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I lean against the counter. “Are we having sex tonight?”

She turns fully toward me. “That’s direct even for you.”

“You like direct.”

For a second I think she’ll say something back. I can see the beginning of it before she decides against it.

“I have an early day tomorrow.”

It isn’t an answer, but I understand it.

“Okay.”

I leave the hot sauce on the counter. Wednesday night, Laura wanted me. Afterward, she asked me to sleep in the guest room. Since then, she hasn’t reached for me once.

Bellafonte didn’t start the distance. It made it impossible to pretend I was imagining it.

Now I know the distance since then isn’t accidental. Laura isn’t angry. She still asks about my paintings and leaves the hot sauce on the counter for me. Sometimes I make her laugh before she has time to stop herself, and for a few seconds she feels like the Laura I knew before Bellafonte.

Then the distance comes back. She doesn’t announce it or make rules for it. She keeps choosing it.

The strange part is that everywhere else, she seems to be letting herself want more. Last week she came home with a black leather jacket and hung it beside mine as though it had always belonged there. Saturday, she wore it with dark jeans and boots I had never seen before. When I told her I liked them, she told me not to make a big deal about it, which naturally made me want to make a very big deal about it.

She tries things now that I don’t think the Laura I first met would have reached for, and when she likes them, she keeps them. She doesn’t ask what I think first.

She is making more room for something in herself at the same time she is making less room for me. I don’t know why she wants the distance. I only know that every time she steps farther into the person she wants to be, there seems to be even more distance between us.

Chapter Twenty

Kell

After dinner, Laura takes her wine into the living room and turns on the television. I sit at the other end of the couch and try to watch with her.

I don’t know what the show is about. Two people are arguing in an office, but I miss most of what they say because Laura is beside me and not beside me at the same time.

She laughs once at something on the screen. Not with me. Just because it is funny. When the episode ends, she picks up the remote.

“I’m going to bed.”

“Laura.”

Her hand stops.

“Why are you doing this?”

She sets the remote down. “Doing what?”

I’ve been thinking about how to ask since the restaurant. I still don’t know the right words, so I use the ones I have.

“You keep stopping us.”

Her forehead creases.

“You still talk to me. You ask about my painting. You cook dinner and buy the creamer I like. But every time we start having fun, you pull away. When I get close, you move. When I ask if you want sex, suddenly we’re talking about work.”

“Kell.”

“You said you were tired.”