Daniel was cutting peppers when Lena got home.
He looked at the book under her arm. She put it on the little shelf by the door, where her keys usually landed.
“He had it,” she said.
She took the envelope from her bag and set it beside Daniel's keys. He looked at it, then back at her. Neither said anything about the money.
Daniel nodded. “How was it?”
“I don't know yet.”
“Okay.”
There was a pan on the hob and a packet of noodles beside it. He'd set the table. Not candles, not flowers. Their ordinary plates and the bottle of chilli sauce she liked better than he did.
She took her jacket off. A dry patch of cheese stuck to the cuff.
“Something happened to your sleeve.”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
His mouth moved, almost a smile. She was grateful he let it go.
“Can I help?”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
He handed her the mushrooms and moved his board over. They worked side by side. She sliced too thinly, he took too long over a pepper seed, and the room began to feel like their kitchen again.
Then she looked at the knife in his hand and remembered that another day, years ago, he had given Nate nine hundred dollars to buy her a ring.
“Did he show it to you?”
Daniel stopped cutting.
“The ring.”
“No. He told me which one.”
“You knew what it was for.”
“Yes.”
“And you helped.”
“Yes.”
She put her knife down. “Were you in love with me then?”
He looked at her for a moment before answering.
“I liked you. Not the way I do now. I didn't know you that well.”
“Nate says you didn't pay him to go.”
“I didn't.”
“Why give him the money?”
“He'd put most of it down. He thought he could make the rest before the job started, and he couldn't. I had it.”
“Just like that?”
“He was going to pay me back.”
“Did he?”
“A year later.”
Lena leaned against the counter. The fan over the hob rattled. Daniel turned it down, then left his hands resting beside the board.
“Did you know he was going to leave without telling me?”
“No.”
She searched his face. She had done that too often this week. It was only Wednesday.
“When I heard he'd gone, I thought he'd told you,” he said. “Then Jo said he hadn't.”
“And you still didn't tell me about the ring.”
“No.”
“Why not then?”
“You were hurt enough.”
She looked away.
“That sounds kind,” she said. “I don't know if it is.”
He picked up one pepper seed from the counter, rolled it between his fingers and put it in the bin.
“Later it was different,” he said.
“When we were together.”
“Yes.”
“You thought I might want him back.”
“I thought you'd wonder whether you'd chosen me because he hadn't asked.”
She was quiet.
There had been two years between Nate leaving and Daniel becoming somebody she looked for in a room. That had mattered to her. She had not stepped out of one man's life into another's. There had been terrible mornings, then tolerable ones, then a summer when she had stopped checking strangers from behind.
Daniel had come into the café to mend a broken socket. He'd returned the next week for lunch and remembered which table she hated wiping because it wobbled. On the third visit he'd fixed the wobble without telling her.
Their first evening together hadn't even begun as a date. Jo had asked him to join a small dinner, then become ill and gone upstairs halfway through. Lena and Daniel had washed dishes, finished the open bottle of wine and gone walking because neither wanted to leave first.
He hadn't kissed her until their next dinner. He had asked, a little awkwardly, whether she wanted him to. She'd said he was taking a long time to get to it.
Remembering made her chest ache in a different place.
“I didn't choose you because Nate forgot to propose.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked at her. “I want to.”
She moved past him to put the kettle on. She wasn't making tea. She needed hot water for the noodles and needed, for a minute, not to look at his face.
“You're making it harder to trust the things I thought I knew,” she said.
“I've done that. I know.”
The kettle clicked on. She watched a little steam begin to rise.
“What did you think would happen when he came?”
“I thought you'd finally get to say what you couldn't say before.”
“And go back to normal.”
“I hoped so.”
“And when he didn't leave quickly enough, you tried to pay him.”
Daniel took a breath. “When I saw what it was doing to you, I wanted him gone.”
“That doesn't explain why you lied.”
“No.”
He didn't ask her to make it explain. She wanted to give him credit for that and resented having to.
She poured water over the noodles. They stood apart until the kettle was empty.
“Do you want him gone?” Daniel asked.
She heard the effort it took.
“I don't want to make him disappear again. I've had enough of that.”
Daniel nodded once.
“I don't know what I want from him,” she said. “An apology that fixes something, maybe. He hasn't got one.”
“He can't have.”
