Chapter 14 #2
I could smell coffee, which meant the generator had survived the night, which meant the bedroom heater was still running, which meant it was going to be okay.
Everything was going to be okay. I put on his thermal shirt because my clothes from yesterday were in a pile on the floor and I did not want to separate myself from the smell of him, the warmth of him, the impossible fact that I was allowed to be here, in his bed, in his apartment, wearing his shirt like I belonged in this small space above my own garage.
The shirt smelled like him and cold and the propane that was keeping us alive.
The kitchen was barely three steps away.
He was standing at the stove with a mug of coffee in his hand, waiting.
He had made it before I woke up. He always made it before I woke up, like he could not stand to be in a place where I was sleeping and he was not present, like he needed to be doing something—making coffee, standing guard, paying attention.
The coffee was black. He knew by now that I was learning to like the things he liked.
It was the kind of thing you did when you were making a commitment.
You learned to like the things the other person liked.
You changed yourself in small ways until you were both standing in the same direction.
I said, “Hi.”
He said, “Coffee’s ready.”
I took the mug and I drank it black because it was his and because I was learning to like the things he liked, and I was standing in his kitchen in his thermal shirt at 7:15 a.m. when I heard the yell from outside.
“MAPLE’S IN HER BOYFRIEND’S APARTMENT!”
Theo Jr.’s voice, loud and young and excited the way five-year-olds get when they have discovered something they think everyone should know about.
Knox closed his eyes. His hand tightened around his mug.
The coffee sloshed. I started to laugh. I could not help it.
The laugh came out of me like relief, like the world was suddenly too funny to bear seriously.
Like I had been holding my breath and could finally breathe again.
“MAPLE’S IN—” another yell, his mother’s voice cutting him off.
“Theo Jr., that is not our business!”
There was fumbling at the outside door—Heather Park was clearly trying to pull her child back toward the property line—and then a knock on Knox’s apartment door, the kind of knock that suggested she was very sorry and also very much here to address the situation. Apologetic. Mortified. Determined.
Knox set down his mug. He went to the door and he opened it, and there was Heather Park in a coat that was not zipped and Theo Jr. in his snowsuit with his feet dangling above the ground where she was holding him, and both of them looked mortified.
Heather was blushing so hard that the color went down her neck.
Theo Jr. looked like he had just made the greatest discovery of his life.
Heather said, “I am so sorry. He saw Maple’s truck in the driveway and he made an assumption and he yelled it into the world. I tried to stop him.”
Knox looked at Theo Jr. He said, “You see her truck and you yell it.”
Theo Jr. said, “Is that wrong?”
Knox said, “Depends on what you’re announcing.”
Theo Jr. considered this with the gravity of a five-year-old who understood that he had crossed into important territory. He said, “Am I wrong, Mr. Grumpus?”
Knox—and I will never forget this, never in my life will I forget this moment—Knox smiled.
Not the careful smile he had given me in the parking lot after the game, not the controlled expression he wore at the diner.
He actually smiled, the kind of smile that made him look thirteen years younger, the kind of smile that said that maybe there was a version of him that was not carrying his brother’s death and all the guilt that came with it, maybe there was a version of Knox that could still be the man who smiled at a five-year-old who was just trying to help.
It was like watching someone thaw. It was like watching winter give way to something warmer.
His whole face changed. The lines around his eyes deepened.
His eyes themselves got lighter, the blue becoming almost silver in the morning light.
He said, “No. You’re not wrong. Maple is in my apartment.”
Theo Jr. said, “I know.”
Knox said, “You’re very smart.”
Theo Jr. considered this. He said, “Do you love her?”
Heather made a noise like she was going to die of mortification. Her face was the color of ripe strawberries. She said, “Junior—”
Knox did not hesitate. He did not look at me. He just looked at Theo Jr. and spoke the truth.
He said, “Yeah. I do.”
He said it like it was the simplest fact in the world.
He said it like he had known this for longer than he had known anything else.
He said it like he was not going to apologize for it or explain it or make it smaller because there was a five-year-old witnessing the moment.
I was standing in his thermal shirt with a cup of black coffee in my hands and he had just declared his love for me to my neighbor’s child, and it felt like the most important thing anyone had ever said.
Theo Jr. nodded like Knox had just confirmed something he had already suspected. He said, “Okay. I’m going to go tell my mom that you love Maple.”
Heather actually groaned. She said, “We’re going.
Now. I’m so sorry. Come on, Junior.” She took him back down the stairs, and you could hear her saying, “We do not announce people’s business into the neighborhood,” and Theo Jr. saying, “But he loves her,” and Heather saying, “That is not the point,” and Theo Jr. saying, “I think it is.”
Knox closed the door.
He turned around.
I was still standing in his thermal shirt with my coffee in my hands and I was staring at him.
I said, “You just told a five-year-old that you love me.”
He said, “I did.”
I said, “That’s not strategic. That’s not careful. That’s the opposite of careful.”
He said, “I know.”
He came back to the kitchen and he took my mug out of my hands and he set both our mugs on the counter and he put his hands on either side of my face like he was making sure I could see him, like he was making sure I understood that this was real and not something I was making up in my head because I wanted it to be true.
He said, “I didn’t laugh because I was happy. I laughed because I was happy with you. There’s a difference.”
I understood what he meant. I understood that he had not smiled in two years, not really, not the kind of smile that came from inside where all the pain lives, and that this week on the ice he had found a reason, and that reason was me, and that I was going to have to accept that he had chosen me and that some days that was going to be terrifying and some days it was going to be enough.
Some days it was going to be more than enough.
I kissed him.
It tasted like coffee and like the smell of his apartment and like the impossible fact that a man who had carried his brother’s death for thirteen years had just laughed like the weight of it was finally getting smaller.
We stood in his kitchen, and the snow fell outside, and I let myself believe—for the first time since he arrived in the diner at 4:58 a.m. on Day 1—that maybe this was going to work.
Maybe the diner was going to survive. Maybe I was going to survive.
Maybe we were both going to survive, and maybe that was enough. Maybe that was everything.