The offer came on Wednesday, between the matinee and the evening performance, while Nick was eating a banana that was still recognizably a banana.
I knew something had happened because he stopped halfway across the wardrobe doorway and looked at his phone as if it had begun speaking in another language.
“Nick?”
He held up one hand, reading. Then he looked at me.
“It’s Elsa.”
Mina quietly took the coat I was holding and moved to the other end of the room.
“And?” I asked.
He read the screen once more. “They want me.”
I stood very still for a second, letting the words become real.
“For the brother?”
He nodded.
“Then why are you standing there?”
He looked bewildered. “What should I be doing?”
I went to him and put my arms around him. His phone and the banana remained trapped awkwardly on either side of us until he laughed and managed to hold me back.
“Congratulations,” I said against his shoulder.
“Thank you.”
His voice was rougher than I expected. I drew back enough to see his face.
“You wanted this.”
“I did.”
“You do.”
He smiled then, the full unguarded smile I had first seen after we sent the tape. “I do.”
Mina came over and hugged him too, then took the banana from his hand because it was becoming a casualty.
“Ring your agent,” she said. “Before she thinks you’ve lost the use of your phone.”
He obeyed. I watched him go into the courtyard, talking too quickly, then listened to the rehearsal noise returning around me.
I was happy for him. I could feel it clearly, without effort. Beneath it, another feeling began to move, slower and less generous: dates, departures, a winter in which wanting him would not necessarily mean being able to see him.
I let both feelings exist. I was getting a little better at not mistaking the less flattering one for the whole truth.
At the interval that evening, Nick found a moment to show me the outline schedule. Rehearsals in November, touring through January, breaks that were not always where either of us would have placed them. It was good work. It was also a life in which a person slept in many beds that did not belong to him.
“Priya’s checking the terms,” he said. “But I want to accept.”
“Of course you do.”
He looked at me carefully. “How does that feel?”
I was tempted to say fine. The word rose so easily I could almost hear it before I spoke.
“Good,” I said instead. “And a bit frightening.”
He nodded. “For me too.”
“You should take it.”
“I want to.”
“I know.”
We stood together beside the rail, the schedule glowing on his phone between us. This was not a test he had to pass by choosing the answer that would make me most comfortable. I knew that. I wanted to go on knowing it when the dates became actual evenings.
“We’ll talk properly,” he said.
“Yes.”
Rhys called him, and he went back to the stage. I returned to the repairs, thinking about the six weeks I had already chosen for myself.
When I got home, a letter from my landlord waited on the mat.
It was not a disaster. The tenancy ended in August, as I had always known it would. He wanted to know whether I planned to renew for another year. He would be happy to keep me, he wrote, but he needed an answer soon because another prospective tenant had asked about the flat.
I sat at the kitchen table with the letter and the Manchester dates.
For months, I had known where I would be living in September. Daniel’s house. A room there for my work, or at least that had been the plan before the room acquired other possible uses in conversation. I had imagined shelves, a cutting table, a door I could shut.
Now I had six weeks of accommodation in another city and no clear picture after that.
The uncertainty should have frightened me more than it did. What frightened me was how quickly I wanted to put Nick into the empty space and call it a solution.
I made a list. Not of how to make a relationship work, but of the actual things I needed: somewhere to sleep, somewhere to work, somewhere to put the sewing machine. Enough money left after rent to accept good work rather than whatever arrived first.
The list was ordinary. It helped.
The next day I spoke to the landlord. I asked whether a shorter extension was possible. He said he would consider six months, though he would still need a decision. I thanked him and said I would ring back by the end of the week.
Then I went to the theater and found Nick learning a new passage from the tour script during a break. He looked up when I entered, and the pleasure on his face made the conversation harder to begin.
“I have a housing problem,” I said.
He put down the script. “How big?”
“Manageable. I think.”
I explained the lease, Manchester, the things I needed space for. He listened, then said the obvious thing before either of us had time to fear it.
“You could stay with me.”
There was a moment of silence.
I could picture his flat. The maps, the plant, the room where I had begun to feel welcome. I could picture my things arriving in bags because a date on a contract made the choice urgent.
“I don’t think I should,” I said.
Nick looked down at the script. “All right.”
The answer was quick, too quick to be the whole of what he felt.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked at me again. “I’m trying not to make it mean more than you said.”
I sat beside him.
“I almost moved my whole life into someone else’s house because it was the sensible next thing. I need to know what I’m choosing this time.”
“Yes.”
“And I need a workroom. You need a place to learn lines without stepping over fabric.”
“I’ve stepped over worse.”
I smiled, then shook my head. “Don’t charm the problem away.”
He took a breath. “I wasn’t only offering because it’s practical.”
I looked at him.
“I liked you in my flat,” he said. “I liked knowing you were going to be there. I wasn’t trying to solve you.”
The admission reached me in a different place from the offer itself.
“I liked being there.”
“But not like that. Not yet.”
“Not because I need somewhere to put the machine.”
He nodded slowly. I could see disappointment, and the effort not to turn it into pressure.
I put my hand over his. “Ask me again when it’s a question about us.”
He turned toward me. “Would you want me to?”
“Yes.”
For a moment neither of us moved. Then he lifted my hand and kissed the knuckles, a small gesture so unlike his usual humor that I felt my eyes sting.
“All right,” he said.
We sat together until his next call. The problem had not vanished. I still had to decide what to do about the flat, and he still had a tour to accept. But they were our actual problems now, spoken aloud, not traps waiting inside an offer that sounded too convenient to question.
That evening I rang the landlord and asked for the six-month extension. It would cost money I had hoped to save, but it gave me time to return from Manchester and decide what came next without carrying all my belongings straight into Nick’s room.
Afterward, I wrote the amount in my notebook and crossed out two purchases I had planned for the studio. I did not feel triumphant. I felt like a woman making an imperfect decision she could afford.
Nick came over after the performance with the tour contract in his bag. We sat at the table, each with our own papers, and ate toast because it was too late to cook.
“Have you accepted?” I asked.
“I’ve told Priya yes.”
I smiled. “Good.”
He looked at the extension note beside my plate. “And you?”
“Six months. Then we’ll see.”
He nodded. The jar of marmalade stood between us. I pushed it toward him, and he passed me the butter.
It was a small, unremarkable exchange. I found I liked the future better when it contained things like that.