The last audience member went out carrying her coat because she had become too warm explaining the ending to her husband.
“It isn’t a tragedy,” she was still saying as the doors closed.
Eli watched her go. “I’m not sure he agrees.”
“He doesn’t have to.”
June took off the little badge she wore for work. Underneath it the shirt had creased. She smoothed the fabric, then stopped. Eli was looking at her.
“What?”
“You were different up there.”
“Louder?”
“Happier.”
She sat on the foyer bench. He sat beside her, nearer than he had on Saturday. Nina was finishing something upstairs. They could hear her moving a chair and muttering at it.
June pulled the programme out of her pocket. It had bent down the middle.
“I don’t think I’d want an evening about my favourite film,” she said.
“Why?”
“They’d be insulting somebody I loved.”
“I’d try to be kind.”
“You think that man should have uprooted his entire life because of one good week.”
“I think he should have tried.”
“He can try after the ending. Phone her. Visit. Find out what he wants. The film doesn’t have to promise it for him.”
“Then you don’t think it’s finished.”
“I think she got where she wanted to go. That’s finished enough.”
He looked at the programme. “I wanted the goodbye to be less lonely.”
June turned toward him. It was the first answer he had given that she didn’t feel like arguing with.
“It was lonely,” she said.
“Yes.”
They sat for a few moments with the old poster above them and the evening thinning around them. June had imagined another kind of end to her first event: going home exhausted, replaying every sentence to Ruby, accepting praise she would pretend not to want. Instead she was sitting with Eli, wanting him to keep talking.
He asked when she had first seen the film. She told him about going alone, buying the wrong size popcorn and carrying it home because she disliked wasting it. He told her he had watched it on a date with somebody who had fallen asleep and then confidently agreed with him about the ending.
“That’s very obliging,” June said.
“It wasn’t what I wanted.”
“An argument?”
“Maybe.”
Their knees touched. Neither moved. June looked at the front doors and then back at him.
“Do you want to come for a walk?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Nina came downstairs as they stood up. “I can lock. Go.”
She said it to June without a knowing smile, which made June love her briefly.
Outside, they walked toward the square. Most of the little shops were dark. The café where they had met had its chairs turned upside down on the tables. A florist had left one light on over a bucket of white flowers.
“This is the wrong way for you, isn’t it?” Eli asked.
“Slightly.”
“Me too.”
“We’re doing very badly at walking.”
They stopped beside the florist. June was no longer cold, though she had been when they came out.
“I want to kiss you,” Eli said.
She looked at his mouth. “I know.”
“Is knowing enough?”
“No.”
She stepped closer. He put one hand lightly at her waist and waited the second it took for her to tilt her face toward him.
The kiss was gentle at first. June held the front of his jumper, a small fistful of warmth. Then he kissed her again, and she forgot the white flowers and the dark windows and the fact that they were standing in the open where anybody could pass.
When they drew apart, she was smiling. It seemed foolish to try to hide it.
“I wanted that too,” she said.
“Good.”
He said it so quietly that she moved closer to hear the next thing. There wasn’t a next thing. He kissed her instead.
They walked afterwards with their hands together, bumping awkwardly once while deciding which side he should be on. At the corner where June needed to turn, Eli let go rather than assuming he would come home with her.
“Can I see you?” he asked.
“You are.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Yes,” she said. “Again.”
He grinned. June stood there long enough to kiss him once more before she left.
At home, she hung up her coat and stayed beside the door, feeling the evening in little separate pieces: her first failed joke, the woman arguing with her husband, Eli’s hand at her waist.
Her phone had a message from Ruby. Hope you got back all right.
June replied that she had. She thought of Ruby sitting in the kitchen with wet hair, trying to explain how a kiss that went no further could hurt so much. She wanted that account to be the one she could believe. It would still leave things to fix. It would leave something to keep as well.
She had not spoken to Sam.
It wasn’t fair to make him part of the explanation without asking him what had happened. And it wasn’t enough to want Ruby’s version to be true.
June found his name in her contacts. The old photograph was still there, Sam looking away from the camera while she laughed behind it.
She wrote, I’d like to speak to you about something Ruby’s told me. Could we meet on Sunday?
She sent it before she could turn the message into something he might mistake for missing him.