“Go,” Ruth said. “Before I change my mind.”
Celia stood in her own doorway on September eighteenth with her coat over one arm and six explanations ready. Nell was asleep. Ruth had been told where everything was, had ignored half the instructions and repeated the important ones back with pointed accuracy. Adrian would be there in five minutes.
“Her clean things are—”
“Where they were ten minutes ago.”
“And if she won’t settle—”
“I’ll call. You’re going to the beach, not across the Pacific.”
Celia looked at the bassinet. Five weeks old today. She had left Nell with Ruth twice for short errands, and once while she showered long enough to feel like someone with a body of her own. This was different. She was going because she wanted an hour with a man.
“I feel guilty.”
“Then feel guilty in the car. I’ve only offered an hour.”
“Ruth.”
Her sister softened enough to squeeze her arm. “You asked. I said yes. I have a wedding tomorrow, and I’m going home after this. That’s the arrangement. Stop trying to earn it in advance.”
Celia looked at the notebook Ruth had brought. It lay open on the kitchen table beside a sketch of planters and a list of costs.
“What’s that?”
“A thing I haven’t got time for while you interrogate me.”
“Is it for the town contract?”
“Maybe.” Ruth closed it. “Go and enjoy your boyfriend.”
“We haven’t said boyfriend.”
“Then enjoy your unnamed gentleman caller.”
Celia laughed, bent to kiss her sister’s cheek and went downstairs before she could start again. Adrian was just pulling up. He saw her at the bottom of the steps and got out, leaving his door open.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I’m escaping while I can.”
He looked past her, briefly concerned.
“Nothing’s wrong. Ruth wants me gone. In a supportive way.”
He smiled and opened the passenger door. “Where to?”
“North beach. I’ve ordered food. We can pick it up.”
He looked at her with a pleasure she was learning to recognize: not simply that she had agreed to see him, but that she’d wanted something enough to arrange it.
“What food?”
“You didn’t get a vote.”
“I like nearly everything.”
“That’s fortunate.”
She slid into the car, her rust-colored wool scarf catching on the seat belt. He freed the fringe with one hand, and she caught his wrist before he could move away. He leaned in, smiling, and kissed her.
“Now you can drive,” she said.
“Thank you.”
The beach had looked friendlier from the restaurant window.
By the time they reached the water, wind was racing along the sand hard enough to make Celia hold her hair with one hand. Adrian carried the paper bag beneath his coat like something he’d smuggled. She had ordered elegant little sandwiches, expensive enough to count as an occasion, and two cups of soup with lids that now seemed a foolish expression of faith.
“We can eat in the car,” he said.
“We’ve only just got out.”
“Yes. I’m very good at changing plans when the plan is windy.”
She looked at the gray water, the pale line of surf and the empty stretch of beach. A battered picnic table stood near a driftwood shelter. “There.”
“All right.”
He followed without arguing. She liked that. She would like him even more if the table proved to be a brilliant choice.
It did not.
The first napkin escaped before either of them sat down. Adrian trapped it against his leg, then rescued the second with a speed that suggested professional training. Celia put her bag on the third and held the soup against the wind while he opened the food.
“This is very romantic,” she said.
“I was going to say bracing.”
“Don’t.”
He grinned. She bit into a sandwich and discovered the filling had shifted to one end. A slice of cucumber landed on her coat.
For a moment she simply looked at it. She had wanted to give him a lovely hour, something easy and chosen. Instead she had brought a man who could eat anywhere to a freezing table where lunch was disintegrating.
Adrian picked up the cucumber and put it in the empty wrapper.
“It’s good,” he said, taking an enormous bite of his own sandwich.
“You don’t have to say that.”
He chewed, swallowed and looked at her. “It is good.”
“The beach was a mistake.”
“The beach is cold. Those aren’t quite the same thing.”
“You sound like someone determined to enjoy himself.”
“I am enjoying myself.” He looked at her hair, now whipping across her mouth. “Although I may be enjoying it more than you are.”
She pulled the hair away and laughed. His own hair was standing up on one side. There was a line of sand against the toe of his expensive shoe.
“You look terrible,” she told him.
“You’ve brought me here under false pretenses.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I trusted you.”
They ate faster than the meal deserved. The soup was unexpectedly wonderful, hot enough to sting her tongue, and by the time she’d finished half of it she was laughing at everything. A gull watched from the driftwood shelter, waiting for either of them to weaken.
“Don’t look at me,” Celia told it. “I’ve already lost the cucumber.”
Adrian looked from her to the bird. “You do apologize to a lot of animals.”
“That wasn’t an apology. That was a warning.”
He laughed. She remembered the depot doorway in January, his coffee, her ginger tea, the way he’d asked whether she’d refused the drink or the company. It seemed both very close and like something that had happened to another woman.
“What?” he asked.
“I was thinking about the first time we talked.”
“When you saved the bus seat?”
“Afterward.”
“I remember.”
He said it without elaborating, and she felt the little warmth that came when she discovered he had kept something too.
They put the wrappers carefully back in the bag and took their cups toward the water. Celia checked her phone. Twelve minutes gone since they left the apartment, then the food, then the wind. Still time. She put it away before she could calculate further.
The tide was low enough to leave a wide stretch of dark wet sand. Adrian offered his arm as they crossed the loose stones. She took it because the stones shifted beneath her shoes and because she wanted her hand on him.
“You like it in bad weather,” he said.
“I warned you.”
“You did.”
They walked slowly, close to the dry edge. Her scarf loosened in a gust. She caught one end, but the other slipped free, skidded across the sand and landed just as a thin sheet of water came in.
“Oh, no.”
Adrian went after it before she’d finished speaking. He caught it by the fringe and stepped back too late. Water washed over one shoe and darkened the cuff of his trousers.
