In the morning, Delia could not find one sock.
She found the other beside the bed, her watch on the chair, and her top hanging from the edge of the overnight bag. The missing sock had apparently left the building. Soren, watching her search from the bed, suggested it might have joined the projection equipment downstairs.
“Then it has made a poor career choice.”
She knelt to look under the bed. There it was, just beyond reach. He got up and moved the frame a few inches while she retrieved it. The whole business should have been embarrassing. Instead she began laughing, partly because his hair was sticking up at the back and partly because she had spent so much time worrying about how she would feel this morning.
“Found?” he asked.
She held it up.
“Then breakfast.”
He put on yesterday’s shirt and went to the kitchen. She dressed slowly, enjoying the unhurried sounds from the next room. When she joined him, he was looking into the refrigerator with the same expression he had worn at the cupboard last night.
“Don’t tell me,” she said.
“I have everything. I’m deciding what requires the least effort.”
She sat at the table. Sunlight fell across the papers he had moved to the chair. Her phone lay beside her plate, dark and silent. No one knew precisely where she was except the people she had chosen to tell. She could let the morning take its time.
They ate with the window open. Soren asked whether she slept well, then seemed to realize how many meanings the question might acquire and looked down at his plate. She answered the plain version. She had slept well until a truck made a terrible noise in the street, then she had gone back to sleep.
“Deliveries,” he said. “They come early.”
“I thought the monster from the film had finally found the stairs.”
“It would never manage the corner.”
He smiled at her, and the warmth of the smile made her say the thing she had been rehearsing since she woke.
“Are you seeing anyone else?”
He put down his fork. “No.”
“I don’t mean that as an accusation.”
“I didn’t hear it as one.”
She nodded, then wished she had asked the question with less force. There was no elegant way to retrieve it and make it casual.
“I’m not either,” she said.
“I’d hoped that.”
He reached across the table, stopping with his hand near hers rather than taking it. She moved her fingers into his.
“I’d like us not to,” he said. “See other people.”
“So would I.”
“Good.”
She let out a breath she had been holding too high in her chest. “That was easier than I expected.”
“I can make it more difficult if you want.”
“Please don’t.”
He squeezed her hand. They finished breakfast without turning the agreement into a discussion of everything that might someday follow it. Delia found she could eat again. She had not noticed that she had stopped.
Later, they walked to the water. The wind was lower than yesterday, and people were spreading towels in places that looked too exposed to stay comfortable. Soren pointed out a path farther along the shore, but she checked the time and shook her head. She wanted to leave after lunch, before the road filled with everyone else returning inland.
“Next time,” he said.
She liked hearing it. She also knew that next time would require another drive, another arrangement at work, another bag packed and unpacked. The thought was not enough to spoil the walk. It did make her look at the distance differently.
They stopped where a low wall overlooked the beach. Soren sat, and she stood between his knees while he held her at the waist. A child nearby was attempting to persuade a kite to rise by shouting at it. Delia watched it drag along the sand, then suddenly catch the wind and pull the child forward.
“That’s one method,” Soren said.
She leaned down to kiss him. His hands tightened briefly against her back. For a moment she wanted to say she would leave later. She could do it. There was nothing waiting at home that required her at a particular hour.
Then she pictured the road after dark, her tired eyes, the work clothes she hadn’t washed. She straightened and told him she should pack. He made a disappointed sound without arguing. She was glad of both parts.
Back at the apartment, he helped her find the charger she had plugged in beside the sofa. She checked beneath the bed for any further escapees. He stood in the bedroom doorway while she zipped the bag.
“Next weekend?” he asked.
“I can come Sunday. I have Saturday work.”
“I can be free for some of Sunday. There’s a thing I have to deal with in the afternoon.”
“That’s all right.”
“Or we can pick another day.”
She considered it. Waiting longer felt unpleasant, and Sunday was available. She said she would come for the day. He warned her that it would be a lot of driving. She knew that; the knowledge was not yet attached to the feeling in her legs.
Before lunch, they sat at the table with their phones open. Delia had been thinking about the following weekend as well as next Sunday, though she hadn’t wanted to sound as if she was booking him for the season.
“June ninth,” she said. “Could you come to Bellweather then?”
He checked. “Saturday. Yes, I think so. I’d need to arrange the evening.”
“I’d like you to stay with me.”
He looked up from the phone. “I’d like that.”
“The chair is terrible, but the bed’s all right.”
“An attractive description.”
She wrote his name in the square. It was a small pleasure, seeing it among the appointments and work shifts. He asked whether she had to be at the museum that day. She had, originally, but a colleague wanted the preceding Saturday off and had asked to swap. Delia hadn’t answered yet.
“Don’t change things for me if it’s difficult,” he said.
“It isn’t. She asked me. It helps her too.”
“Okay.”
She sent the colleague a message agreeing to the swap, then set the phone down. A whole Saturday in her city, with no museum shift waiting at the end of it. She could take Soren somewhere beyond the center, show him the quieter part by the river, or leave the day empty until they decided what they felt like doing. She liked the last idea best, though she knew she would look up the weather beforehand.
“Do you need me to bring anything?” he asked.
“Your comfortable shoes.”
He glanced down at the pair by the door. “Already decided.”
“And no complaints about my kitchen.”
“Does it have a sink that attacks people?”
“Only men who criticize it.”
