Mara had not expected to have to explain the dress while Theo was trying to remove it.
“It's at the side,” she said.
He stopped looking at her back and moved his hand.
“Your left. No, my left.”
“That's the same side.”
“We're facing different ways.”
“Not enough to make left a new place.”
She turned into his arms, laughing. He kissed her before she could defend the dress any further. She put her hands beneath his T-shirt and felt the warm, familiar skin at his waist. He breathed in against her mouth.
The zipper was small. The dress was fitted. The two of them had never possessed quite as much elegance as strangers gave them credit for. Mara found the fastening herself and pulled it down while Theo lifted his shirt over his head.
She looked at him, then touched the sunburn on his shoulder very carefully.
“That's going to hurt.”
“I'm prepared to complain.”
“We know.”
He smiled. There was a pale line where the fabric had covered his skin, the little uneven shape she'd watched change through summers, winters, holidays in rooms cheaper than this one. She wanted to kiss it. She did.
Theo's hand came up into her hair. He pulled the clip free, letting the damp weight fall against her shoulders, and put it on the bedside table with the same care he'd used for cups and safety pins and the enormous, impossible things they had tried to say to one another.
“Mara,” he said quietly.
She looked up.
“I haven't changed my mind,” she said.
His face moved, a small hurt she felt because she knew it so well. Then he nodded.
“Neither have I.”
She put a hand against his cheek. They stayed like that for a moment, the dress still hanging half-off her shoulder, his shirt on the floor.
“I want you,” she said.
“I want you too.”
He kissed her again, less carefully now. She let the dress fall, stepped out of it and drew him toward the bed.
It was an excellent bed. She had been right to like it. The thought made her laugh unexpectedly as they sat, and he asked what was funny with his mouth against her neck.
“The furniture.”
He raised his head. “Not now.”
“You're the one who's had a whole day of it.”
“I've moved on.”
She laughed again, then lost the sound when his hand slid along her thigh. She had imagined him touching her in the transfer, at lunch, standing near the hat, and all those imagined motions had been far less precise than the actual one. He knew where her skin became sensitive. He knew how quickly she would stop finding something funny if he took his time.
She drew him down with her. His knee pressed the mattress between hers. She ran a hand along his back, carefully avoiding the red place at first and then forgetting until he made a small noise against her shoulder.
“Sorry.”
“I'll survive.”
“You say that now.”
He kissed the centre of her chest. She put her hand back where it wouldn't hurt him and stopped talking.
The room had cooled. The door to the terrace was still open beyond the sitting room, and she could hear distant voices, a chair being moved, ordinary people deciding where to eat. It was strange to have the world continuing so easily while her body became entirely interested in the man above her.
She touched his mouth with her fingers. He kissed them, then followed her hand when she let it fall. His breath was warm against her stomach. She closed her eyes.
After six weeks of doing without each other, there were moments when familiar became new through absence. The weight of his hand. The hair against her skin. His face when she moved beneath him, the quick loss of composure she'd always loved. She wanted to make that happen again and then again, until she couldn't keep track of whose movement had begun it.
He took his time with her. She stopped keeping hers. When she pulled him close at last, he looked at her before moving, and she lifted her hips to meet him.
They were awkward for a moment, the sheet caught, one foot in the wrong place. Then he was inside her, his breath breaking against her cheek, and the room became smaller than any room could actually be.
She knew his rhythms. She also knew how to change them. Her fingers tightened at his waist, and he moved differently, watching her until she couldn't bear to keep her eyes open. She felt the pressure build, wanted more, asked for it without finding a particularly graceful sentence. He understood.
When pleasure came it made her cry out, then laugh breathlessly because he had lifted his head to look at her with a startled happiness he never quite managed to conceal. She kissed him, still moving, and felt him lose the last of the careful pace he'd tried to keep for her.
Afterward his forehead rested against her shoulder. She stroked the back of his neck, feeling his breath slow. The sheet was twisted beneath one knee. She didn't want to move it yet.
For a while there were no jokes.
He rolled beside her eventually, carefully enough to make her laugh again.
“Shoulder?”
“A very personal sunburn.”
She fetched the bottle she'd packed for after the sun, came back and sat beside him. He lay on his stomach, one arm beneath the pillow, while she spread the cool lotion across the red patch. He made an entirely excessive noise of relief.
“You'll alert the neighbours,” she said.
“They can learn.”
She smoothed the lotion with slow fingers, feeling the small bones beneath the skin. He grew quiet. She did too. There had been years of touches which happened between other things, passing in the kitchen, sitting in front of a film, one hand on his head while he bent to tie a shoe. Tonight she could give the touch all the time it wanted.
“There,” she said finally.
He turned his face toward her. “Thank you.”
She put the bottle down. He moved his arm so she could lie beside him.
They stayed in bed until the room was darker and the bread outside had acquired the precise atmosphere of something neglected. Theo said they ought to bring the plates in. Mara said the fish could stand guard. He pointed out that it looked like the sort of creature which would eat the supplies and then deny being employed.
“You get the food,” she said. “I'll deal with the fish.”
“An equitable arrangement.”
He got up and pulled on his shorts. She watched him go to the terrace. He turned back with their plates in his hands.
“You're not dealing with it.”
“I'm directing.”
He shook his head, smiling. She got out of bed after all, found his T-shirt on the floor and put it on. It felt loose and soft against skin which still wanted his hands.
Outside, the fish dish waited. There were two olives left in it. Mara ate one and gave him the other. The night was warm. They could hear music from the far terrace, low enough to remain somebody else's evening.
Theo looked at her in his shirt.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
This time she let it be nothing. She carried the bread in, wrapped it and put it away. He stacked the plates near the sink. They worked around each other in the small kitchen, moving with a competence neither had needed to recover.
Her phone had a message from Leah asking whether she was coming down for a drink. She looked at it, glanced toward Theo and wrote that she was staying in tonight. Leah replied with a simple all right. Mara waited for another line, then put the phone down when none came.
Theo filled two glasses of water. She took hers and carried it to the bedroom.
The daybed was made. Its crisp sheet lay untouched, the embroidered cushion beside it. She walked past. He followed a little later, stopping in the doorway to look at the scattered clothes and the bed they had thoroughly ceased to treat as a display.
“That was a good day,” he said.
She nodded. “It was.”
He sat down beside her. She leaned against his good shoulder and watched the fan turn above them. She had spent part of Wednesday wanting the unfamiliar and part of Thursday wanting the man she knew. Now his hand rested on her thigh, and she liked the weight too much to put it into a sensible sentence.
“Stay here,” she said.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and drew back the sheet.
They talked in the dark for a while. About the terrible hats, the fruit bowl, a thing Freya had said which Mara couldn't remember properly because she'd been laughing too hard. Theo supplied the missing part, and she laughed again. The room filled with a small version of the day they had made together.
Then he slept. She could hear it in the change of his breathing before he went still.
Mara lay beside him, awake a little longer, her foot touching his ankle. Tomorrow she would have to stand up and be the person who had chosen this night. For now she put a hand on his chest and felt him breathing beneath it, alive and warm and still hers to touch.