the floor.
After he left, I found Sophie’s message. She wanted to see me. Just the two of us, she said. She wouldn’t bring Daniel or Mum.
I read it several times. I had been waiting for her to say something that didn’t begin with what somebody else needed. This was not quite that, but it was closer.
I suggested Thursday afternoon, at the park near the library.
Her answer arrived quickly.
Thank you. I’ll be there.
I put the phone down. The cups were still on the table, untouched. One had a faint mark where Nick’s thumb had rested against the glaze.
I carried them to the sink and washed them carefully, giving myself a task while I decided how much of my sister I was ready to see.