I walked away, pausing at the coffee table with my back to him. An opened bottle of red wine waited on it, two glasses by its side. Dominic’s sleeve brushed against mine on his way to the sofa.
“Join me?” He picked up the bottle and tilted a glass toward me questioningly.
I hesitated. The sitting room door was ajar, the curtains open. I rubbed my arms.
“I’ll light the fire,” he said. “We should celebrate the blue moon. Here, sit.”
I pulled the curtains closed before sinking onto the sofa. The wine was warm, and I swirled it around my mouth, trying to get used to the bitter furriness of it as I watched Dominic crouch over the hearth with a box of matches. He coaxed a pile of kindling into flames, then arranged logs over the top. A billow of smoke puffed into the room, carrying an aroma of something musty and old.
“So what do you want to do with your life, then?” he asked as he sank down next to me with his own full glass. “After you finish here, after your biochemistry degree or whatever?” I curled up in my half of the sofa and sighed.
“I don’t know. Travel, maybe.”
“With your friends?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We used to talk about it. They’ve probably made new plans by now.”
“You’re very good with Edwin. I can see you settling down and having a family of your own one day.”
The heavy flavor of the wine had grown on me, and I drained my glass. “Yeah.”
“But meanwhile, the world is your oyster.”
“I’d walk away from everything if I could,” I said. “Start again. Be someone new.”
“Reinvent yourself?”
I looked directly at him then. His expression was open, no glint of judgment in his eyes. I held his gaze for a moment, and then nodded.
“Yeah. That’d be nice.”
He considered this, and didn’t press me further. The combination of wine and warmth and companionable silence helped my muscles relax, and I shifted into a more comfortable position. He refilled my glass, and we sat and watched the flames dance over the puckering logs.
“Funny thing, life,” he said eventually. His voice was low and scratchy. “One minute you’ve got everything you ever wanted, and the next minute...” His pupils were dilated in the low light, reflecting the flickering yellow of the fire.
“Theo,” I said.
He tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling. “Did Ruth tell you how it happened?”
“Alex told me.”
“I think about it all the time. I think about him all the time.”
I leaned toward him, and placed my hand over his. His hands were broader than Alex’s, and not as smooth; his knuckles bore smudges of soot from the fire, and it made him seem vulnerable somehow.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He rolled his head forward, tucking his chin down and studying my hand. He turned it over, running his thumb over my palm. A tingle spread through my body, and I savored the sensation.
“You know, it’s funny,” he said. “I thought—that day we all went to the beach. When you went on the Topper with Alex. I thought maybe you two might...?”
I shook my head, tried to smile. “Nope.”
“Ah.” He stroked my palm again, and then looked at me. “You wanted to?”
When I didn’t answer straightaway, he turned his attention back to my hand. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the feeling of his thumb running along the underside of my fingers, crossing my palm, stroking circles on the inside of my wrist. I felt as though I was floating, as if my muscles had melted.
“Someone like him would never be interested in someone like me,” I said, without opening my eyes. I was picturing the way Alex watched Ruth’s movements, from under half-lowered lids, his concentration intense. I was picturing the way he’d stood on the doorstep in the rain, his clothes dripping, craning his neck for a glimpse of her.