Celia covered her mouth. He stood very still, looking down.
“Don’t,” he said.
She began laughing.
“I’m trying to maintain some dignity.”
“I know. That’s making it worse.”
He came back holding the sodden scarf away from him. One foot made an audible wet sound. She laughed so hard she had to take his arm again, and he gave up trying to look affronted.
“I should have let it go,” he said.
“It’s old.”
“You could have shouted that.”
“You were very fast.”
“I thought I’d be faster.”
She took the scarf, still smiling, and kissed his cheek. The wind had made his skin cold. He turned his head before she could move away, and the kiss landed nearer his mouth.
“Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s get you warm.”
In the parked car the windows began to mist almost at once. Adrian put the heater on low, then removed his wet shoe with a sigh so heartfelt that Celia laughed again.
“I should offer to pay for cleaning.”
“You should offer sympathy.”
“I have very little left after the cucumber.”
He put the shoe on an old towel he’d found in the trunk and looked at her. The smile remained in his face even when he stopped laughing.
“You have sand on your cheek,” he said.
“Probably everywhere.”
He reached across, brushing the little grain away with his thumb. His hand stayed there a moment. She leaned toward it without deciding to.
The kiss was awkward around the space between the seats. She laughed against his mouth, and he moved back enough for her to turn. Then it wasn’t awkward. His hand settled at her nape, fingers beneath her hair, and she caught the front of his jacket as she’d done in the hotel corridor.
She had missed the force of wanting. Not a general wish to be loved or looked after. This particular impatience to be closer to him, to feel his mouth change against hers when she stopped being tentative.
His breath caught when she touched his neck. The small sound made her bolder. She kissed the corner of his mouth, then the place just below it, and felt his hand tighten for a moment at her waist.
“Celia,” he said, a little unsteadily.
She drew back. “Too much?”
“No.” He laughed under his breath. “Not remotely.”
She smiled, still close enough that she could feel his warmth. “Good.”
He kissed her again, slower this time, and she let the minute stretch. Outside, a couple with a dog walked past, their figures blurred by the fogged glass. She was thirty-seven and kissing a man in a parked car. It was wonderful.
When they separated, she touched her forehead to his shoulder and laughed softly.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m happy.”
His hand moved once over her back. “So am I.”
She sat back reluctantly. Her phone remained silent. She checked the time and found they still had ten minutes before they ought to leave.
Adrian rubbed a clear patch in the windshield. The view returned: pale water, dark beach, a gull making its own unhurried decisions.
“You know,” he said, “I haven’t done this in a long time.”
“Lost a shoe to the sea?”
“Wanted to stay somewhere without thinking about where I should be next.”
She looked at him. He was watching the beach, his mouth no longer quite smiling.
“Your work?”
“Usually.”
He took a breath. She waited, resting her hand on his sleeve.
“The woman I was with before. Six years. I kept thinking there’d be a point where the company needed less of me. We’d book things, and I’d move them. Dinners, trips. Once her birthday. I sent flowers because I thought that was better than nothing.”
Celia didn’t rush to tell him it was. She knew too much about waiting beside an explanation.
“Was it?” she asked.
“Not by then.” He looked down at her hand. “She said she couldn’t spend another year getting dressed for things I didn’t come to. I was offended because there were reasons. Good reasons, some of them.”
“And the others?”
He looked at her directly. “I was used to being forgiven.”
The answer was uncomfortable enough that she believed it. She didn’t want him spotless. She did want to know where the dirt might come from.
“Do you still do it?”
“Sometimes. I wish the answer was no.”
Celia considered him, the wet trouser cuff, the tired crease beside his eye, the hand that had been warm against her back.
“I don’t want to dress up and sit waiting,” she said.
“I don’t want you to.”
“You might still make me.”
“I might.” He looked as though he disliked saying it. “I’ll try not to. And I’ll tell you if something changes, before you’ve spent half an evening inventing reasons for me.”
“Good. I’m very good at inventing reasons. You shouldn’t encourage me.”
He smiled, but didn’t turn the conversation into a joke. She appreciated that too.
“October second,” she said. “Would you keep the evening?”
He took out his phone, then stopped. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know yet. Something with me. I’ll sort out care for Nell. We can make the rest of the plan after that.”
“Yes.” He entered it. “Evening. Celia. No invented reasons.”
“You don’t need to write that part.”
“I might.”
She laughed and leaned in to kiss him once, briefly. “Then write it.”
He showed her the screen. He had written only her name and the time. Somehow that pleased her more.
They reached the apartment three minutes before the hour was up. Ruth opened the door with Nell against her shoulder and looked immediately at Adrian’s bare ankle above the damp shoe he’d put back on.
“What happened?”
“Your sister chose an excellent venue,” he said.
“I told you she likes bad weather.”
Celia reached for Nell, who smelled of the familiar warm things she’d missed even while she was enjoying herself. She kissed the little head and looked over it at Adrian.
He was watching them, smiling faintly. She wanted to ask him to stay. Ruth needed to go, Nell needed feeding, and Celia was beginning to understand that wanting didn’t always have to become a plan at once.
“Thank you,” she said to him.
“For the footbath?”
“Among other things.”
He kissed her cheek before he left, close to the corner of her mouth, a private reminder in the busy little room.
After Ruth had gone too, Celia put the wet scarf in the sink and sat down with Nell. The apartment seemed quiet, but not empty. She could still feel Adrian’s hand at the back of her neck.
She sent him a message after the baby settled.
I had a lovely hour. Sorry about your shoe.
His reply arrived while she was folding the towel Ruth had used.
I am accepting sympathy in person. October second.
Celia smiled and left the message open beside her.