26 October 2026
Simon arrived with bread, flowers and a question about where shoes were meant to go.
“On your feet, usually,” Willa told him.
Maren shut the apartment door before he could make the mistake of apologizing to a six-year-old for wanting an instruction.
“By the mat is fine.”
He looked at her over Willa’s head. There was a quick, private smile in his eyes, one she now knew how it felt to be kissed by. She wanted to pull him down by his collar and welcome him properly. Her daughter was examining the bread as if it might contain something alive.
“Is there garlic?”
“No.”
“Good.” Willa turned away. “The horse doesn’t like garlic.”
“Useful to know,” he said.
He handed Maren the flowers. A small bunch, dark red and cream, still in the paper from an ordinary florist. She had intended to tell him not to bring things every time, but he hadn’t brought things every time. This was his first visit. She liked flowers. She put them in water before she could spoil the pleasure.
The invitation had been hers. Yesterday she had asked whether he wanted to eat with them on Monday, with the important qualification that dinner would be simple and he might be required to admire a horse. He had answered yes before asking the time.
Now he stood in her kitchen with his sleeves rolled back, looking at the pan on the stove while Willa explained a kingdom in which nobody had a proper job except the horse.
Maren had made chicken with lemon and oregano, rice, and a salad Willa would selectively dismantle. The smell belonged to her childhood, to her grandmother squeezing lemons over nearly everything, but she hadn’t made it as a test of cultural appreciation. It was something she could cook while supervising spelling. Still, when Simon leaned toward the stove and said it smelled wonderful, she felt the compliment in an unreasonably tender place.
“You can set the table,” she told him.
“Three?”
“Yes, unless the horse has a dietary request.”
“The horse eats outside,” Willa said.
He opened the wrong drawer, apologized to nobody in particular, and found the forks on the next attempt. Maren watched him for a moment. His broad shoulders occupied more of the kitchen than she had allowed for when picturing the evening. She had wanted him here. She hadn’t quite anticipated how much she would want to touch him here.
At dinner Willa asked whether his company made horses.
“Some,” Simon said.
“Real-looking ones?”
“Yes.”
“Mine’s better. Mine can be a dragon.”
“Then mine are at a disadvantage.”
Willa considered whether he was being sarcastic. Maren recognized the scrutiny because she had received it herself that morning over a banana.
“It’s not a game where you win,” Willa said.
“Ah.”
“You can win the war. But we’re not doing the war today.”
Simon took a bite of chicken. “What are we doing?”
“Court.”
Maren glanced at him. She had not known about court.
“The horse stole all the carrots,” Willa explained. “So he’s got to tell the king why.”
“What happens if his reason isn’t good?” Simon asked.
“He goes in the cupboard.”
“That sounds severe.”
“It’s got a cushion.”
After dinner, they discovered that Simon was to play the horse’s lawyer. His client, operated by Willa, had no intention of cooperating. Each time he offered a defense, the horse admitted another crime.
“He was hungry,” Simon said.
“He also stole a chair.”
“Perhaps he needed somewhere to sit while he ate.”
“Horses don’t sit on chairs.”
Maren, playing the king with an oven mitt, attempted a dignified snort and lost it halfway through. Willa frowned at her.
“Kings don’t laugh.”
“They might. Under the right provocation.”
“Mine doesn’t.”
Simon knelt beside the coffee table. “Your Majesty, I suggest the carrots were a misunderstanding.”
“The horse knew they were carrots,” Willa said.
“He believed them to be his carrots.”
“No he didn’t.”
Maren met Simon’s eyes above the table. He looked helpless. She laughed properly this time. The king fell over. Willa seized the chance to have the horse escape through a cushion tunnel, leaving his lawyer to face the cupboard alone.
“An excellent case,” Maren told him.
“I’d prefer not to receive a review yet.”
Willa made him a paper hat for prison, then rejected the shape of it and started again. Simon waited. He didn’t take over the scissors, offer a product that would make a better prison, or try to regain control of the story. But when the hat was finished and Willa demanded a second trial, he looked at Maren with unmistakable relief as she announced bath time.
“He doesn’t have to go to bed,” Willa said.
“No. You do.”
“Then he can wait in the cupboard.”
“We’ll let him out for a glass of water.”
Willa accepted this with reluctance. In the bathroom she whispered, “He doesn’t know the rules.”
“You made some of them up today.”
“He still doesn’t know.”
Maren washed the paint from her daughter’s wrist. “Did you have fun?”
Willa shrugged. “The hat’s good.”
Maren took that for the answer it was.
While she read the bedtime book, she could hear Simon in the kitchen. Water ran, stopped, ran again. A cupboard clicked shut. She wondered if he was doing the washing-up to be helpful or because he couldn’t work out where he ought to wait. She wanted to go and tell him she wanted him here, but Willa was pointing to a picture she had missed.
“Read that bit.”
She read it. She stayed until her daughter’s breathing slowed. There would be evenings, if she let this go on, when wanting two people would require more than the ability to arrange a dinner. She did not yet know what Simon would do when she couldn’t make the evening charming.
