Chapter 18
Cole found my second mug behind a saucepan I’d been pretending not to need for twenty minutes.
“It wasn't hidden,” I said.
“It was in the cabinet of things you never use.”
“That cabinet has an organizational system.”
He pulled out the blue ceramic mug, set it beside the coffeemaker, and leaned his weight against the counter.
He was no longer wearing the sling his physical therapist had forced on him for four days, but he still protected his left shoulder whenever he reached for anything overhead.
A flour stain marked the front of his T-shirt across his stomach.
In the skillet, a pancake was beginning to singe around one edge.
“Your system put the mug behind a bamboo steamer with the price tag still on it,” he said.
“I bought that with good intentions.”
“In what calendar year?”
“Don't turn breakfast into an audit.”
Cole flipped the pancake. The scorched side stared back at us.
“It’s already an audit.”
It was the last Sunday of June, and we’d spent forty-three minutes debating things that didn't matter in the slightest. The mug.
The ratio of grounds to water. Whether the flour spilled on the floor constituted an immediate domestic crisis.
Morning sunlight poured through my kitchen window, warming the clay pot of basil on the sill, which now boasted six new green shoots and a botanical arrogance it hadn't earned.
Cole had stayed over last night. Friday night, too.
His toothbrush had lived in my bathroom for two weeks, introduced without ceremony or a formal executive committee review.
I had a T-shirt, a phone charger, and a pair of flats at his lake house.
Neither of us had labeled any of it as moving forward.
We’d simply stopped carting the exact same essentials back and forth across town.
“You’re going to set off the smoke alarm,” I said.
“Over a pancake?”
“Over your attitude.”
He laughed—that booming laugh that never quite fit inside my small kitchen—and pulled the skillet off the burner.
The aroma of browned butter had won the battle against the brewing coffee.
Outside, someone dragged a recycling bin down the sidewalk.
The radiator remained silent for the first time since March.
Cole slid the defective pancake onto my plate.
“This one’s yours.”
“How remarkably generous.”
“Affection takes many forms.”
I looked up at him. The line had been delivered with casual lightness, but it left my fork suspended an inch above the table.
Cole caught the shift. He didn't rush to fill the silence. He pulled out the chair across from mine, sat down, and turned his mug a quarter turn until the handle aligned squarely with his right hand.
Over the past several weeks, we’d become good at this.
Dinners that weren't the prelude to a heavy confession.
Text messages about laundry detergent, traffic, and a show Cole was watching ahead of me despite swearing he wouldn't. A short walk when his shoulder was up to it. Two late nights when I’d worked past nine and he hadn't shown up with takeout or an unprompted solution; he’d simply asked if I wanted to talk, and accepted my no without pushing.
Ordinary time was harder to recognize simply because it didn't make any noise.
I cut a piece of the pancake and tasted it. It was charred on one side and slightly raw in the middle.
“This is objectively terrible.”
“That hurts worse than the shoulder.”
“You shouldn't have requested a formal evaluation.”
Cole reached across, snagged a piece from my plate, chewed it, and winced.
“I retract my defense.”
The laugh escaped me before I could decide whether it was appropriate.
I leaned across the small table, and Cole brushed his thumb along my lower lip, catching a stray drop of maple syrup.
His hand lingered against my jaw. The temperature between us shifted with an ease that no longer surprised me, even if my body still reacted like it needed to log the data point.
I kissed the pad of his thumb.
Cole stood up. His chair scraped softly against the hardwood, and his knees settled between mine. He cupped my face in his right hand.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
I kissed him first. He tasted of coffee and that terrible pancake.
Cole rested his hip against the edge of the table and let me set the pace, waiting as I closed the distance.
We’d learned not to treat every pause like an incoming storm, but he still asked with his hands: resting at the nape of my neck, settling at my waist, still before they moved.
I slipped my fingers under the hem of his T-shirt.
“Your shoulder,” I murmured.
“I can get it off one-handed.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
Cole rested his forehead against mine.
“It’s fine as long as I don't raise my arm. If anything changes, I’ll tell you.”
I nodded. He didn't rush.
“And you?” he added softly. “You okay?”
