Tess saw Cal's hands before she saw his face.
He was in front of the snack shelf in the little food shop near her bus stop, holding two packets as though there were a sensible way to choose. His sleeve was rolled to the elbow. There was a small white scar on the side of his thumb that she remembered touching when his hand rested on her knee.
She could still go down the next aisle. He hadn't seen her. She could buy the milk and leave.
Instead she said, “The left one.”
He turned.
She had prepared herself for his smile in the time it took him to do that, but it didn't help very much. He looked delighted, plainly delighted, before he said anything.
“Tess.”
“Hello.”
He lowered the packets. “You look—”
She waited.
“It's good to see you.”
Her coat was old. Her hair had slipped out of its clip on the bus. She had powdered her nose that morning and done nothing since. Some part of her, which had been arranging a better reunion for months, was furious that this one felt so good.
“You too,” she said.
He glanced at her basket. “Big shop?”
“Milk.”
“You could hold that.”
“I thought I might become ambitious.”
He smiled again, more slowly. Tess went to the chilled cabinet and came back with the milk. Cal was still holding both packets.
“You said left?”
“You can't eat the other ones. You complain about the crumbs.”
“I've changed.”
“Buy them, then.”
He put the flaky cheese twists in her basket.
“That's my basket,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You're meant to be buying them.”
He reached to take them out, and Tess caught the end of the packet. For a moment they held it between them. His knuckles touched her wrist. The touch was accidental and small enough that neither of them needed to acknowledge it. Tess let go first.
“I'll get them,” she said. “Then you can't complain.”
“That has never stopped me.”
They queued together. Cal bought bread and apples, Tess bought milk and the cheese twists. She was very aware of the distance between their bodies. When the queue moved, he moved with her, even though there was enough room for him to go ahead to the other till.
Outside, the pavement was warm in the late sun. Cal held out his hand for the heavy bag, and Tess shook her head too quickly.
“I'm all right.”
“I was only—okay.”
She hadn't wanted him to carry her shopping as if nothing had happened. Now she wished she hadn't made him stop.
“Where are you living?” she asked.
“Other end of town. Small place off Cooper Road.”
“For how long?”
“I'm staying. The job's here now.”
She nodded. No train he had to catch on Friday. No weekend visit that would make every hour urgent. He was here, and she could see him again if she wanted to.
“The same kind of work?”
“Same workshop, different branch. Mostly the same arguments with different people.” He looked at her. “You still at the office?”
“Yes.”
“How's that?”
“It was Wednesday all day.”
He laughed. She had missed the way he did that: briefly, with his head lowered, as though the laugh had got past him before he could decide whether she deserved it.
They had reached the low wall at the corner. Tess put the canvas tote down and opened the snack packet.
“You've only just bought that,” Cal said.
“I know. That's how this works.”
She offered it to him. He took the smallest twist, examined it and put the whole thing in his mouth. Flakes fell onto his shirt immediately.
Tess brushed one away before she remembered that she wasn't his girlfriend.
Her hand stopped just below his collar. She drew it back.
He looked down at the place she had touched, then at her.
“Still good,” he said.
She chose a broken piece and ate it. They stood against the wall like people with nowhere else to go. Every few seconds Tess remembered her milk, the bus, the fact that she had spent the past eight months telling Mara she was perfectly capable of never seeing him again.
“Mara's getting married a week on Saturday,” she said.
“That's soon.”
“I've been sticking things together for weeks.”
“To Ben?”
“Of course to Ben.”
“I don't know. You haven't told me anything.”
“You haven't been here.”
The packet crackled in her hand. Cal pressed his lips together and looked toward the crossing.
She could have asked why he hadn't said more in the message. She could have said she had wanted him to. Instead she offered him another cheese twist.
He took it.
“I'm going to the café by the river tomorrow,” he said. “After work. About half four. They still do those flat little cakes you like.”
“They're not cakes.”
“You can tell me what they are if you come.”
Tess looked into the packet. There were three unbroken pieces left. She selected one and took too long about it.
She was free. She had arranged to take Thursday afternoon off to help Mara with wedding things. Mara wanted her there for supper and some place cards, nothing that had to begin at two. She could go to the café at half four and still arrive in good time.
But he had said it so easily. An hour at the café. Come if you liked. Last time there had always been something afterward: other friends, something he had agreed to do, a place he needed to be. She had fitted herself into the spaces and told him she had plans too.
“I don't know,” she said. “I've got a lot on.”
“Right.”
He straightened away from the wall.
She wanted him to say he would wait. Or that he would change the time. Something she could repeat later without admitting she had asked for it.
He looked at her shopping bag. “Do you need to catch that?”
A bus was coming up the road. Not hers. She could have said so.
“Probably,” she said.
“I'll be there anyway. If you get a chance.”
“Maybe.”
She gathered the tote, milk and open packet. Cal reached out as the packet tipped, caught it by one corner and handed it back. A little shower of crumbs fell onto the pavement.
“Still that bag,” he said.
“It's a good bag.”
He touched one faded orange handle. “We nearly left it on the beach.”
“You nearly left it. You were carrying it.”
“I went back.”
She remembered that too: Cal barefoot on the wet sand, waving the recovered bag above his head, her laughing so hard that she hadn't been able to shout instructions. They had come home with damp sandwiches and grit in their pockets. Nobody had been waiting for them. For once they had spent the whole day together.
The bus passed them. Cal watched it go, then glanced at her.
“Not that one?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
She could hear the little question in it. She didn't answer.
He shifted his bread under his arm. “Well. Tomorrow, if you're free.”
She nodded. He left before she could change that into a yes.
Tess stayed by the wall until he had crossed the road. Then she took out the last large cheese twist and ate it herself.
At the bus stop she opened their messages. There were gaps between each exchange wide enough to hold whole weeks of her life. The newest one was still his Thanks.
She typed What time again?
She knew the time. She deleted the question.
When her bus came, she was still looking at the empty box where her answer ought to go.