When she came back he was standing at the sink, holding the lid of a container.
“I’ve been offered several incompatible places for this,” he said.
“Bottom drawer. On its side. If you put it flat, the drawer won’t shut.”
He obeyed. “Good. I’d hate to be imprisoned twice.”
The sink was clear. The pan had been left to soak. He had understood which part needed doing and which could wait.
She leaned against the counter beside him. “You’re allowed to say she exhausted you.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“She’s quite selective about the rules.”
“She used my own testimony against me.”
“She’ll remember the hat.”
He smiled, then looked toward the hall. “Was I all right?”
The question was quiet. She could have reassured him too quickly. Instead she touched his forearm.
“You were here. You played a game you were terrible at. You didn’t have to turn it into anything else.”
He covered her hand with his. “I’d also like you to know I ate two portions of dinner because I liked it, not because I thought that was a rule.”
“Three. You had three.”
“Then it was very good.”
She moved closer. “You can kiss me now.”
“I’ve been trying to find the polite way to ask.”
“It’s my kitchen. I can abolish politeness.”
His smile disappeared as she reached for him, replaced by something that made her catch her breath. He kissed her with one hand at the side of her neck and the other low against her back, holding her close without lifting her away from the ordinary ground beneath them.
She had expected the kiss to belong to the restaurant, the lit houses, the green dress. Instead she was wearing old trousers and a blue shirt with a spot of lemon juice near the hem, and she wanted him badly enough that the effort of staying quiet became part of the pleasure.
He drew back first. “Door?”
“Her room. Open a little.”
He nodded. She saw him glance down the hall and understand, rather than resent, the incompleteness of their privacy. That made her want a closed door with him. Not tonight, with a child who hadn’t known him long and might come out looking for water. But soon.
“Tea?” she asked, because kissing him again would make it harder to mean what she intended.
“Please.”
She filled the kettle. He leaned against the opposite counter, looking too large and too desirable for her kitchen. There were things to ask while they still had room to speak.
“Are you dating anybody else?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate. “And I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I.”
He let out a breath she hadn’t known he was holding. “That’s excellent news.”
“I thought I’d avoid a sophisticated conversation in which we both imply things for six weeks.”
“I’m too old for sophisticated.”
“Forty-four isn’t old.”
“It is when you spend an evening on the floor defending a criminal horse.”
She smiled, but he was watching her seriously now.
“I’d like to keep seeing you,” he said. “I know that sounds modest for the amount I mean.”
“It doesn’t sound modest to me.”
The kettle began its small preparatory rumble. Maren turned it off before it could drown them out.
“I haven’t done this with Willa,” she said. “I’ve been out. I’ve liked people. But I haven’t invited someone into an evening and wanted him to stay through the boring parts.”
His eyes moved to the container drawer, then back to her. “I was rather enjoying the lid.”
“I’m trying to be serious.”
“I know.” He stepped nearer. “I liked being here. I don’t know all the rules either.”
“Some of them are still being invented.”
“Then you’ll have to tell me when I’ve got something wrong.”
She wanted to promise she would be good at that. The ease with which she could avoid a difficult sentence was one of the things she knew best about herself.
“I’ll try.”
She switched the kettle on again. They drank tea at the table. Without Willa talking, the apartment seemed larger and more intimate at once. Simon told her about going home after company celebrations to a kitchen so quiet he sometimes switched on a radio he didn’t listen to. She told him about sitting on the edge of Willa’s bed when she was a baby and imagining a whole adult conversation, complete with the other person’s replies.
“What did they say?” he asked.
“Usually that I was right.”
“A remarkably sympathetic person.”
“Terrible taste in music, though.”
She did not tell him every lonely thing. There would have been something defensive in making the evening an exchange of injuries. Instead she asked what he had listened to at seventeen, and he named a band she had loved at fourteen. They disputed the best song, quietly and with great seriousness, until he reached for his phone to prove his case.
“No. You’ll wake her.”
“Headphones.”
“One each?”
He found them in his coat. They sat shoulder to shoulder at her table listening to an old song through opposite earbuds. Maren knew the next line before it came. Simon sang it under his breath, slightly wrong, and she pressed her face into his shoulder to hide the laugh.
At ten she walked him to the door. The paper prison hat sat on the shelf by his shoes. He picked it up.
“You don’t have to take that.”
“It’s evidence.”
He put it carefully in his coat pocket, then kissed her. She wanted to draw him back inside. He seemed to want it too; his hand tightened at her waist before he let go.
“Saturday was a date,” she said. “Tonight was dinner.”
“I liked both.”
“Next time I get to take you somewhere.”
“All right.”
“Somewhere terrible.”
His eyes warmed. “I like how confidently you sell an invitation.”
After he left, she checked Willa, put the leftover rice away and found one earbud still beside her cup. She sent him a photograph.
A reason to return, he replied.
Maren stood in the kitchen, phone warm in her hand. Then she wrote, You already had one.