On June twenty-sixth Adrian arrived with a reservation, a weather report and the anxious expression of a man who’d had time to reconsider all his decisions.
“It’s close,” he said while Celia locked Ruth’s front door. “In the hotel by the marina. There’s a place to sit beside the dance floor. We can stay half an hour or two hours. Or eat and leave.”
“Have you arranged an evacuation route?”
He looked at her. “There are two exits.”
She laughed, and he put his head back for a moment, acknowledging defeat.
“I want you to enjoy it.”
“I’m planning to.”
She had chosen a dark blue dress this time, one she already owned, forgiving enough for thirty-two weeks and the small dinner she intended to eat. Her silver earrings brushed her neck when she turned. She’d put them on, taken them off because they seemed excessive, then put them back.
Adrian noticed them as he opened the car door. “Those are pretty.”
“They’re my reckless side.”
“I’ll remember.”
She got into the car before he could see her smile broaden. In five days she’d have her own keys, her own bedroom, her own sink with no one else’s dishes in it. Tonight she wanted to think about something that didn’t require lifting, labeling or a trip to the hardware store.
The jazz club occupied a low room at the back of the marina hotel. Brass lamps made soft pools of light on the tables. Through an open archway Celia could see water between the moored boats, but the room itself felt enclosed, private in the pleasant way the restaurant’s separate dining room hadn’t. People sat close enough to speak quietly. At one table a woman in a red blouse was laughing with her whole body.
“This is perfect,” Celia said.
Adrian’s shoulders lowered a fraction.
They were shown to a small table with two chairs and a cushioned bench. Celia chose the chair because she could get out of it more easily. Adrian sat beside her rather than across the little table, then moved the lamp so she could read the menu. She stopped his hand.
“I can see.”
“Right.”
He put both hands on his knees with such deliberate restraint that she laughed.
“You can touch the furniture. Just don’t rebuild the room for me.”
“This is going to be difficult.”
“I suspected.”
He smiled at her, a little ruefully, and she liked him better for not getting it right without effort.
The trio began while they were deciding what to eat. The singer had a low, rough voice that made even familiar songs sound as though she’d thought of the words herself. Celia ordered something small and savory, then stole a fry from Adrian’s plate before hers arrived. He moved the plate closer.
“I don’t understand people who say they don’t want fries,” he murmured.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No. You were honest. Direct action.”
She took another. The music filled the pause between them. Under the table his knee brushed hers, and neither of them moved at once.
When the first couple went onto the small dance floor, Celia watched the woman’s hand settle on the man’s shoulder. They were older than she and Adrian, comfortably out of step, talking as they moved. The sight stirred a longing she hadn’t expected to feel so sharply. She wanted to be held in a room where nobody needed her to accomplish anything.
“Would you like to?” Adrian asked.
“Yes.”
He stood, then held out his hand without a performance. She took it and rose. The floor felt different beneath her shoes, smooth enough to make her careful for the first few steps.
“Tell me if I’m—” he began.
“I will.”
He placed one hand lightly at her back. It was a sensible distance, politely arranged. Celia put her hand on his shoulder and felt the warmth of him through his jacket.
He could dance. Not brilliantly. He counted under his breath at first, and once he steered them toward the edge too late and apologized to a chair. But he knew where to put his feet, and when he stopped thinking about it his body grew easier beneath her hand.
“You misled me,” she said.
“About what?”
“You said you didn’t dance often. I imagined something much worse.”
“This is what happens when I prepare.”
“Did you prepare?”
“Not recently.” His mouth twisted. “I learned a couple of dances years ago. My girlfriend liked it. I thought I’d surprise her.”
“Did you?”
He looked beyond her shoulder, missing a step. “We never got around to it.”
She waited, keeping her hand where it was.
“I’d booked lessons,” he said. “Four. I went to three. Then I had a trip, and she went away with friends, and by the time I got back we were quarreling about something else.”
“Did she know?”
“Eventually. It sounded like a defense by then.”
There was a story beyond that, but he had not offered it, and she didn’t want to spend this evening examining a woman she’d never met.
“Well,” she said, “I’m getting the benefit.”
He looked down at her. “You are.”
The singer moved into the next verse. Celia stepped closer, not enough to make the dancing awkward, enough that his hand spread against her back. She could feel his breath near her temple. The room had become a series of small sensations: the soft drag of her dress against her calves, a pulse at the base of her throat, his thumb moving once against the cloth.
She’d wanted to be desired. She hadn’t accounted for how distracting her own desire would be.
When the song ended he started to move away. She caught his hand.
“One more.”
His answer was to draw her back.
For that song she didn’t think about the apartment or the baby things or the man overseas who still had no idea. She knew those things existed. They would exist when the music stopped. Right now Adrian was smiling because she’d said something about his counting, and she was enjoying the unpolished warmth of his face close to hers.
Afterward she needed to sit. She said so without making it an apology, and he led her back to the table. Her drink had lost its ice. She drank it anyway, thirsty and pleased, while he loosened his collar with one finger.
“You enjoyed that,” she said.
“I did.”
