The second chair was ugly.
Coralie stood in the open gateway of the walled garden and regarded it beside the first. One was wooden, weathered to a soft gray. The other was a folding chair with a striped seat that had faded unevenly in the sun.
“You promised me a place,” she said. “You didn’t mention the quality.”
Stellan came toward her carrying a bottle of water. “You can have the good one.”
“Which is the good one?”
“Depends whether you want comfort or appearances.”
She chose the folding chair. He nodded as though she had passed a test he had no intention of explaining, and sat in the wooden one with a small grunt that suggested she had chosen correctly.
The crew had gone. He had permission to stay after the day’s work, and the owner knew she was visiting. The garden was quiet except for the breeze moving through the leaves above the wall. In the corner that had disappointed Stellan, the unfinished ground remained unfinished. Elsewhere, things grew without regard to his schedule.
Coralie had brought nothing to improve it. No advice, no sketches, no examples found online. She had brought herself, and a cardigan because he said the air cooled quickly here in the evening.
“Show me what you’re pleased with,” she said.
He looked surprised. Then he stood and held out a hand.
She took it.
He walked her through the parts she had seen before and several she had missed: a narrow opening that revealed more of the garden than she expected, a low seat where the light fell late, a section that looked untidy until he pointed out the new growth. He did not explain every plant. Once, when he started to, he stopped himself and said, “That’s enough names.”
“I had already lost the first three,” Coralie said.
“They’re not offended.”
At the far end he showed her a mistake. He called it that before she had a chance to decide whether she liked it: a little passage that seemed inviting from one direction and led to an awkward blank space from the other.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I got attached to the drawing. Didn’t stand here enough.”
She understood that immediately. The paper woman in her blue dress had been remarkably unhelpful once fabric met her own body.
“Will you change it?”
“Yes. Not today.”
He stood in the opening, looking at it without the injured expression she had seen when he discussed the postponed work. This problem belonged to him; apparently that made it easier to bear.
“I like this part,” he said after a moment. “Working out why something doesn’t feel right. Not always while I’m doing it. Sometimes I’m foul company.”
“I have encountered a small sample.”
He nodded, accepting the reminder. “Yes. You have.”
She moved beside him and looked through the passage. It framed a patch of wall and a strip of sky. She could not tell him how to fix it. She liked being allowed to see it before it was fixed.
“Did you always want to do this?”
“No. I wanted to work on boats for about six months. I was nineteen. Knew nothing about boats.”
“What happened?”
“Went on one.”
She laughed, and he grinned.
“Then I took a job helping someone clear a garden. Thought I’d do it until I found something else.”
“And didn’t?”
“Found this instead, I suppose. Took a while to admit I liked it enough to learn properly.”
Coralie studied his face. She had known the established business, the capable man who could discuss a day’s work without making it sound like a performance. She liked this glimpse of the boy who had needed to discover that liking something was a reason to stay with it.
“I would have liked to meet you then,” she said.
“I was an idiot.”
“I was nineteen once too.”
“Then we’d have been hopeless.”
“Probably.”
He offered his hand to help her over an uneven place in the path. She took it and kept it after they were past.
She brushed her thumb across his knuckles as they walked.
She liked the way he moved here, certain of where to put his feet, less concerned with how he appeared. He crouched to lift a fallen branch from a path, and she watched the pull of his shirt across his shoulders. When he stood again, he caught her looking.
“What?”
“Nothing educational.”
His expression changed slowly. She enjoyed that too.
“We’re meant to be looking at the garden,” he said.
“You invited me. You didn’t specify my interests.”
He came closer. “No, I didn’t.”
The kiss was brief because a voice called from beyond the gate, somebody asking whether he was still there. Stellan answered, waited while a work question was settled, and returned to her with an apology that she waved away.
“Real life,” she said.
“Poor timing.”
“Also real life.”
They went back to the chairs. Coralie stretched her legs out and felt the day’s standing leave them. She had finished the blue dress two evenings before, on July fourteenth, and had then spent twenty minutes walking around her apartment simply to feel it move. Farah had demanded a photograph. Lenore had asked whether the neckline was secure. Stellan had been told he could see it at the wedding.
“That seems unnecessarily strict,” he said now, when she mentioned it.
“You’ll survive.”
“Probably.”
“You sound doubtful.”
“I haven’t seen it. Hard to judge the danger.”
She laughed and leaned back. Above the wall, a bird kept beginning the same short phrase and abandoning it. For once the unfinished things around her did not make her restless.
Stellan asked about the course. Petra had approved it on the tenth as promised, and they had put the notice in the shop window that afternoon. Coralie had gone outside twice to look at it, pretending the second time that she had forgotten something in the car.
“Any names yet?” he asked.
“Two interested. Not enrolled. I’m learning those are different things.”
“It’s early.”
“I know.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t need me to say that.”
“No. But I don’t mind.”
She told him about the first woman who had asked a question, which was whether she could come if she had no talent. Coralie had wanted to say something magnificent and reassuring. Instead she had said yes, and then explained what they would actually do. The woman had taken a leaflet.
“That sounds useful,” he said.
“I hope so. I keep imagining empty chairs.”
He looked at the one she occupied. “This one’s all right.”
“This one’s actively trying to fold me in half.”
He shifted forward at once. She caught his hand before he could stand.
