I take a breath. "Ian."
"Mm."
"About last night?—"
"How are your feet?" He looks up with complete sincerity. "The stones on that path are uneven. You were barefoot."
I blink. "My feet are fine."
"Good." He nods seriously. "Because I've been thinking, and I know this is controversial, but I think Gerald may have been carved by the same person who designed that path. There's a structural recklessness to both of them that suggests a shared artistic vision."
"Ian."
"I'm serious. Look at his beak. That's a beak made by someone with strong opinions about?—"
"Ian." I set my cup down. "I'm trying to have a conversation."
"I know." He meets my eyes. His are steady and warmand completely, deliberately deflecting. "I know you are, Crazy."
"We have to?—"
"You hungry?" He's already at the stove, back to me, cracking eggs into the pan with the efficiency of a man who has decided that breakfast is the most important thing happening in this kitchen right now. "You want eggs? Actually, yes, you do. You need the protein. You haven't been eating enough."
I stare at the back of his head.
"Ian."
"Salt?"
"You're impossible."
"I've been told." He glances over his shoulder, and for just a second—one unguarded second—the deflection drops, and what's underneath it is exactly what I saw on the step last night. Honest and tired and careful. Then he turns back to the stove. "Two minutes and I’ll have you fed."
I understand then that he's not going to have this conversation. Not because he doesn't know what I'm trying to say. Not because he doesn't have things he could say back. But because he's made a decision about what this morning is going to be, and arguing with that decision would require me to push harder than I'm willing to push.
For the rest of the day, we move around each other with the careful choreography of two people who have silently agreed, without discussion, to table something indefinitely.
Ian makes jokes. I laugh at them. We walk to the castle in the late morning—he finally meets the aggressive swan, who charges him with the conviction of an animal who has identified a naturalenemy, and Ian stands his ground with a level of calm that I suspect is less about the swan and more about having somewhere to direct his energy.
We eat lunch at the small place down the road that does cold soba, and Ian orders wrong and eats it anyway without complaint. In the afternoon, he reads. I sit in the garden with Gerald and try to write and don't.
We don't talk about the step.
We don't not-talk about it in a way that feels strained. We just—don't. And I let him set that tone because I understand, with the part of me that has been watching people manage themselves for years, that Ian is doing the only thing available to him right now. Holding the line. Keeping the shape of what we are intact for as long as he can.
I respect it.
I hate it a little too.
By evening, the air between us has settled back into something familiar, almost the way it was before last night, except it isn't and we both know it isn't, and that knowledge sits quietly between us like a third person at the table who doesn't speak but takes up space.
I’m in my bedroom by eleven, then find myself in the kitchen by half past midnight. I don't decide to bake. It just happens—me opening cupboards, pulling out flour and sugar and cinnamon, because my hands need something to do and my head needs somewhere to put all the noise.
Apple cinnamon muffins.
I don't let myself think about why. But then I think about why.
Him.