“You look surprised.”
“I usually feel as though everyone can see me working things out.”
“I could. It was charming.”
He made a face. “Charming is what my mother says when I’ve worn a tie she bought.”
“Then I won’t say it again.”
“You can. Just don’t sound like her.”
Celia laughed, tipping her head back. When she looked at him again, he wasn’t smiling. Not because he’d taken offense. His eyes had moved to her mouth.
She went still beneath the look, then reached for her water because her hands needed something to do.
They stayed through another set. She listened with her hand on the table near his, the distance between their fingers becoming a small, ridiculous preoccupation. Once he touched her wrist to draw her attention to a solo, and she could hardly listen to it.
When she finally said she was ready to go, she was tired. She was also unwilling to let the evening end in the car with both of them being sensible again.
The corridor outside the club was quiet. A row of old harbor photographs hung beneath little lights. Adrian had stopped to put on his jacket while she came out of the restroom, and he turned at the sound of her steps.
“Car’s just outside,” he said. “I can bring it around.”
“Wait.”
He waited.
She came close enough to see the faint crease where his shirt collar had folded against his neck. There was a small mark beside his mouth, an old scar perhaps, which she’d never noticed at a table or across a bus aisle.
“Did I do something?” he asked.
“No.”
“You look very serious.”
“I’m trying not to talk myself out of something.”
He put his hands down at his sides. She liked that he didn’t immediately guess aloud and save her from deciding.
Celia laid one hand against his chest, rose a little toward him and kissed him.
For an instant he stayed perfectly still. Then his hand came to her cheek, the other settling at her waist, and he kissed her back.
It was nothing like the careful touch she’d imagined on the drive here. His mouth was warm and certain now that she had closed the distance. She caught the front of his jacket because the first kiss had made her want a second before it was finished.
He drew back just far enough to look at her.
“Celia.”
“Yes,” she said, before he could ask anything.
His laugh was barely a sound. Then his mouth was on hers again, and the hand at her cheek slid into the short hair behind her ear. She felt herself lean into him, hungry for the pressure and the little loss of composure she could feel in his breath.
A door opened somewhere down the corridor. They separated, slowly, as a man carrying an ice bucket walked past without looking at them.
Celia covered her mouth with one hand, not to hide a smile so much as to contain it.
“I was going to wait,” Adrian said.
“I know. I was beginning to think you’d wait until I retired.”
He laughed, his hand still at her waist. “I couldn’t tell whether—”
“Now you can.”
“Now I can.”
She lowered her hand. The corridor seemed absurdly bright. She could feel the heat in her face, the softened place inside her where his voice had said her name.
“We should go,” she said, although she didn’t move.
“We should.”
He kissed her once more, briefly this time, and took her hand.
Outside, the cool air made her shiver. He noticed but didn’t immediately put his jacket around her. She was already wearing a coat. The small correction pleased her almost as much as the kiss had.
They stopped beside his car. Beyond the hotel parking area the marina masts clicked in the wind. Celia could see the lamps reflected in the water, wavering whenever a boat shifted against its moorings.
“I don’t know what happens next,” she said.
Adrian leaned against the car beside her. “Tonight?”
“After tonight. When the baby’s here. I can barely imagine being in the new apartment, and that’s next week. I don’t want you to think I’ve worked something out because I kissed you.”
He looked at their hands. “I haven’t worked anything out either.”
“You usually sound as though you have.”
“Usually I have a schedule. It isn’t quite the same.”
She smiled faintly.
“I want to see you,” he said. “I know that much.”
“What if I’m exhausted and can’t go anywhere? What if I’m a terrible person for a while?”
“You’re allowed some credit. I’ve already been tedious about a lamp.”
She laughed, but he didn’t let the joke finish the answer.
“I don’t know what it’ll be like,” he said. “I don’t have children. I’ve held a few at company events, mostly while someone photographed me looking alarmed. I shouldn’t pretend I know.”
The honesty made her want to touch him again. She laid her free hand over his.
“I don’t want a promise you can’t mean yet.”
“Then let’s not make one.” He turned toward her. “I want another date. That’s the promise I can manage tonight.”
“I want that too.”
They stood there longer than they needed to. She could have talked until the fear came back in a new form. Instead she touched the crease of his collar, smoothing it because she wanted a reason to keep her fingers near his neck.
His hand closed gently around hers.
“You make it difficult to be patient,” he said.
She felt that everywhere. “Good.”
On the drive home she stayed awake, although the road lights and the low hum of the car invited sleep. At Ruth’s, Adrian walked her to the door and kissed her beneath the porch light. A moth battered itself against the glass above them. She laughed into his mouth and felt him smile.
When she went inside, she leaned against the closed door for a moment, still holding the key.
Ruth had left a stack of flattened boxes in the hall for the move. Celia stepped around them, touched her lips once with her fingertips and went upstairs to find her phone.
I got home safely, she typed.
Adrian’s reply came before she’d reached the bedroom.
I noticed. I’m trying not to come back.
She sat on the edge of the bed, smiling into the quiet room, and told him she was trying not to ask.