Page 32 of Carry Me Home

Chips looks up at me, head tilted, with an expression I’m starting to think is judgement.

‘Don’t start,’ I tell him.

He sighs and puts his head back down.

I listen to Tom moving through the café – the scrape of a table, the click of a screwdriver, the quiet competence of a man who fixes things because that’s what he does. He doesn’t ask for thanks. He doesn’t make it a production. He just identifies what’s broken and puts it right, the same way he puts everything right, the same way he’s been putting me right since the night Peter died and Tom was the one who came to the door at three in the morning and sat on my kitchen floor and didn’t say a single word for two hours.

I make tea. I listen to the sounds of him making my café work again. And I think about Tilly saying Tom Darcy has been looking after things that aren’t his business for as long as I’ve known him, and I think about eighteen visits to a closed café to water fuchsias that weren’t his responsibility, and I think about the way he held completely still when I mentioned Peter’s name yesterday, giving me room the way he always gives me room, and I have the sudden, vertiginous thought that I have no idea what it costs Tom Darcy to be this kind.

The thought is there and gone. I don’t follow it. I make the tea.

By the time Tom finishes, it’s properly dark outside. The café is lit only by the fairy lights, and the window he fixed is letting in the cool night air, and somewhere in the process of him tightening table legs and adjusting door hinges we’ve settled at the counter with our mugs like this is normal, like this is just what we do.

Maybe it is what we do. I’m losing track of where habit ends and something else begins.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For all of it. The window. The table. The list.’

‘The list was only four items. The bathroom light just needed the bulb tightening.’

‘It counts. You came over and fixed things and you didn’t make me feel weird about asking.’

He looks at me. ‘Why would I make you feel weird about asking?’

‘Because I’ve been gone for three weeks and I left everything a mess and you had to water my fuchsias and now you’re fixing my windows and it’s a lot of … maintenance. Of me.’

‘I don’t mind maintaining you.’ He says it simply. Plainly. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s the most obvious sentence he’s ever said.

‘Most people would mind.’

‘Most people aren’t me.’

I don’t know what to do with that, so I wrap my hands around my mug and hold on. ‘I just mean – I’m a lot. I know I’m a lot. The lists and the disasters and the running away to Truro. I’m a lot of upkeep.’

‘You’re not a lot of upkeep, Nina.’ He’s not smiling. He’s looking at me with an expression almost fierce. ‘You’ve run a café for years. You survived the worst thing that can happen to a person. You went away to take care of yourself and then you came back and opened the doors.’ He stops. Shakes his head once, a small, sharp movement. ‘That’s not a lot of upkeep. That’s someone I⁠—’

He stops.

The pause is the length of a heartbeat. Maybe two.

‘That’s someone worth showing up for,’ he finishes. Steadily. Like the sentence always ended that way.

The fairy lights flicker. Chips snores in his bed. The harbour makes its soft lapping night sounds through the open window.

‘Okay,’ I say. My voice comes out smaller than I intended.

‘Okay?’

‘Okay. I’ll try to believe you.’

‘That’s all I’m asking.’

He finishes his tea, sets down the mug, and stands. And for a second – just a second – I want to ask him to stay. Not for any reason. Not because I need more windows fixed or tables tightened. Just because the café feels like itself with him in it, and I’m not ready for that feeling to stop. The thought surprises me. Not its existence – I’ve always liked Tom’s company, that’s nothing new – but the weight of it. The way it sits in my stomach like something warm and heavy and slightly too large for the space I’ve put it in.

I don’t ask. He’s already reaching for his jacket.

‘Same time tomorrow?’ he says.

‘You don’t have to come by every day.’