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Jan wheels his suitcase in and stands at the edge of the infinity pool looking out at the terraces and says nothing for a full minute.

I stand beside him. I let him have the minute, Jan receiving something that exceeds his expectations goes still and quiet and needs the moment, and I have learned this.

"Adequate?" I say.

He looks at me.

"More than adequate," he says.

I grin.

Then I take his hand and say: "Bed."

He looks at me. "It's four in the afternoon."

"Not to sleep."

He follows me inside. The bedroom is good, I chose this villa partly for the wide bed, the quality of light through the shutters, and I drop onto it flat on my back and wait. Jan stands at the end of the bed looking at me. Then he lies down beside me, shifts so I can put my head on his chest, and puts his hand in my hair without being asked.

I exhale completely.

"I'm not stopping you," he says, when I close my eyes.

A pause. Then Jan says, not unkindly: "You're very needy, you know that. Like someone who has never been cuddled before."

I don't say anything.

Jan stops moving his hand.

He looks down at me.

"Patrick," he says.

"Mm."

"I was joking."

"I know."

A pause. "Have you not been…”

"Not like this," I say. Into his chest. "Not — I don't think I was like this before. I don't think I let myself be."

He is quiet. His hand starts moving again, slower this time.

"I think—" I try again. "With Maya, I believed there was something expected of me. That I had to be the strong one. The one who held her. I gave all of that, and I liked giving it. But I never learned how to ask for it back." I stop.

"So you didn't," Jan says. Quietly.

"Yeah." I look at the ceiling through the fabric of his shirt. "I didn't know I wanted it. I didn't know I was—" I exhale. "I guess I just get to be cuddled now. By you. Which is… yeah. I don't know."

I feel his arms tighten around me.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to, Jan processes things and then acts, rather than filling space with words, and what he does is pull me in slightly closer and press his mouth to the top of my head. Not briefly. He stays there, lips against my hair, his arms around me, the Bali afternoon outside the shutters and the rice terraces somewhere beyond and in here just this.

I close my eyes.

"Thank you," I say. Quietly. Into his chest.