They cooked in Nate's narrow kitchen with one person at the counter and the other moving things out of the way.
He had bought too little oil. Lena had bought too much bread. They managed with both mistakes. She leaned against the fridge while he stirred, then took his place when he went to find a second clean plate.
Music came faintly through the floor. The live set downstairs had ended, but the shop was playing something slower now.
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
“Tonight? No.”
He set the plates down and pulled his chair nearer hers.
They ate at the little table beside the window. Lena showed him the finished river drawing. It was not her best, but it held something of the afternoon.
“I like the wet bit,” he said.
“That was accidental.”
“I didn't say you were a genius.”
She laughed and put the book beside her plate.
After dinner she washed. He dried badly, leaving a puddle under one bowl. She moved it without telling him the right way, then laughed at herself when he noticed.
“What?”
“I was about to become Jo.”
“Terrifying.”
She flicked a drop of water at him. He caught her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, then looked at her instead of continuing the joke.
She moved toward him.
They kissed in the kitchen until the dishes were forgotten. She drew him toward the bedroom. He paused to turn off the kitchen light, missed the switch and laughed against her mouth when she reached past him.
Later, they lay close with the window partly open. Somewhere outside a bus pulled away. A person on the pavement laughed too loudly, then apologised to nobody in particular.
Lena rested her hand on his chest.
“I still want to get married one day,” she said.
He looked down at her.
“I don't want to say I don't just because the last month was awful.”
“I wouldn't ask you to.”
She nodded, relieved and afraid in equal measure.
“But I want this slowly,” she said. “With the trains and the work and the bits that aren't a good day.”
He ran his thumb over her knuckles.
“So do I.”
She waited, then asked the question she had been avoiding because it would make an old object real again.
“What happened to the ring?”
“The old one?”
“Yes.”
“I sold it after we talked at the bakery.”
She looked at him.
“I wasn't going to make a performance of it,” he said. “I don't need that box deciding what happens now.”
She breathed out. She had once thought the ring could prove she hadn't imagined being loved. She no longer needed to wear the proof.
“All right.”
He kissed her forehead. They didn't give the old ring another conversation.
The next morning she woke before the alarm. It was barely light. Nate lay beside her with one arm thrown across the pillow, the same mouth, the new lines by his eyes. She stayed a few minutes looking at him.
Then the alarm rang, and she had a train to catch.
He got up to make coffee. She packed while he stood in the kitchen rubbing sleep from his face. He didn't ask her to stay and make Jo cover another morning.
“Next time,” he said, handing her the mug, “we find a day you don't have to leave at dawn.”
“We can find one. Not guess one.”
He smiled.
On the walk to the station they worked out the next visit. He could come to Greyhaven the following Tuesday, after a morning job nearby. Lena had her new evening close, so he could meet her for a meal afterward if he didn't need an early start.
He checked. He didn't.
“Nine might be late,” she warned.
“I can eat a sandwich before and pretend I'm a patient man.”
She laughed. “Don't pretend too hard.”
They decided on Tuesday. She put it in her phone while he carried her bag.
At the platform she kissed him, then kissed him again because she could. He handed over her bag before the doors began to close.
“Call when you're home?”
“Yes. If you're working, answer later.”
He nodded. She stepped onto the train without waiting for a sentence that could guarantee he would never hurt her.
He stayed on the platform until it moved. This time she didn't watch him as if her whole life depended on whether he turned away first.
At Greyhaven she walked straight to the café with her bag. The clock behind the counter showed ten to ten. Jo had opened, as they had agreed, and was filling the little milk jug.
“You're early.”
“I had a good train.”
“A mythical creature.”
Lena smiled. Her sister studied her face, then smiled too, carefully enough not to make a claim on the whole story.
“Good day?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Bea came in ten minutes later with a plant for a customer collecting it at the café. She had booked herself a weekend away with a friend and wanted Lena's opinion on whether a room above a pub would ruin her sleep.
“Probably,” Lena said. “You should go anyway.”
Bea nodded. “Useful advice. Very qualified.”
They talked about the room, about the café's new board, about a customer who'd left one glove and returned for it three times without ever remembering which hand was missing it.
Lena put on her apron. There were cups to carry, places she knew how to fit things, people she loved whose mornings did not wait for hers to resolve.
At lunch she sent Nate the photograph of the drawing. He answered after two, when she was busy and couldn't reply at once.
Tuesday, he wrote. Still good for you?
She read it behind the counter, with a tray waiting at her elbow and Jo calling for the garden order.
Yes. Nine. I'll make something.
Then she put the phone away and carried the tray outside.
The garden was warm. The pear tree moved above the tables. At the best corner, two customers were arguing affectionately about which lunch to share.
Lena set their plates down and smiled.