Page 42 of Soft Serve

"You," he says. "I'm sure about you."

The kitchen is very still.

I look at him for one long moment, at the certainty in his eyes that has nothing managed about it, and I feel the last of the spiral dissolve into something warmer and more frightening.

"Go home," I say softly. "Get some sleep. Call Eleanor in the morning."

He searches my face.

"And then," he says.

"And then come back," I say. "And we'll figure out the rest."

He reaches up and touches my face, the same way he did on the dock, his thumb at my jaw, light and certain, and I lean into it slightly before I can decide not to.

He drops his hand and picks up his jacket.

"Goodnight, Paloma," he says.

"Goodnight," I say.

He lets himself out. The door closes quietly behind him, and I stand in my kitchen in the late-night stillness and listen to his footsteps on the path outside until I can't hear them anymore.

Then I sit down at the table where we were sitting. I look at the two glasses of water. I think about a boy who wanted to build things with his hands. I think about what it means to be sure.

And I think about tomorrow, about what he'll decide when it's just him and the morning and no one else's agenda pressing in. I realize that the spiral has gone quiet, not because I've talked myself out of being afraid, but because I've decided to trust him with it, anyway.

That's new.

That's frightening.

That might be everything.

Chapter 13

Charles

Icall Eleanor at seven.

The conversation is shorter than she expects and longer than I want, and when it ends, I set the phone down on the rental's kitchen counter and stand there in the early morning quiet.

It isn't a relief, exactly. It's more like the feeling of setting down something heavy you've been carrying for so long you'd forgotten it wasn't part of you.

The rental looks exactly as it always has. Clean and functional and completely indifferent to the fact that something has just shifted permanently in the life of the man standing in its kitchen. There’s no personality and no warmth at all. It’s the kind of space that exists in a state of permanent readiness for a person who never quite arrived.

I look around it for a moment. Then I pick up my keys and leave.

The drive to Paloma's takes four minutes at this hour, the town still quiet, the morning light sitting low and golden on the street, Hearts Bend doing what it does every day, regardless of what anyone else has decided.

I park and walk to her door, and then I knock.

The wait is long enough that I consider what I'll do if she doesn't answer, whether she's already at the shop, whether last night was something she's thought better of in the sober early hours, whether I've miscalculated the one thing I've been most certain about.

The door opens.

She's in the clothes she pulls on before the uniform. Her dark hair is loose, and she has a coffee cup in her hand. She looks at my face. She reads it. Something moves through her expression; it's quiet and comprehensive, and she steps back from the door. I go inside, and she closes it behind me.

We stand in her hallway, neither of us says anything because neither of us needs to.