Chapter 14 #2
The space between our mouths was small enough to count in inches.
I felt the pull—the real one, the one I'd been carrying for months, the one that lived in the cab of my truck on the drive over, in the hallway outside her door, and on the couch at eleven-thirty when I stood over her and made myself walk away.
Her eyes were on mine. Her face was turned.
The air between us had collapsed into a distance I could have closed with less than a breath.
I put my hand on the back of her neck. I held her there, forehead to forehead, my fingers in her hair, her breath warm on my mouth.
We stayed like that. Her breathing slowed against my mouth. The pump was still humming on the counter, and I reached over without lifting my head and turned it off, because it had been running this whole time, and the sound had no business being in a room where this was happening.
The silence after the pump shut off was bigger.
I shifted. I got one arm under her knees, one behind her back, and I picked her up.
She didn't fight it. She put her arm around my neck, and her face went to my shoulder, and I carried her out of the bathroom to the couch.
I laid her down on the cushions and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch over her.
I sat on the floor beside the couch. My back against the front of it. My head against the cushion near her hip.
Her hand found my shoulder a beat after I sat down.
It rested there, her fingers loose against the fabric of my shirt, and she didn't move it.
I didn't move. Nova was asleep in the bouncer in the bedroom across the hall.
The bathroom light was still on down the hallway, throwing a thin stripe of yellow across the floor.
I slept on the floor. She slept on the couch above me, her hand on my shoulder. The three of us in three different positions in an apartment that had been quiet for two hours, and I was where I said I'd be.
I woke first.
The light was gray through the blinds. It was early.
My back was stiff from the floor, the specific kind of stiff that came from sleeping upright against a piece of furniture, and my neck had a knot that was going to be a problem for the next two days.
Audrey's hand was still on my shoulder. She was breathing the slow, deep breathing of a woman who had finally let go of something long enough to sleep.
I didn't move until I'd decided what I was doing.
I was making coffee.
I slid out from under her hand, crossed to the kitchen, and started the French press.
The apartment in the early morning was a room I was learning—where she kept the coffee, how long the kettle took, the particular rattle of the cabinet where the mugs were.
I made the coffee the way she drank it. I poured a cup and set it on the counter.
Nova woke in the bedroom with the sound she made before the crying started, more opinion than distress. I crossed the hall and picked her up before Audrey could. Nova's fist found my shirt. She settled. That was the word for it—she just settled.
Audrey was sitting up, hair down, eyes open, the blanket pooled at her waist. I brought her to Audrey on the couch. She looked at me carrying the baby, looked at the coffee on the counter, and didn't say anything for a beat.
I put Nova in her arms and sat on the floor next to them.
"Thank you for coming," Audrey said.
"You called, Aud. That's the point."
"I shouldn't have woken you up."
"You woke me up because you needed to. I'd rather you wake me up at two in the morning than not."
She didn't argue with me. She picked up the coffee. She drank it, and I sat on the floor beside her with my back against the couch, and Nova was between us, making the small sounds she made in the morning.
I left around nine. At the door, I stopped, put my hand on the side of her head, and kissed her forehead.
It was the first time I'd done it. Her eyes closed for a second, and she let me, and I kissed Nova on the head and went through the door before the moment could become something I'd have to explain.
The bathroom floor was still in the room, and neither of us was going to pretend it wasn't.
What she'd said to me on the tile at two in the morning was the most honest thing she'd given me in weeks, and I wasn’t going to rush past it with anything that let us pretend the honesty was already resolved.
I drove home with the morning sun in my eyes and the bathroom floor in my head, and I thought about the word need the whole way.
That evening. I was at her door again.
Audrey opened the door in clean clothes. Hair washed. She looked better than she had at two in the morning, which was a low bar, but her eyes were clearer, and the color was back in her face. Nova was in the bouncer. The kitchen was cleaner than it had been twelve hours ago.
I set the takeout I brought on the counter, unpacked it, and started plating.
