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Later, considerably later, he says, into my hair: "I have to go home at some point."

"You don't have to," I say.

A pause.

"I don't have enough clothes," he says. "I packed for Singapore, not a weekend."

I consider this. "We can put a wash on. Or you can go to your apartment and come back."

He is quiet for a moment.

"Or," I say, "you stay and we deal with it in the morning."

He looks at me. "You just want me to stay."

"I pointed out three options. One of them happened to be staying."

He looks at me with the expression that means he knows exactly what I am doing and finds it both transparent and endearing. "Jan."

"The clothes situation is manageable," I say. "And your apartment has been yours for what — four weeks? You still have boxes. You told me this."

He looks at his hands. "Some of them are unpacked."

"Come back here after," I say. "If you want."

He is quiet. Outside the canal. Inside the lamp. His expression is the one he has when something has landed and he doesn't want to make a ceremony of it.

"Darren's sofa was not comfortable," he says.

"I know."

"My apartment is fine. It's just…” He stops.

"It's just new," I say.

He nods once. Then looks at me.

"Stay," I say. Without qualifications.

Sunday comes.

We stop on a bridge over the Prinsengracht, tea for him, coffee for me. I think about the first bridge. The streetlight. The moment the architecture of my life rearranged itself.

"What are you thinking about?" he says.

"The first time we stood on a bridge."

"Better or worse?"

"Different. That one felt like something beginning. This one feels like something that has already begun."

He looks at the canal. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.

Sunday evening.

Dinner again, his turn, which he insisted on, which means the kitchen has been occupied for forty-five minutes and smells extraordinary and I have been told twice not to come in. I am sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop pointedly not looking toward the stove.

He brings two plates to the table. Pasta, a specific thing, not from a recipe, from memory, something his mother makes. He told me this while he was cooking, through the doorway, and I filed it.