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We stayed like that with time treacle-heavy around us and the night bright with snow, until I was half-insensible on the beauty and the quiet, and Leo was gently extricating himself from me. Standing up.
“Where are you going?” I asked, hating how needy I sounded the moment I’d spoken.
“I should check the snow.”
“It’s not that heavy, surely?”
He shook his head. “No. But a lot of the boats along here are owned by people who won’t think to check until summer. Sometimes not even then.”
“Isn’t it their lookout, then, if their boat sinks?”
“Well, it’ll make the river more difficult to navigate. And also”—leaning over me, Leo pressed a kiss to my brow—“this is the right thing to do.”
“According to Marcus Aurelius?”
“Mostly according to me, but I think he’d agree. Is it the action of a responsible being and so on.”40
My intent was to roll my eyes; all I mustered the spite for, though, was a vague flutter of my lashes. “Well, try not to freeze to death or sprain your own ankle.”
“Is that your way of telling me to be careful?”
I sighed in irritation. “It’s my way of pointing out I’m probably not going to be much help to you.”
“If I’ve frozen to death, I don’t think that’ll be an issue.”
“Oh, go away”—I gave him a little push—“you disgusting do-gooder.”
And a few minutes later, having dug his coat, boots, beanie, and a very unflattering head torch out of his cupboard, Leo had indeed gone away. I heard his footsteps briefly on the roof, which startled me until I realised he was probably retrieving something.Then there was just me and the silence and the still-falling snow. Mine had always been an alley cat heart—wanting to be in when I was out, out when I was in, with people when I was alone, alone when I had company, and released the moment I was held—but Leo’s boat without Leo felt empty. When surely, with the two of us, it should have felt crowded.
Eventually I plucked his copy ofMeditationsfrom the shelf and flicked through it listlessly. It did not particularly hold my interest, but I was, I reluctantly conceded, interested by his interest.
Leo had been gone for what felt like a while. Limping to the stern, I eased the doors open and peered out. Tasted the chill of snow on my lips like a cursed kiss from a fairy tale. Felt the eerie heaviness of it upon my eyelashes. I couldn’t distinguish much through the white swirl. Perhaps a figure in the distance with a shovel. Or perhaps I was imagining what I wanted to see. I closed the door and retreated.
It had been some hours, I thought, since the pierogi. Most likely he would be cold too. To say nothing of tired from shovelling snow that was not his problem. Aggrieved, I found a saucepan and put some red barszcz on a gentle heat to simmer.
“That smells wonderful,” said Leo when he finally returned, with that red-nosed, chapped-lip, simultaneously sweaty-and-freezing look you only got from working hard in the snow.
I glanced up fromMeditations. “Don’t get used to it.”
“Your parents’ food smelling wonderful?”
“Any domestic bullshit from me.”
“You’d better be careful.” Turning off the hob, Leo transferredthe barszcz from pan to bowl. “Making soup once. That’s a pretty big deal. It could turn a boy’s head. Do you want any, by the way?”
“One, it’s barszcz, not soup. Two, shut up. And three, no.”
He paused, one hand reaching for a spoon. “You know, this was really kind of you.”
“Just thought you might be cold or hungry or something,” I muttered.
“Well, I’m both. And knackered.”
Leo slid into the dinette opposite me, something that should not have felt familiar after barely two days in each other’s company. Perhaps we had simply spent too long sitting at it. Except it didn’t feel that way either.
“Didn’t your sense of self-righteousness sustain you?” I asked.
“Unfortunately not. Which is a shame”—he popped an uszka into his mouth—“because it would make a fantastic renewable energy source.”