"I want you to take a night," I said it from across the kitchen.
She looked at me.
"I'll take Nova to my parents'. They've been asking. My mom will keep her overnight. I'll cook dinner at my place." I kept my voice even. Simple. The pitch was short, and I was going to keep it short. "You don't have to do anything except show up."
Audrey blinked.
"Or your place. I'll cook here. Whatever works."
She shook her head. "No. Your place."
She said it without thinking about it long enough to talk herself out of it. I watched the decision go across her face—the quick calculation, the moment where her brain tried to build a wall, and her mouth got there first.
"Tomorrow night?"
"Okay, tomorrow night," she said.
"I'll pick you up at seven."
She didn't argue.
I was at her curb at six fifty-five. Five minutes early.
Nova was at my parents' house. I'd dropped her off two hours ago.
My mother reached for the baby before I'd finished getting out of the truck.
My dad talked about something to do with the peewee hockey schedule while I stood in the kitchen, and I didn't fully listen because my brain was already at the dinner.
I'd been cleaning my house for two hours since.
The living room floor was swept. The kitchen counter was cleared.
The nonfiction stack was moved off the coffee table.
The dishes were done. Something was simmering on the stove that I'd started at four from a recipe I pulled up on my phone, and it involved chicken and a sauce that had more ingredients than anything I'd ever cooked, and I'd watched the video twice.
Audrey came out of her building. Jeans and a sweater—softer than work clothes, not date clothes.
Hair down. She crossed the sidewalk in the evening light, and I sat in the cab of my truck and clocked what I was doing.
I was parked at this curb to pick up the mother of my child and drive her to my house for dinner.
I'd cooked for her. I'd cleaned for her.
I was sitting in a parking spot five minutes early because I didn't want her to come out and not see me there.
She got in the truck. "Hi."
"Hey."
I pulled away from the curb. The cab was quiet on the drive over.
Audrey looked out the window. My hands were on the wheel.
Neither of us filled the silence, because neither of us needed to.
I stopped at the one light between her place and mine.
Didn't look at her. She didn't look at me. The light changed. I drove.
I pulled into my driveway. Cut the engine.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
I walked her up the front steps and through the door.
The house was what it was—small, a firefighter's house.
I'd done what I could with it. Two place settings on the small table in the kitchen.
The stove running. The basement door closed because the pinball machine was down there, and the basement was not the room I was showing her tonight.
The framed photo of the firehouse crew was on the wall by the living room window, the one from Easton's first year, all of us younger and squinting into the sun.
The Krakauer on the coffee table because I'd moved the stack but left the one I was reading.
Audrey walked through it. She was quiet.
She took it in the way she took everything in—quick and precise, filing what she saw.
I watched her look at the photo on the wall.
At the book on the table. At the kitchen, which was small, smaller than hers, the stove and the counter and the two-person table that was the only table the room could hold.
I wanted her to like it. The want was plain and simple, and it surprised me, because I'd lived in this house for years without once thinking about whether anyone else would want to be in it.
It was my house. It held my things. It did its job.
Standing in the doorway watching Audrey take it in, I wanted her to see something in it worth being in, and the wanting was a door I hadn't stood in front of before.
She looked at me. "It smells good."
"Don't sound so surprised."
The corner of her mouth went up. The half-smile. I'd take it.
We ate. The chicken turned out better than I expected.
She said so, then told me she could tell I'd watched a video because the garlic was cut too small.
I told her the garlic was cut to the size the video said to cut it.
She told me the video was wrong. I laughed.
She laughed. The dinner was easy in a way I hadn't been sure it would be.
The wine was a bottle I'd bought yesterday after standing in the aisle for ten minutes reading labels like they were going to tell me something useful.
Then she put her fork down.
The shift was immediate. I could feel it before she spoke—the temperature in the room changing, her posture settling into something deliberate, her eyes finding mine and holding.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
I set my glass down. I waited.