“No.”
She put the kettle down and rubbed her forehead.
“Can we eat? I'm exhausted.”
“Yes.”
Cooking went wrong in a familiar way. The pan was too hot because they'd left it heating through the conversation. Daniel dropped the peppers in and they spat oil onto his wrist. He said a word he didn't usually use in front of her, then looked at her as if she would mind.
“You're allowed,” she said.
“Good.”
She took his wrist and held it under the cold tap. A red spot showed near his thumb.
“It's nothing.”
“I can see that. Stay there.”
With her other hand she turned the heat down. He stood under the tap while she stirred the vegetables, his body turned awkwardly toward hers. When she reached across him for the sauce, he kissed the top of her head.
She went still for a second, then kept stirring.
The food was too salty. They discovered it at the same time, looking up from their first mouthful.
“Breakfast revenge?” he asked.
She shook her head, laughing reluctantly. “You poured it.”
“I did.”
He fetched a little tub of rice left from the night before, and they mixed it into their bowls. It helped. They ate at the window because the evening was warm, listening to somebody downstairs try repeatedly to start a motorbike.
Daniel pointed his fork toward the sound. “Battery.”
“You're not going down there.”
“I hadn't said I would.”
“You were preparing to.”
He smiled. “I could stand at the window and give advice.”
“Everyone loves that.”
The motorbike finally started. The rider shouted something triumphant, then stalled it.
Lena put her hand over her mouth. Daniel laughed quietly, and for a minute they were on the same side of something.
After dinner he washed while she dried. He gave her the chipped mug handle first so she wouldn't catch the rough edge. She put the clean plates away in the order he disliked, then waited for him to notice.
He noticed.
“Big ones underneath.”
“They're all big in spirit.”
“Lena.”
She grinned and moved them before he could. He caught her against the counter, both hands still wet, and kissed the side of her neck.
She turned into him.
For a moment it was simple. His hand at her waist, the familiar angle of his mouth, the small sound he made when she kissed him back. She wanted this man. Not merely the wedding, not merely somebody who had stayed.
When they moved apart, he put his forehead against hers.
“I've missed you,” he said.
“It's been two days.”
“I know.”
She didn't tell him she had missed him too. She kissed him once more, which was easier and just as true.
They sat on the sofa with the window open. Lena drew her feet up beside her. Daniel brought her the light blanket without asking, then sat close enough that she could rest against him if she wanted.
“Could we go away this weekend?” he asked.
Her first thought was work. Jo would need cover. The flowers still hadn't been decided. There was a pile of things they had promised to sort on Saturday.
“Where?”
“Somewhere close. Two nights. No wedding list.”
“We just spent money on the hotel.”
“A little place. I can look.”
She thought of the beach supper they had lost, and the morning in the blue shirt before Bea arrived. She wanted more than one good kiss between difficult questions.
“What are we going away to do?” she asked.
“Be together.”
“As what?”
He turned toward her.
“I don't want to get there and spend two days trying to persuade you about the wedding,” she said.
“You don't have to persuade me.”
“Then tell me you want it.”
His hand was on her knee. He looked down at it, then up at her.
“I want you. I want us to be happy.”
She waited for more.
“Let's have a weekend where we remember we can be,” he said.
She could have demanded the exact words. She could hear herself doing it, telling him the sentence to say and watching his face until he said it. She didn't want a promise dragged out that way.
“Two nights,” she said. “I'll ask Jo about Friday afternoon. I'm already off Sunday.”
“Thank you.”
“Don't book anything until she says yes.”
“I won't.”
He reached for his phone. They looked at little beach rentals together, rejecting one with a mattress on the floor and another that described a fold-out sofa as a generous sleeping area. Lena liked a tiny white place with a window seat. Daniel liked that it was close to a path along the cliffs.
She leaned against him while he read the description aloud. He stumbled over the owner's enthusiastic spelling, and she laughed until she had to take the phone away.
“Show me the photographs,” she said.
He handed it over. The kitchen was barely larger than theirs. There were two mugs on a hook and an old wooden bench outside.
She imagined coffee on the bench with Daniel beside her. No guests. No ring from five years ago. No man at the end of the street carrying an envelope.
Just two nights that they could actually have.
She sent Jo a message asking about Friday, then put the phone down and moved closer to Daniel.