The question wasn't just about this morning. I felt its weight in the steady pressure of his knees against mine, in the sweet buttery scent still drifting from the stove, in the long months it had taken for my body to feel like my own again.
“Yeah,” I said. “I want to keep going.”
His mouth found mine again. This time, there was no careful distance left to maintain. I worked his shirt over his head with gentle care, he lifted me from the chair with his good arm, and I protested the moment I saw two plates sitting dangerously close to the table’s edge.
“Trouble,” he murmured against my throat, “if you’re worrying about tableware right now, my technique is severely deteriorating.”
“One of those plates belonged to my grandmother.”
Cole paused mid-stride.
“That would've been useful to know three seconds ago.”
He nudged the plates safely toward the center without letting go of my waist. I laughed against his mouth and pulled him toward the hallway.
In the bedroom, the morning blinds cast striped bands of sunlight across the gray duvet.
My clothes from yesterday were still folded neatly over the back of the desk chair; his formed a significantly less disciplined pile on the rug.
Cole pulled open the nightstand drawer and his hand went still inside.
“There’s one left,” he said.
The box of condoms was nearly empty. A small, mundane object purchased weeks ago without ceremony, yet the air in my lungs thickened instantly.
Cole drew his hand back. He didn't pick up the foil packet.
“We can stop.”
I sat on the edge of the mattress. The linen scraped against the backs of my bare thighs.
“I don't want to stop.”
“Okay.”
He stayed standing, close enough to feel his warmth, but careful not to box me in. He waited.
“I want to talk about why there’s only one left,” I said.
“Because I put entirely too much faith in a twelve-pack.”
I looked up at him.
“That was a terrible joke.”
“Yeah.”
He didn't try to salvage it. He looked down at the open drawer, then sat beside me on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight, tilting me slightly toward his side.
“I’ll buy more,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
The answer came fast. Decisive. My right hand, however, had already found the clasp of my watch, clicking it open against my wrist.
Cole watched my fingers.
“And what part isn't?”
I snapped the clasp shut. The metallic click was entirely too loud in the quiet room.
“I don't know if wanting you to buy more means I don't want kids, or if it just means I don't want to be pregnant right now.”
“It could just be the second one.”
“It could also be both.”
“Yeah.”
His effortless acceptance of two opposing truths irritated me. It was an unfair reaction, so I let the spike of annoyance move through me without turning it into a weapon.
“I researched daycares,” I said. “After the ultrasound. I already told you that.”
“Three of them.”
“Three. And I’d also decided that a baby didn't fit into my life. Both of those things were true, and then the miscarriage happened. Now, every time I try to figure out whether I want to be a mother someday, I don't know which part of the answer belongs to what happened.”
My voice cracked on the final word. Not gracefully. Heat stung behind my nose, and I had to fix my eyes on the line of sunlight cutting across the closet door.
Cole rested his palm flat on the mattress between us.
“I don't know how to separate it all either,” he said. “I wanted those socks. I pictured the spare bedroom. And I wasn't ready.”
I didn't ask about the socks. The word hung between us like an object he wasn't ready to show me and I wasn't ready to look at yet.
“Do you want to be a father?” I asked.
Cole leaned forward, his right forearm resting on his thigh.
“Someday, yeah. I think so.”
“You think so.”
“I don't want to give you a more certain answer just because it sounds cleaner.” He rubbed his thumb against his palm.
“If you’re asking whether I want to try right now, the answer is no.
I don't want a new pregnancy to become an assignment to stop missing the one we lost. And I don't want you having to make that choice with that kind of weight on your shoulders.”
I swallowed. The bedroom smelled of warm cotton and the coffee cooling on the counter down the hall.
“I don't want to try right now either.”
Cole gave a single nod.
“Then we keep using condoms.”
“And we talk about it again.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“No.” I turned toward him. “I don't want this turning into a decision about my body that you wait for from the hallway. We revisit it together. Not because there’s a scare or a late period. Before that.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth, then lifted to meet mine.
“Together,” he said.
“Without interpreting the loss as an instruction.”
“Without using what we were hoping for as proof of what we’re supposed to want next.”
The precision of his words left me without an immediate answer. I reached out and covered his open hand with mine.
“Exactly that,” I said.