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“But I should have checked with you first. I know people can be particular about others using their things, especially record players, and?—”
“Celeste,” I say, interrupting her. “It’s fine.”
She swallows. “It won’t happen again.”
“I just told you it was fine. You’re welcome to listen to whatever you want.” I nod at the album in her hands. “Why don’t you put it back on while we eat? It was only a few songs in.”
She hesitates, as if this is some kind of test I’m putting her through. But when I give her an encouraging nod, she puts the record back on the turntable and starts it up again.
“Aria is asleep,” she says, turning down the volume a smidge. “She went down about twenty minutes ago.”
“How did the rest of the afternoon go?” I ask. I carry the bag of takeout into the kitchen and Celeste comes with me.
“Fine. Good.” She looks like she wants to say something else, but stops herself.
“What?” I ask. “Did something happen?”
“No. She was great. I enjoyed getting to know her.”
I can tell something else is on her mind, but she still doesn’t volunteer whatever it is.
“Is your room all right?” I ask, unpacking the takeout. Little clouds of steam rise out of the containers as I open them up. “Do you need more furniture?”
“No, no. The room’s fine.” She accepts the plate I hand to her. “Thanks.”
“Help yourself. There’s plenty. Would you like a beer?”
“That’s okay. I’ll stick with water. Thanks.”
Silence falls between us as we load up our plates and sit down on the bar stools at the kitchen island. As I’m chewing a piece of Szechuan pork, I feel Celeste’s eyes study me.
“You’re different now,” she says.
I take a swig of my beer. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond to that.”
She laughs a little and pinches a piece of pork with her chopsticks. “I’m sorry. It’s just disorienting. I worked for you for six years, and you were never like this. The man I knew wouldn’t have ever offered to carry in my bags for me, or been okay with me going through his records. And you definitely wouldn’t have asked how my afternoon was.”
I wonder what she would say if I told her the full truth about why I had to act the way I did. But I can’t tell her, can I? Because my feelings for her aren’t limited to the past. I’m just as infatuated with her now as I always was. The only difference now is that I know I need to act differently around her or I’m going to fuck things up all over again and send her running a second time.
“I owe you an apology for my past behavior,” I say. “I’m sorry, Celeste. You deserved to be treated far better than that.”
The piece of pork falls out of her chopsticks and lands on her plate. She snatches it up again, a bewildered look on her face. “Thank you for saying that.”
“I’m going to try to make it up to you now.”
She still looks bewildered. “It’s okay. It’s in the past.”
“I want to make it right.” I gesture around us. “I want you to make yourself at home here. That room upstairs is yours, but so is the rest of the house. Play records. Raid the fridge. Et cetera. You don’t ever need to ask permission.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing else you need in your room?”
She shakes her head. “No. It has everything I need.”
I want to tell her that simply meeting her needs isn’t good enough for me. I want to give her more than that. A hell of a lot more, if I were to be fully honest.
But all I say is, “If you think of anything, you’ll tell me?”
