A small soft laugh from her. Some of the pink left her cheeks. She lowered her other hand to the table and looked at me with the expression she got when she was deciding whether to be embarrassed or to let herself be glad, and I watched her land, slowly, on glad.
I took a bite of my steak and said nothing, which she correctly interpreted as agreement. She made a sound of protest and looked back down at her plate, and I watched the corner of her mouth fighting itself and losing.
We ate in silence for a moment, the comfortable kind, the kind that didn’t need anything added to it. The conversation settled between us, and she had stopped being pink-cheeked and embarrassed and was back to being herself, which was its own problem because her being herself was what had gotten me into this in the first place.
She looked up.
“How are the cats?” I said, before she could redirect the conversation somewhere safe.
She blinked. Then she laughed—a real one, surprised out of her. “You did that on purpose.”
“You were about to change the subject to something boring.”
“I was absolutely about to change the subject.” She set her fork down and leaned forward, and I knew from the look on her face that whatever she was about to tell me about those cats was going to be delivered with complete sincerity, and I settled in and gave her my full attention. “Wentworth has been conducting a formal inquiry into your whereabouts,” she said. “Daily,” she added. “Back of the couch, every afternoon, one meow. Very pointed. Like filing a complaint with management.”
“What time?”
She tilted her head. “What?”
“What time does he do it?”
She thought about it. “Around four, usually. Why?”
“Just want to know if I should be somewhere at four,” I said.
She stared at me for a second and then covered her face with one hand, laughing into her palm, and I felt it move through me—immediate and warm. I took a bite of my steak and waited for her to recover.
“Knightley has been more subtle,” she said, dropping her hand. “But I’ve caught him at the door twice. He won’t admit to anything if you ask him directly.”
“Smart cat.”
“Very dignified.” She picked up her glass. “And then there’s Darcy.” She paused, giving it the weight it deserved. “Remember how he got on the back of the couch behind your shoulder at lunch. Right behind you. His tail was touching your shoulder blade.”
“I felt it,” I said. “I didn’t want to make a thing of it.”
“Jasper.” She leaned forward. “He has never done that. Not once. Not for anyone who has ever sat on that couch.”
“What does it mean?”
She looked at me very seriously. “It means he’s decided he likes you,” she said. “That’s not nothing. That’s everything, actually.”
I held her gaze across the table. “Then I’ll take it seriously,” I said.
“You should,” she said. And then, softer: “He’s a hard sell. He doesn’t give that to just anyone.”
Neither do you, I thought. I didn’t say it. I just looked at her across the candlelight and took another bite of my steak and felt the evening wrap around us like something I wanted to stay inside for a long time.
I picked up my drink and leaned forward slightly, watching her. She was relaxed in a way she hadn’t been at the start of the evening—the careful composure she sometimes wore around me had gone quiet, and what was underneath it was warmer and easier and open. I wanted to keep it that way. I also wanted to know her, not the outline of her I’d been filling in from a distance, but the real version, the one that came out when she wasn’t thinking about being watched.
Books were the way in. I’d known that since I was seventeen years old, sitting across from her in a school library. She talked about books how most people talked about the people they loved—with personal investment that told you everything about who she was underneath. Ask her about a book, and you weren’t asking about a book. You were asking abouther.
“What was the first book that wrecked you?” I asked.
She looked up from her plate. “Define wrecked.”
“Not made you cry,” I said. “The one that made you understand what a book could actually do. What it was capable of.”
She set her fork down and thought about it seriously, which I’d known she would, which was why I’d asked. The candlelight moved on her face while she turned it over, and I watched her and sipped my drink and didn’t rush her.
