On Sunday afternoon, Annelise found herself standing in front of her closet holding a dress against her body as though it might issue instructions.
It was navy, simple, and comfortable enough to eat dinner in. She had worn it to a work event the previous spring and spent the evening thinking about whether the parking garage would close before the speeches ended. Tonight she was thinking about Malcolm’s hand at her waist, which seemed a much better use of the dress.
She put it on.
Her hair refused to remain in the loose arrangement she attempted, so she tied it back and let the shorter waves escape around her face. In the mirror, she looked thirty-eight. She had begun noticing how often she judged that as a problem to solve before going anywhere enjoyable.
She put on her earrings and left.
They had agreed to meet at the restaurant. It occupied the ground floor of a narrow brick building, with warm lights in the windows and a menu written clearly enough that nobody needed to ask what anything meant. Malcolm stood outside, looking down the street. When he saw her, his attention changed so completely that she forgot to wonder whether the dress was right.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
“You look lovely.”
“Thank you.”
She nearly told him how old the dress was. Instead she looked at his dark pants, the pale shirt open at the throat, the care he had taken without appearing transformed into someone else.
“So do you.”
“Lovely?”
“Very.”
He laughed and held the door.
Their table was near the back, beside a wall hung with small framed prints. Annelise sat where she could see the room. Malcolm took the chair opposite her and put his phone away without checking it. She did the same.
For a moment they regarded each other across the menus.
“This is different,” she said.
“From peanuts?”
“Yes. There are plates.”
“And fewer opportunities to humiliate myself about capitals.”
“The evening’s young.”
He smiled. She liked that she could tease him and see him decide to enjoy it.
The server brought water. They ordered one glass of wine each, and Annelise opened the menu. There were several things she wanted, which seemed an agreeable problem.
“They still do the mushroom pasta,” Malcolm said. “You used to love anything with mushrooms.”
“I don’t anymore.”
He looked up. “Really?”
“Really.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing dramatic. I stopped liking them.”
“All mushrooms?”
“Enough of them that I don’t want to spend dinner investigating the exception.”
He glanced back at the menu. “I nearly suggested we get that to share.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
The answer came out more definite than she intended. She waited for awkwardness. Malcolm was still looking at the menu.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“The fish, I think.”
“That looks good.”
“What are you having?”
“The mushroom pasta.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to abandon it in solidarity.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
When the server returned, they ordered exactly what they wanted. It was such a small thing that Annelise felt foolish for noticing the pleasure of it. There had been years when she would have agreed to share something and spent the meal telling herself it did not matter.
Malcolm asked about her weekend. She told him she had cleaned her apartment, bought groceries, and spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to remember a song from choir without opening the folder.
“Why didn’t you open the folder?”
“Because then it wouldn’t count as remembering.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was. Eventually I gave up and read the music like a normal person.”
“Good result?”
“Several correct notes.”
He nodded gravely. “We should celebrate.”
“We are. There are plates.”
Their drinks arrived. He raised his glass slightly, and she touched hers to it.
“To correct notes,” he said.
“And the occasional wrong capital.”
“That was one capital.”
“One very large wrong capital.”
He shook his head, smiling, and took a drink.
She asked about his Sunday. He had worked in his yard, gone out with his camera for an hour, and repaired a loose cupboard handle in his own kitchen only after it came off in his hand.
“You make cabinets for a living.”
“That doesn’t make me enjoy fixing my own.”
“Fair.”
“It had been loose for weeks. Every time I opened it, I thought I should get a screwdriver.”
“And then?”
“I had the thing I opened it for.”
She laughed. “I understand that more than I want to.”
“What needs fixing in your place?”
“Bedroom door won’t stay open.”
“You said.”
“I use a shoe.”
“Effective.”
“You’re not going to tell me what’s wrong with it?”
“Would you like me to?”
She considered. “No. I like the shoe.”
“Then I respect the system.”
They talked about the city, the parts that had changed, the roads that seemed designed to punish anyone who trusted them. He asked where she had lived before returning, and she told him about the apartment after the divorce, the good grocery store and the neighbor who watched television loud enough that she knew the plots of shows she had never seen.
“Did you like living alone?” he asked.
“Yes. Sometimes more than I expected. Sometimes less.”
He nodded as though that answer made perfect sense.
“What about you?”
“Mostly. I like knowing where things are. Though apparently not the screwdriver.”
“And the less?”
“Sometimes I make dinner and wish someone else had an opinion about it.”
“That’s a dangerous wish.”
“I know. You might tell me about mushrooms.”
She smiled, then let the smile settle. There was an honesty in the answer she wanted to meet without turning it into a promise she could not yet make.
“I know what you mean,” she said.
The food arrived. For a few minutes they ate, exchanged ordinary verdicts, and watched the server negotiate a tray through a narrow gap between chairs. Annelise was hungry enough that she forgot to monitor herself. When she looked up, Malcolm was watching her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was definitely something.”
“I like being here with you.”
She put down her fork because her hand had become unexpectedly unsteady.
“I like being here with you too.”
He held her gaze for a moment, then returned to his food. The restraint made the words more affecting, not less. He had said them and left her free to feel them.
Afterward, when the plates were cleared, she asked about his apprenticeship. Not the beginning, which she remembered, but the part after she had gone. He described finishing, working for another company, eventually joining Tobin in a business they had both thought they could run more sensibly than their previous employers.
“Could you?”
