Nick was outside the café when I arrived, looking at the timetable in a display case left from when the building had been a station. The last train had passed through thirty years earlier. He seemed to be giving the information serious consideration anyway.
“Anything useful?” I asked.
He turned. “If we hurry, there’s a connection in 1994.”
I smiled before I meant to. He looked relieved, then careful not to make too much of it.
We went inside. The café was quiet, with two women sharing a newspaper near the window and a man asleep beside an empty cup. I chose a table where neither of us would have to sit with our back to the door.
“How was the call?” I asked after we ordered.
Nick rubbed a thumb along the edge of the table.
“Good, I think. Difficult to tell.”
“Did she make you read?”
“Twice. With different directions.”
“And?”
He smiled a little. “I listened the second time.”
“A useful technique.”
“Apparently.”
The coffee arrived. We thanked the waitress, moved the cups, found temporary work for our hands.
“I’m glad it went well,” I said.
“Thank you.”
He looked tired in the way people became when they had spent too long thinking after they should have gone to sleep.
“I got your letter.”
He nodded.
“I know you asked for time. I wasn’t sure whether sending it was another way of ignoring that.”
“I didn’t mind the letter.”
“All right.”
I looked into my cup. There was a tiny pattern in the foam that had already begun to collapse.
“I don’t know what I want this afternoon to mean,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to mean more than coffee.”
“I know. But you want it to.”
He met my eyes. “Yes.”
“I miss you,” I said.
His face changed. He started to speak, then stopped.
“I miss you too.”
“That isn’t the same as knowing what to do.”
“No.”
Outside, a cyclist leaned a bicycle against the old platform wall. I watched her remove her helmet, shake out her hair and go in search of a table. There were people having entirely ordinary Saturdays. I remembered that Nick and I had been among them not long ago.
“I keep going back to the moment you said you wouldn’t give them the passes,” I said. “I was so relieved afterward. I didn’t realize how much until I saw Daniel in the door.”
Nick lowered his eyes.
“I know I can’t undo it.”
“I’m not asking you to. I need to understand what happens the next time something is difficult and you think I can manage it.”
He took a breath. “I don’t have a sentence that proves I’ll never get it wrong again.”
“Good. I wouldn’t believe it.”
He looked up, and despite everything there was a flicker of the humor I liked between us.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t think you would.”
“Next time you’re worried about work, tell me,” I said. “I might not have a solution. I could still understand.”
Nick nodded, his hands still around the cup.
We sat quietly for a while. The man by the window woke, looked startled by his own empty cup and went to order another.
“Have you spoken to Daniel since?” I asked.
“Once. I told him I won’t arrange anything involving you. I told him I was angry about what he did at the shop and that I should have said it without making it sound like a temporary difficulty.”
“How did that go?”
“Badly.”
“Are you still friends?”
Nick looked at his hands. “I don’t know what we’ll be. I can’t pretend twenty-eight years didn’t happen. I also can’t keep using the length of them as a reason not to look at who he is now.”
That was not the clean break some angry part of me might have wanted. It sounded more like a real answer.
“I don’t need you to hate everyone I can’t bear to see.”
“I know.”
“I need you not to volunteer me to make it easier.”
“I won’t.”
The promise hung between us. He seemed to hear its echo too.
“I know those words aren’t enough right now,” he added.
“No.”
I drank some coffee. It had cooled. I didn’t mind.
“Rhys told me you’re checking guest arrangements with him personally.”
“Yes.”
“And Helen?”
“We had an uncomfortable conversation. Several, actually.”
“Did you tell her I made a scene?”
He looked genuinely startled. “No. You didn’t.”
“I know. I wanted to hear you say it.”
He nodded. “I brought them into your workplace after I’d promised not to. You asked them to leave. That’s what I told her.”
Something in my chest loosened a little. Not enough to make the rest easy. Enough that I could breathe without holding myself quite so carefully.
We ordered more coffee. This time Nick asked whether I wanted anything to eat, and I said yes because I was hungry. The ordinary admission felt oddly useful after all the more difficult ones.
While we waited for the sandwiches, I told him about Manchester. The workshop, the high windows, the room with herbs in the courtyard. He listened without offering solutions.
“I’ve accepted,” I said.
His smile came quickly, then steadied into something quieter. “I’m glad.”
“Six weeks.”
“You said.”
“I know.”
He looked at me. “Are you telling me because you think it makes this harder?”
I considered the question.
“Partly. I also wanted to tell you because I wanted you to know something good.”
His eyes softened. “Thank you.”
The sandwiches arrived. We ate. There was a small relief in having something to do that didn’t require courage.
After a while, Nick said, “I don’t only want you when you’re easy to be with.”
I looked up.
“I know it must look that way after Friday. But it isn’t why I want you.”
“Why do you?”
He was quiet long enough that I began to regret asking. Then he smiled a little, almost to himself.
“Because you argue with a coat until it tells the right story. Because you laugh when something is properly funny, even if you’re trying not to like the person who said it. Because you notice things nobody else thinks to look at.”
I stared at him. My throat had become unexpectedly tight.
“And because,” he added, “you once told me a fabric couldn’t be cheap and tragic at the same time, because that would be asking too much of it.”
I laughed despite myself. “It was very bad fabric.”
“I remember.”
The laugh changed the air, not by erasing what we’d said but by making room beside it.
“I don’t want you to be perfect,” I said.
“That’s fortunate.”
“I do want you to tell me things before you decide how I’m supposed to feel about them.”
He nodded. “I can work on that.”
“You need to do more than work on it when I’m looking.”
“Yes.”
We stayed until the café began clearing the tables for the afternoon lull. Outside, the sky had brightened. The old platform ran beside a strip of grass where the tracks used to be, and we walked along it without deciding to.
At the far end, Nick stopped.
“Would you see me again? Not to have this conversation twice. Just an evening.”
I looked at him. I could feel both answers available: the safe refusal, the risk I still wanted.
“One evening,” I said.
He nodded, not smiling too quickly.
“All right.”
“And don’t arrange something impressive.”
His mouth moved. “You’ve removed most of my strategies.”
“You’ll have to improvise.”
We walked back toward the street. At the corner, his hand moved slightly, the beginning of a familiar gesture. He stopped before reaching for mine.
I took his hand for the last few steps.
It was not forgiveness completed. It was warm, and familiar, and something I chose while knowing why it was difficult.