Chapter 14 #2
Her reply came the next morning. A text, not a voice message.
Wednesday. Noon. There's a Vietnamese place on Irving that does the best pho in the city. Don't wear a suit.
On Wednesday he wore khakis and a blue button-down, which was the most casual thing he owned, and drove to Irving Street.
The restaurant was called Pho Tan Hoa, it had fluorescent lights, formica tables and a menu laminated in plastic.
The air inside was thick with steam, the smell of star anise and charred ginger.
She was already there. She was sitting at a table by the window with a glass of water, her phone on the table and her hand resting on her belly, which was unmistakable now at fourteen weeks.
She was wearing a cream shirt that stretched gently across the new curve of her, her hair was pulled back and she had reading glasses on top of her head that he'd never seen before.
The reading glasses almost undid him. She'd gotten reading glasses. She'd gotten reading glasses and he hadn't been there when she picked them out, hadn't watched her try on frames, hadn't told her she looked beautiful in every pair, which she would have, which she did.
"You're staring," she said when he sat down.
"I'm looking. There's a difference."
She glanced at him. The echo landed. He could see her register it, the callback to a thousand evenings in the hallway of the Pacific Heights house, and something moved across her face that she didn't name and he didn't push.
"You're not wearing a suit," she said.
"You told me not to."
"And you listened."
"I'm practicing."
A ghost of a smile appeared on her face.
She picked up the menu, which was unnecessary because she clearly already knew what she wanted.
He watched her scan it and he ached. He ached with a thoroughness that amazed him, a longing that occupied every cell, and he sat with it.
He didn't reach for her. He didn't find her wrist. He sat across a formica table and ached.
They ordered. She got the brisket pho, he got the same because he had no idea what to order and because he wanted to eat what she ate. The soup came in bowls so large they took up half the table, fragrant and steaming, with plates of herbs, bean sprouts and lime wedges on the side.
"So," she said, tearing basil into her broth. "Baby lunch. What do you want to know?"
"Everything."
"That's not a question."
"How are you sleeping?"
"Badly. I have to pee every two hours and when I do sleep I have dreams about houses. Last night I dreamt I was replastering a wall and the wall started talking to me."
"What did it say?"
"It said the colorwash was too pink."
They both laughed. The laughing was easier this time, less guarded, and she didn't cut it off.
They talked about the baby. She told him about the fatigue, the hunger and the way her center of gravity was starting to shift.
She told him about the books she was reading, what to expect and what to prepare for and how the baby was developing week by week.
She told him the baby could hear now, or would be able to soon, and that she'd been talking to it while she worked.
"What do you say?" he asked.
"I narrate. I tell it what I'm doing. What I'm restoring. What the house used to look like."
"You talk to houses."
She looked at him. "Who told you that?"
He held her gaze. "Douglas."
"You talked to Douglas?"
"I went to see him."
She set her chopsticks down. He could see her processing this, turning it over, trying to figure out what it meant.
"Why?" she said.
"Because I wanted to know who you are. Not who you are to me. Who you are when I'm not in the room. Who you’ve always been.”
She stared at him. Her eyes were bright, her lips were parted and he could see her throat working.
He watched her absorb the sentence and he knew, in that moment, that it was the most honest thing he'd ever said to her.
More honest than I love you. More honest than any vow he'd made at their wedding.
The admission that he hadn't known her as well as he should have, and that he wanted to.
"What did he tell you?" she said, quiet.
"He told me you were the smartest person in every room at Berkeley. He told me you can read joinery from across a room. He told me you talk to the houses you're working on."
"He talks too much."
She looked at him; the distance between them was still there, still real, still populated with everything he'd broken.
But it was narrower than it had been at the taqueria on Clement.
Narrower than it had been at the doctor's office.
Much narrower than it had been on Margaret's doorstep when she'd refused to come to the door.
They finished lunch. He paid. They walked outside into the afternoon, the Sunset District stretching toward the ocean under a high gray sky.
"Same time next week?" he said.
"Same time next week." She paused. "You can pick the place next time. But nowhere with a sommelier."
"Noted."
She turned to walk to her car. He stayed on the sidewalk.
She got four steps away, stopped, turned back and looked at him.
The look on her face was something he hadn't seen in months: open, unguarded, wanting.
She took a step back toward him, he took a step toward her and they were close. Very close.
The moment held. Her hand came up. Her fingers touched his jaw, lightly, barely there, and his whole body went still.
He didn't move. He didn't close the distance.
He stood there and let her touch him; it was the hardest thing he'd ever done because every molecule in his body was screaming close the gap, kiss her, bring her back.
Isabelle pulled her hand away. She took a breath and stepped back. He could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
“I’ll see you next week,” she whispered.
She turned and walked to her car. Xavier watched her go; the place on his jaw where her fingers had been was still warm. He pressed his own hand against it and held it there.