“It’s fine. Sit down.”
He did, his fingers remaining in hers between the chairs.
The light changed while they talked. The heat softened, and the wall opposite them became a darker red. Coralie put on her cardigan. Stellan drank the last of the water and set the bottle beside his chair.
“I used to think I’d stop feeling foolish by now,” she said.
He turned toward her. “About the course?”
“About all of it. Being left. Having believed something so completely.”
He stayed quiet.
She had not intended to talk about Gareth. She did not particularly want him in this garden. But the thought had arrived while she was sitting comfortably with a man whose hand she trusted, and that seemed as good a time as any to discover whether she could say it without ruining the evening.
“I don’t want him back,” she said. “That’s clear. But sometimes I remember something I said, or something I planned, and I want to climb out of my own skin.”
“Something you said to him?”
“To anyone. The woman ordering the flowers. Farah. People who asked if I was excited. I was excited. That’s the worst part. I wasn’t secretly wise about it.”
Stellan’s thumb moved against her hand, then stopped.
“I don’t think you had to be.”
“I know. In theory.”
She shifted in the uncomfortable chair. A splinter caught her cardigan; she eased the thread free.
“You don’t have to make me feel better,” she said.
“I’m not sure I know how.”
“Good. That takes the pressure off.”
He smiled, then looked down at their hands. “I worry about doing it wrong again. With you.”
The words landed more heavily than she expected.
“What part?”
“Waiting. Deciding something will be easier next week. Telling myself I’m being careful when I’m just frightened.”
She watched his face. He did not look toward her for absolution.
“You did wait too long,” she said.
“I know.”
“And you hurt me.”
“I know that too.”
She could have stopped there, kept him on the side of the conversation where he owed her something. Instead she drew his hand into her lap.
“I don’t want every good evening to become evidence for the defense.”
He looked up.
“I want to have this one,” she said. “Because I like being here. With you. Not because you’re getting it right.”
His mouth moved as though he had begun an answer and changed his mind. He stood, then crouched beside her chair, bringing his face level with hers.
“I like being with you too,” he said. “That’s not enough for what I mean.”
Her heart began to beat hard, with an awkward urgency she resented and welcomed at once.
He looked at her shoulder, then back at her face. “I had thought I’d find a better moment.”
“You’re doing it again.”
He laughed once, quietly. “Yes.”
Coralie put her hand against his cheek. The skin was warm from the day. She could feel the faint roughness beginning along his jaw, the little movement as he swallowed.
“I love you,” he said.
No elaborate introduction followed it. No explanation of what she had healed or saved. He stayed where he was, looking at her with a vulnerability that made her own eyes sting.
She had imagined hearing the words again. In some versions she had been cautious and composed. In none had she been sitting in a striped chair that pinched the back of her knee.
“I love you,” she said.
His eyes closed briefly. She kissed him before he could answer, bending forward so far that the chair made an alarming sound beneath her. He caught its arm with one hand and her waist with the other.
They broke apart laughing.
“I did warn you,” he said.
“You let me choose it.”
“I didn’t know you’d do that.”
“You should have hoped.”
He stood and helped her out of the chair. She went willingly into his arms, her face against the open neck of his shirt. For a while neither spoke. A car passed beyond the wall. The bird tried its phrase again.
Coralie held him closer.
They left the garden before the light went. Stellan checked the gate while she stood beside the car, and she watched him test the latch once, not twice. He came back smiling at something she had not said.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You look very pleased with yourself.”
“I am.”
She kissed him again, briefly, because she could. On the drive to his house, she rested one hand on his leg and looked out at the ordinary streets. They had not changed. She was grateful for that. She did not want the world to become a grand accompaniment to something she would have to keep deserving.
At his house, he opened the refrigerator and admitted he had forgotten to buy what he intended for dinner. Coralie looked over his shoulder and suggested a less ambitious alternative. He agreed without defending the original plan.
While he cooked, she sat at the kitchen table and took off her shoes. He turned once to ask a question and lost track of it when he saw her watching him.
“Again?” he said.
“Still.”
He put down what he was holding and came to kiss her. This time there was no gate, no voice, and no dangerous chair. She drew him between her knees and felt his hands settle along her back.
“Dinner,” she reminded him eventually.
“Yes.”
He did not move.
She laughed against his mouth and pushed gently at his chest. “I am hungry.”
They ate later than intended. Afterward, with the dishes left until morning, they sat on the sofa and talked about the wedding. He would pick her up. She would go early enough to do the brief dress help she had agreed with Bryony, then join him as a guest. Neither pretended those roles would be effortless to separate, but they knew what they were trying to do.
“I want to dance with you,” he said.
“You haven’t seen me dance.”
“I’ve seen you fall into a lake. I’m prepared for surprises.”
She put her head on his shoulder. “One dance, at least.”
“More if the shoes allow it.”
Her ivory shoes were still under her bed. She had found another pair that would work with the blue, comfortable enough to forget after the first few minutes. She did not tell him the history of either pair. There were some things she no longer needed to explain in order to enjoy what came next.
When they went upstairs, he paused outside the bedroom and touched her face again, as though checking the evening had not been something he invented.
“I love you,” he said, less carefully this time.
She smiled. “I heard you.”
“I know.”
“I liked it.”
He kissed her, and she drew him through the door.