Mrs. Avery unzipped the garment bag and looked at the dress as if it were a dress, which was exactly what I needed from her.
“Still lovely,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to speak to the consignment buyer. I can’t promise what you’ll get for it.”
“I know.”
She spread the skirt across the clean table. The lace caught the light from the window. For a moment I remembered how I had felt the first time she brought it out, before there was any reason to suspect happiness could become embarrassing in retrospect.
“You don’t have to decide today,” she said.
“I have decided.”
She nodded and made a note.
I touched the neckline one last time. There was no tear where it had caught on my nail. I had checked twice at home, then once more before carrying it down the stairs.
“I hope somebody likes it,” I said.
“Somebody will.”
“Not because it’s a bargain.”
Mrs. Avery looked at me over her glasses. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive pleasures.”
I laughed. She smiled and folded the skirt back into the bag.
We completed the few necessary details. I kept a copy of the form, thanked her and went out carrying nothing but my ordinary handbag. The absence of the dress felt peculiar, like stepping off a moving pavement and discovering the ground had stopped helping.
Nick waited across the street outside the bookshop. He was reading a poster in the window with the earnestness he brought to any text at eye level. When he saw me, he crossed at the lights.
“All done?”
“All done.”
He looked at my face rather than asking whether I felt better. I found I wanted to tell him anyway.
“A bit sad,” I said. “Mostly relieved.”
“Coffee?”
“Definitely.”
We walked toward the harbor. Halfway down the street, I took his hand. It was not a decision I had rehearsed. His fingers closed around mine, and we went on walking.
Westmere was busy with the beginnings of summer visitors. A family stood in front of a map trying to determine whether the sea was uphill. Somebody had put tables outside the bakery. The air smelled of warm pastry and the tide.
We passed a woman I knew from the library. She looked at our joined hands, then at my face, and said hello without making it a question. I liked her intensely for it.
At the café, Nick ordered coffee while I found a table. There were only two left, one near the door and one at the window. I chose the window.
When he came over, he set down the cups and glanced at the view.
“In plain sight,” he said.
“Yes.”
He sat opposite me. “Good.”
I watched him stir his coffee. “Does it bother you?”
“Being seen with you?”
“Being discussed.”
He put down the spoon. “Sometimes. Less than pretending we’re not doing this.”
I nodded. That was an answer I could live with.
My phone rang while we were drinking. Gwen’s name appeared. I looked at Nick; he gestured for me to answer.
The interview had gone well two days earlier, though I had spent the following evening finding things I should have said differently. Now Gwen was asking whether I could come to Manchester after the premiere to see the workshop and meet the rest of the team.
“They liked the sketches,” she said. “They want to talk about the schedule in person.”
I looked at Nick across the table. He was watching my face with an expression that made me want to smile before I knew what I was agreeing to.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll work out a day.”
After the call, I put down the phone carefully.
“Not an offer yet,” I said.
“You mentioned that.”
“But close.”
“It sounds close.”
I smiled then, unable to keep the pleasure small. Nick grinned back at me.
“There you are,” he said.
I could feel myself wanting something without immediately calculating how inconvenient the wanting might be.
We spent the rest of the morning doing nothing particularly memorable, which became memorable because of how easy it was. We went into the bookshop. Nick bought a paperback he said he would probably leave on a train. I bought a notebook despite living above a shop full of them. We argued over which of two terrible postcards was worse and sent the winner to Mina, though she worked three rooms away from us.
At the harbor steps, he told me Elsa had confirmed the premiere.
“Helen’s arranging a small drink afterward. Company and guests. Nothing formal.”
“Nothing formal is when everybody tries hardest.”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“Are you worried?”
“I’m trying to call it excited.”
I sat beside him on the wall. “You can be both.”
He looked at the water for a while.
“I want her to see me as somebody she could trust with the part. Not just somebody who won’t cause trouble.”
“Those aren’t the same?”
“They overlap. Sometimes I think I’ve made a whole career in the overlap.”
I thought of the fourth take, the moment he stopped making his character pleasant enough to invite home.
“You weren’t safe in the tape.”
He turned toward me.
“Good,” he said quietly.
I leaned across and kissed him. He put his hand behind my head, and for a moment I forgot that people could walk past us.
A child nearby said, very loudly, “They’re kissing,” and a woman answered, “Yes, darling, sometimes people do.”
I laughed against Nick’s mouth. He rested his forehead against mine.
“A useful public information service,” he murmured.
We went back to my flat for lunch. I made eggs. Nick claimed the toast was his contribution and took the work seriously enough that I let him choose the plates.
Afterward, I showed him the Manchester sketches. This time he asked questions instead of making plans. I found myself talking faster as the ideas became clearer, moving pieces of paper around, explaining the shape of a sleeve with my hands.
He listened from the sofa, one arm along the back, looking at me with an attention that was more unsettling than any compliment.
“What?” I asked eventually.
“I like you like this.”
“Surrounded by paper?”
“Certain of something.”
I looked down at the drawings. “I’m not certain it will work.”
“No. But you know why you want to try.”
That was true. I had not realized how much I missed the feeling until someone noticed its return.
I left the drawings where they were and went to sit beside him. He drew me close, and I kissed the small scar in his eyebrow because I had been wanting to do it for days.
“What’s that from?” I asked.
“A cupboard door.”
I drew back. “Really?”
“I can invent something more heroic.”
“No. I like the cupboard.”
He laughed. I kissed him again.
In the afternoon we lay together with the window open, the sounds of the street reaching us in softened pieces. I felt no urge to fill the quiet. Nick’s hand rested loosely against my waist, and I watched a patch of sunlight move across the wall.
His phone vibrated on the bedside table. He glanced at it and frowned.
“Daniel?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What does he want?”
“To talk.”
I sat up a little. “About me?”
“He hasn’t said.”
Nick put the phone down. The ease of the afternoon had thinned, but it had not vanished. I waited, listening to a car pass outside.
“You can talk to him,” I said. “I don’t get to decide every friendship you have.”
“I know.”
“I just don’t want to become something you two work out between you.”
He looked at me. “You won’t.”
I held his gaze for a moment, then lay back down.
There were reasons to be afraid. I could name them all if I tried. There were also reasons to trust him, and I did not want fear to become the only part of myself I listened to.
Nick’s arm came around me. I rested my cheek against his shoulder.
The phone remained where he had put it, silent now, while the afternoon light moved slowly toward the floor.