He laughed, then put the date into his own calendar. She watched him type. The simple act gave the coming weeks a shape she could see: her drive next Sunday, his visit after that, the proposal due a few days later. She had no idea yet how the work decision would go. At least she wouldn’t be waiting for both things at once.
Her colleague replied while they were eating lunch. The swap was agreed, with enthusiastic thanks and an offer to take a less desirable shift later if Delia needed it. Delia sent a brief answer, then turned the phone facedown. She wanted to finish the meal while it was still warm.
After lunch, he carried the bag downstairs. She put it in the hatchback and turned to him. Goodbyes had begun acquiring their own set of small habits: one more kiss, a question about the route, her hand lingering on his arm after she had said she must go.
“Text when you’re back,” he said.
“I will.”
This time she knew what room he would return to when she drove away. She could picture the plates in the sink, the papers on the chair, the window he would close if the wind rose. It made leaving both easier and harder.
The road was slow almost at once.
A line of cars stretched ahead at a junction, moving in short, uneven bursts. Delia changed the music, then turned it off. She had been on the road forty minutes and covered very little of the distance. The car in front carried bicycles on its back. One wheel turned slightly whenever the driver braked.
She tried to remain pleasant about it. She had chosen to come. She had enjoyed herself. People were allowed to go home from the coast at the same time she did. None of those facts made the stationary line move faster.
At the first clear stretch, she loosened her grip on the steering wheel. Her shoulders ached. She had spent much of the previous day sitting in the car and intended to spend much of this one the same way. A day trip next Sunday would mean six hours of driving for how many hours together? She began doing the arithmetic and stopped because it made the visit sound unreasonable before it had happened.
She pulled into a rest stop instead. Walking helped. She went to the bathroom, filled her water bottle, and stood for a few minutes under a tree whose leaves were covered in road dust. A woman nearby was unfolding a map across the roof of her car. Delia watched the paper lift in the wind, then helped hold one corner while the woman found her route. They were going in opposite directions. The woman wished her a good journey and folded the map badly, leaving one flap sticking out. Delia returned to her own car. Her phone showed a message from Odette asking whether she was home yet.
Not yet. Traffic. I’ll call when I’m back.
She did not mention that she was tired enough to resent the message. Her mother had not caused the traffic.
By the time she reached the apartment, the trip had taken well over three hours. She carried the bag upstairs in two stages, pausing on the landing to shift it to her other hand. Inside, the room felt too warm. She opened the window, took off her shoes, and sent Soren the promised message before calling her mother.
“You sound worn out,” Odette said.
“The road was slow.”
“Did you have a nice time?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” A pause. “You can’t spend every weekend doing that drive.”
Delia shut her eyes. “It was one weekend.”
“I’m just saying.”
“He came here last weekend.”
“For a visit.”
“That’s what this was.”
Her mother sighed. Delia heard a cupboard close at the other end. “I don’t want you doing all the running again.”
“I’m not.”
“All right.”
It was the kind of agreement that contained no belief. Delia wanted to hang up, but Odette began telling her about a neighbor’s broken fence, and she stayed on the phone until the story ended. When they said goodbye, Delia was more irritated than the conversation deserved. Her mother’s phrase had lodged beside the ache in her shoulders.
She put the laundry in the machine and heated something from the freezer. While it warmed, she opened her proposal. The revised outline looked sensible. It also looked unfinished in ways she had not noticed at work. She needed a clear invitation, a realistic materials list, a way to explain who the evening was for without making people feel excluded before they arrived.
She added two sentences, deleted one, and rubbed her eyes. Soren sent a photograph of the sock she had found that morning. No, not her sock: a dark folded cloth on the chair, arranged to resemble one.
Found another. They’re multiplying.
She laughed despite herself and sent back a complaint about counterfeiting evidence. Then she asked whether next Sunday still worked. He said yes, though he would need an hour downstairs during the afternoon. She told him that was fine. It was fine. She could walk, read, do something that did not involve sitting in his room waiting for him.
After dinner, she searched for the museum’s public events page to compare the wording of another invitation. An advertisement appeared beside the results: a coastal visitor center wanted a program assistant. The location was close enough to Gullhaven that the name caught her eye before she read the job title.
She clicked. The page loaded slowly. She waited with one hand on the trackpad, watching the empty boxes fill with words while the washing machine turned behind her.
The work was familiar in outline: visitors, school bookings, weekend activities, a little administration. The hours included weekends. The salary was lower than hers. She read that part twice, then looked at the duties again. There was no mention of developing a program of her own. She would be helping run what already existed.
She pictured a short drive instead of three hours. An evening when she could finish work and see Soren without packing a bag. A cupboard in a place she had chosen, perhaps a window with different light. The image came too easily. It left out rent, the cost of moving, the job she actually liked, and the fact that a seaside town remained a town in winter.
She opened the application information, then closed it. She had not been asked to move. She had not asked him what he thought. They had agreed this morning not to see other people; that was already a real decision, not an invitation to make every other decision before bed.
Still, she saved the listing.
The proposal waited in the next window. She moved the cursor to the unfinished invitation and read the first line aloud. It sounded like something nobody would choose to attend. She rewrote it, then checked the clock and realized how late it had become.
Before shutting the laptop, she looked once more at the two open windows. The job had a closing date. So did the proposal. She left both where they were and went to hang the wet laundry.