We spent our next free afternoon trying to find one weekend we could both promise.
At first it was funny. Nick spread the winter tour schedule across my table. I added the Manchester dates, the Portlight closing night and the work I had already agreed to do before leaving. Before we’d chosen a September weekend, we were trying to settle everything through January. We used different colored pencils, as if that might make time more cooperative.
“This one,” he said.
“Workshop presentation.”
“The next?”
“You’re in Norwich.”
He looked at the page. “So I am.”
We found a day, then discovered neither of us could get there without spending most of it on trains. Nick drew a small cross beside it.
“A romantic view of the Midlands.”
“We could wave as we pass.”
He laughed, but after another ten minutes the joke wore thin.
I put down my pencil.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t do this now.”
Nick looked up. “The dates?”
“All of it.”
The words landed more heavily than I intended. He went still.
“What do you mean?”
I looked at the pages. They had begun to seem like evidence against us, though five minutes earlier they were only schedules.
“I mean we’ve only just started being all right again, and now we’re trying to arrange months we don’t know how to live through.”
He set down his pencil too.
“Do you want to stop seeing me?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly and clearly. It relieved me to hear it.
“Then what?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t want us to spend every conversation negotiating who gives something up.”
“Neither do I.”
“It already feels as if there’s no room.”
Nick leaned back. For a moment I could see the old impulse in him, the urge to offer a solution so reassuring that neither of us would have to remain uncomfortable. He didn’t speak until it had passed.
“There is room,” he said. “There just isn’t as much as we’d like.”
I looked at him.
“We don’t have to fill every empty day before you’ve even left. But I don’t want to pretend I’ll be happy never knowing when I can see you.”
“I wouldn’t be either.”
“Then let’s choose something we can do. One thing.”
We looked again. There was a weekend three weeks into the residency, before his rehearsals began, when he could come to Manchester. Not long. Saturday morning to Sunday evening. Enough to walk somewhere, eat, sleep in the same room.
I circled it.
“That one.”
Nick nodded. “That one.”
The pages stopped looking quite so hostile.
We put them aside and went out for air. I hadn’t realized how warm the flat had become until we reached the street. Clouds had gathered over the harbor, but the rain was holding off.
We walked without choosing a destination. After a while, Nick took my hand.
“I didn’t like hearing ‘all of it,’” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You can be frightened. I just need to know whether you’re telling me you’re frightened or telling me you’re leaving.”
I looked at him. The distinction seemed obvious once he said it, and much less obvious when I was inside the feeling.
“Frightened,” I said.
He squeezed my hand once.
“All right.”
At the harbor, a group of people were carrying a small boat down the ramp. Nobody seemed entirely in charge. One man shouted instructions that contradicted the instructions shouted by another, while a woman at the back quietly kept the rope from tangling.
Nick watched them with interest.
“You want to help,” I said.
“I have no useful knowledge.”
“That hasn’t stopped the man in the red jacket.”
He laughed. We stayed until the boat reached the water, then continued along the wall.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he told me. “About asking again when it’s about us.”
I felt my hand tighten in his.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to ask you to move into the space I already have and call that making a life together.”
I looked at him. He watched the water while he spoke, as if it helped him keep the words plain.
“I want, eventually, to choose somewhere with you. A place where your work isn’t what we fit into the spare corner.”
My throat tightened.
“Eventually is a very accommodating word.”
“I know.” He turned toward me. “After the tour. If we still want it then. We can start looking, not because either lease forces us, but because we want the same address.”
I stood still. People moved around us on the path, carrying bags, pushing bicycles, continuing with their ordinary afternoon while a possible life arrived between two sentences.
“I’d want a room with good light,” I said.
Nick smiled. “I suspected.”
“And a door you can shut when you’re working.”
“For me or for you?”
“Both.”
His smile softened. “Yes.”
I looked back at the sea. I could imagine it, which was dangerous. I could also imagine the ways it might be difficult, which made it feel more real than the perfect version I had once carried into Daniel’s house.
“I’d like to look,” I said. “After the tour.”
Nick let out a breath. “So would I.”
He kissed me there, beside a rusted railing and a bin that needed emptying. It was not a proposal. It was not a guarantee. It was enough to make me put both hands against his face and kiss him back.
On the way home, we bought bread and a jar of olives. Nick made a point of asking whether they had stones. I told him I was proud of his development. He said he hoped I would include it in any future references.
We cooked together. I gave him a task and did not take it back when he did it differently. He asked whether I wanted advice about the Manchester packing list and accepted no without producing the advice anyway. None of it was dramatic enough to describe to someone else as proof. It was simply how the evening went.
After dinner, I sat on the kitchen counter while he washed the dishes. I had offered to do them; he had pointed out that I had done most of the cooking. We were learning a rhythm that did not require either of us to earn our place by anticipating everything first.
“I’m going to miss this,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder. “The washing up?”
“You being in the way.”
“I can maintain that by telephone.”
I smiled, then felt the sadness return, gentle this time rather than threatening.
“I’ll miss you,” I said.
He dried his hands and came to stand between my knees.
“I’ll miss you too.”
I rested my forehead against his. We did not try to make the missing smaller. We had chosen things worth going toward, and there would be a cost to that. For once, it did not feel as though the cost had been assigned to me without asking.
Later, in bed, I told him about a room I had rented when I was twenty-four. It had a skylight that leaked and a view of a brick wall, but I had loved it because it was the first place where all the decisions were mine.
“I painted one wall orange,” I admitted.
Nick turned toward me. “How orange?”
“Aggressively.”
“I’m glad we’re discussing this before looking at properties.”
I pushed his shoulder. He caught my hand and kissed it.
“What did your first place look like?” I asked.
“Mostly borrowed furniture.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“Nothing matched. The table was too big. I had to turn sideways to reach the fridge.”
“Did you like it?”
“Very much.”
We talked until the stories grew slower and the room darkened. At some point he fell asleep with his hand loosely holding mine. I stayed awake a little longer, not worrying, only listening to the sounds of the building settle around us.
I could not remember the last time a future had felt both uncertain and welcome.