“Some days. Other days I discover why the previous employers looked tired.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No. I wish I’d known a few things sooner.”
“Such as?”
“That a customer saying it’s a simple job is information about the customer, not the job.”
She laughed, then asked another question. He told her about learning to quote accurately, about the first time they had enough work to turn down a job they did not want. There was pride in his voice, earned and unshowy. She could hear the years she had not witnessed.
“What about the training?” he asked. “Was it what you wanted?”
She looked at the water glass between her hands.
“Some of it. I was very frightened at first.”
“You didn’t seem frightened.”
“I tried not to.”
He leaned back slightly. “I remember you worrying before you went.”
“You used to say I’d be fine.”
“I thought you would be.”
“I know.”
Something in her tone made him wait.
She had not planned to talk about this tonight. She had also spent enough years planning conversations so thoroughly that the real person could scarcely get into them.
“Sometimes I wanted you to ask what I was scared of,” she said. “When you said I’d be fine, I heard that there wasn’t any reason to be worried.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know that now.”
“I believed you could do it.”
“I did too, sometimes. But I thought if I told you how uncertain I was, you’d explain why I shouldn’t be.”
He looked down at the table. “I might have.”
She was quiet.
“I was twenty-three,” he said. “I thought encouragement was telling somebody the problem wasn’t as big as it looked.”
“I thought being an adult meant I should already know whether I wanted everything I’d said I wanted.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
He breathed out slowly. “I could have listened better.”
“Yes.” She held his gaze. “That isn’t why I was entitled to end it the way I did.”
“I wasn’t saying it was.”
“I know. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t saying it was.”
The server approached to ask about dessert. Both of them looked up with the slightly dazed expressions of people returning from somewhere farther away than the table.
“Give us a minute?” Malcolm asked.
“Of course.”
Annelise looked at the dessert menu without reading it. She felt exposed, but not in the old way. He had acknowledged a thing she remembered without demanding that it cancel the thing he remembered. Neither of them had been made innocent.
“Is this too much for a first dinner?” she asked.
He considered before answering. “It’s more than I’d discuss with someone I met last week.”
“We did, in a way.”
“In a way.”
She smiled faintly. “I don’t want to spend every date explaining 2012.”
“Neither do I.”
“What would you like to discuss instead?”
He looked at the menu. “Why the pear dessert comes with three things that seem unrelated to pears.”
She laughed, grateful without needing him to have rescued her.
“Perhaps the pears are shy.”
“Then I won’t embarrass them.”
They ordered one dessert and two spoons. Malcolm took the smaller portion of the crisp edge until she accused him of false modesty and pushed the plate toward him.
“I was leaving you the good part.”
“I know. Eat some.”
He did.
They talked about books they had abandoned, films they had loved for reasons they could not defend, music that made them feel older than they were. Annelise admitted she sometimes listened to one song repeatedly until she could no longer bear it. Malcolm said that explained an entire month of their old relationship.
“Which song?”
He told her.
She covered her face with one hand. “I had forgotten.”
“I hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry for that too.”
“That one may take longer.”
Their laughter came easily. She felt the evening open again, the difficult conversation still part of it but no longer occupying every chair.
When the bill arrived, he asked if he could get it.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll get the next one.”
He looked up. “All right.”
There it was: next, placed on the table between them as plainly as the check.
Outside, the street had quieted. The restaurant windows glowed behind them. Annelise stopped to put on her jacket and caught one sleeve inside out. Malcolm waited while she wrestled it into place, smiling without offering assistance she did not need.
“Very elegant,” she said.
“I was admiring the technique.”
“Years of practice.”
They walked toward the lot where both had parked. Their hands brushed once, then again. The second time, she let hers turn toward his.
He took it.
The contact was simple: his fingers around hers, his palm warm and slightly rough. Her body answered with such a rush of pleasure that she was glad the darkness concealed how much of her face had changed.
They reached her car and stopped. He did not let go immediately.
“I had a good evening,” he said.
“So did I.”
She looked at his mouth. This time she did not pretend she was looking elsewhere.
“Annelise.”
“Yes.”
He smiled a little at the speed of it. “I haven’t asked anything.”
“I know.”
His thumb moved once against the side of her hand. “May I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
He came closer slowly enough that she could meet him halfway. Her free hand rose to his chest, fingers resting against the smooth fabric of his shirt. She felt him breathe before his mouth touched hers.
The first kiss was gentle, almost questioning. She had remembered the shape of his mouth; she had forgotten the effect of it. Or perhaps she had never known this version, the small pause before he deepened the kiss, the warmth of his hand settling at her waist, the restraint that made her want to draw him closer.
She did draw him closer.
Her fingers curled in his shirt. He made a quiet sound against her mouth, and she felt it everywhere. The car behind her, the street, the years of careful explanations—all remained, but none required her attention just then.
When they separated, she kept her hand on his chest.
He looked at her, his face close enough that she could see the fine lines beside his eyes and the slight unevenness where his beard met his cheek. Real, specific, here.
“All right?” he asked.
“Yes.” She laughed softly, breathless. “Very.”
His hand was still at her waist. She liked its weight. She liked that he seemed in no hurry to convert the moment into anything else.
“I’ve wanted to do that,” he said.
“I noticed.”
“Subtle, was I?”
“Terribly.”
He smiled. She felt her own answering smile disappear into wanting.
“Could you do it again?” she asked.
His hand tightened gently at her waist, and this time she was already rising toward him when he bent his head.