Jo said yes to the weekend, then made Lena wait while she finished counting the rolls.
“You're allowed to go,” she said. “I don't want you checking your phone every ten minutes to make sure I'm managing.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted me to do the new board first.”
“I do. Then you can stop managing me.”
Lena drew a small boat under the lunch prices. It came out better than usual. She considered rubbing it off because it looked too pleased with itself, then left it there.
By Friday afternoon she had packed too much, taken half of it out and put one dress back. Daniel arrived at the café carrying her bag. He had finished his last small job early so they could leave before the roads filled.
Jo handed him two wrapped slices of cake.
“That's my blessing,” she said. “Don't ask for another.”
They drove south with the window partly open. Lena put her feet on the bag, which Daniel asked her not to do because it contained the cake. She put them on his dashboard instead.
“Worse,” he said.
She lowered them, laughing.
It took an hour before she stopped feeling she had left something unfinished. They passed fields, a long row of greenhouses, then a small seaside village whose shops seemed to have agreed on the same pale blue paint.
Daniel took the wrong turning twice.
“You've been here before,” Lena said.
“Not in this particular sequence.”
She offered to look at the directions. He handed her his phone without a fight, which disappointed the part of her that had been preparing an excellent argument.
Their rental was behind the owner's house, a little white building with a crooked wooden gate. The window seat was real. The kitchen was even smaller than the photograph suggested.
Daniel opened the fridge. “We could get both breakfasts in here if we folded them.”
Lena dropped her bag on the bed and looked through the back window. A strip of grass ended at a path above the sea. Nobody on it seemed in a hurry.
“We should go out.”
“Now?”
“Before I think of something useful to do.”
He left his bag unopened and followed her.
The path led down to a broad beach. At the bottom, Daniel took his shoes off and stood looking at the water.
“Cold?” she asked.
“Very.”
“Have you tested it?”
“I've met the sea before.”
She stepped in, shrieked and leapt out. He laughed, then made such a pleased face that she caught his hand and tried to pull him after her.
“Absolutely not.”
“Scared?”
“Sensible.”
“You used to be fun.”
“I was never this fun.”
She splashed him. Not much. Enough to wet the front of his trousers.
He looked down. She waited for him to complain.
Instead he scooped water with both hands.
She ran. He followed her onto the dry sand and caught her before she reached their shoes. She fought laughing, trying to keep his wet hands off her back. He lifted her for half a second, just enough to make her shout, then put her down and kissed her.
Around them people carried towels, dug holes and tried to call children out of the water. Nobody knew they were six weeks from a wedding. Nobody knew about Nate.
Lena put both hands against Daniel's chest and kissed him again.
They bought little paper cups of ice cream from the beach shop. Daniel's melted faster than hers, an injustice he could not explain. Lena let him finish hers because she wanted to walk with her hands free.
Above the beach they found a row of rental boats. A boy working there tried to sell them half an hour in a two-person kayak.
“No,” Daniel said.
“Maybe,” Lena said.
He looked at her.
“Only half an hour.”
“You saw what happened when you held a jug near a table.”
“I'm improving.”
She expected another refusal. Instead he studied the calm part of the water, asked the boy two practical questions and said yes.
Ten minutes later Lena understood why the boy had insisted they keep their hands inside the boat when they pushed off. Her fingers were cold, one trouser leg was wet, and Daniel was sitting behind her saying, “Left. No, your other left.”
“You're supposed to be helping.”
“I am helping with all my strength.”
They went in a circle. Then in a smaller circle. Finally they got far enough from the beach that it seemed possible to admire it.
Lena stopped paddling.
Daniel's paddle knocked hers.
“Warn me,” he said.
“I wanted to look.”
They drifted. She could hear the small slap of water against the side. The town looked different from here, neat roofs above a wide strip of sand. Daniel rested his paddle and leaned forward.
“All right?”
She nodded.
His knee touched her back. A small contact, nothing she needed to earn.
On the way in, they disagreed about the best place to land and reached neither option. The boy waded out and pulled them the last few feet. Daniel thanked him with the dignity of a man refusing to admit rescue.
Lena laughed all the way up the hill.
Back at the rental she hung their wet clothes over chairs. Daniel came out of the bathroom in a towel and found her trying to wipe sand off the bed with his clean sock.
“That isn't yours.”
“It was available.”
He took it away, tossed it into the laundry pile and drew her toward him by the waist.
This time she didn't say he was late. There was nowhere they needed to be.
Afterward they lay under the light sheet while the late sun reached slowly across the wall. His hand rested on her stomach. She liked the weight of it. She liked being able to close her eyes without worrying he would use the silence to go somewhere else.
“We should do this more,” she said.
“Nearly drowning?”
“Not that bit.”
He kissed her shoulder.
They ate Jo's cake in bed because neither wanted to dress yet. Crumbs became a problem. Daniel fetched a plate too late, and Lena complained that he had interrupted her comfortable eating position.
At seven they went out for dinner. The small restaurant had paper menus and a waitress who warned them the fish would take a while. They said they didn't mind. For once Lena really didn't.
“What would you do,” she asked, “if work was easy for a month? If you could choose anything?”
Daniel thought about it. “Take a week on the road. No bookings.”
“You'd make bookings.”
“Eventually.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere with places to stop. Drive until we find something.”
“We could do that.”
“Could we?”
She heard the question underneath the pleasant one.
“Jo would need notice. But yes.”
He nodded, turning his glass between his hands.
“I thought after the wedding we'd settle into things,” she said. “Not stop going places. Just know where we're going home to.”
“We do know that now.”
“Yes. But it would feel different.”
“To you.”
She looked at him. “Not to you?”
“I don't know. That's a lot to ask one day to change.”
The fish arrived. They thanked the waitress, moved their glasses, tasted their food. Daniel gave Lena the piece she liked from the edge of his plate. She gave him her lemon because she had already used too much.
The dinner was still good. She didn't want to ruin it by asking a question he had partly answered.
On the walk back he took her hand. They stopped beside a gate to look at the darkening sea. A dog barked from a house behind them, then someone called it inside.
“I like going home with you,” he said.
She leaned against his arm.
For that evening, it was enough to be here.