Mara sat in the chair beside Theo and discovered she had chosen the one in the sun. She could move. It seemed an absurd first thing to have to decide.
He noticed before she did anything.
“Swap?”
“No. I'm fine.”
She put her hands on her knees. The blue fish dish stood on the little table, empty apart from a paper napkin. They'd used it last night for the remaining fruit after dinner. Theo had washed it this morning; she could tell from the faint water mark on the rim which she would have wiped away and he never did.
“How was lunch?” he asked.
“Good.”
“Leah?”
“Also good.”
He smiled. She looked at his bare arms, the shoulder nearly recovered now, a small pale line where his watch had kept the sun out. He had taken it off. It lay beside his phone.
“You know about the room,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I don't want you to feel you have to use it because I've paid.”
She nodded. It was a sensible place to begin, and she wished he hadn't chosen it. It made the conversation look easier than the one she'd been bringing back along the path.
“I know I don't have to.”
He looked at her. “All right.”
“I want to.”
His face changed before he could keep it still. She saw the hope arrive, immediate and lovely, and felt a small terrible lift of pleasure at having put it there.
“I mean I want another morning,” she said. “I want all of this. The coffee. You coming through the door. I want you to spend twenty minutes convincing me to get up and then be annoyed when I take too long.”
He looked down, smiling.
“I can do that.”
“I know.”
For a moment neither went further. It would have been very easy to stop at his smile, go inside and take off the dress she wasn't yet wearing for the party. She could see the slow day after everyone left. They could eat somewhere they'd already liked, swim until their fingers looked strange, return and sleep without needing to give the night a name.
“We'd need new flights,” she said.
“We could find them.”
“You haven't looked?”
“Not properly.”
She believed him. He had bought the room, but he hadn't bought their departure. There was still an ordinary Sunday with seats waiting for them, a journey they could take if neither moved anything else.
Theo picked up the napkin from the dish and folded it once, then put it down.
“I wanted the option,” he said.
“I know.”
“I didn't think it would make you—”
He stopped.
“Change my mind?”
“I don't know what I thought.”
The answer landed more honestly than an explanation. Mara watched his hands. She knew how good he was at making an awkward thing manageable, taking it apart until each piece could be held without anyone getting hurt. He wasn't doing that now.
“I thought we'd had a lovely night,” he said after a while. “Then I had a lovely morning. And I didn't want Sunday to be the end of it.”
She nodded. Her throat had begun to hurt in the place which usually gave her a few seconds before tears.
“Neither do I.”
He looked at her again.
She could not let him mistake the answer. She also could not bear to say the next one quickly, as if speed would prove she knew what she wanted.
“Could you come back to the flat?” she asked.
Theo sat still.
“I don't mean I'm asking you to. I'm trying to imagine it.”
“I can imagine it.”
“So can I.”
“I've imagined it quite a lot.”
Mara looked away. Across the terrace wall, the little lizard appeared and stopped, a narrow dark shape on warm stone. It had no responsibility to remain while they looked at it. She watched it go.
“Your books are still there,” she said.
“A few.”
“The ones you couldn't decide about.”
“The ones I couldn't fit.”
She laughed, very briefly. Then she couldn't.
Theo moved his chair closer. She had not asked him to. She put her hand out and he took it, her fingers settling between his in the familiar places. She looked at their joined hands and remembered the six weeks before they flew, the strange visits when he came to collect something and they tried to speak like people who had always lived elsewhere. The first time she'd opened the door she'd nearly kissed him. The second time she had. They'd both looked surprised afterward, which was worse.
This week had given them back something much less careful. His shoes beside hers. A complaint shouted through the shower door. The knowledge that the next clever thing she thought could be delivered immediately to the person most likely to enjoy it.
“We could be happy,” she said.
“We have been.”
“I mean at home.”
“Yes.”
She squeezed his hand. He didn't argue with the truth to help them leave it.
“For quite a lot of the time,” she added.
He nodded.
The terrace had grown quiet. Somewhere inside the villa the coffee machine clicked, cooling or remembering that it existed. Mara wanted to get up and make another cup. She wanted the conversation interrupted by something she could do well.
“Would you still want children?” she asked.
Theo looked at her, and she felt embarrassed before he answered. It was not new information. The question was new only because she wanted to hear a different answer in this chair.
“Yes,” he said.
She nodded, her eyes filling now.
“You?”
“No.”
Her voice was very small. She cleared her throat, then wished she hadn't made it sound like a fault of volume.
“No,” she said again.
He rubbed his thumb along her fingers. Neither defended the answer. They had done all that before, and still there was a part of her waiting for an exception to walk in and sit beside them, some new fact which would make both words fit the same life.
“I keep thinking,” she said, “that if I could want it, I'd be very good at it.”
Theo shut his eyes for a moment.
“You were good with Iris.”
“I liked being with her.”
“I know.”
“That's the horrible thing. I can see the nice bits. I can see you with her.”
She stopped. He was looking at her now, his face open in a way she found more difficult than disagreement.
“And I know you weren't just looking at me when you were pleased,” she said. “You weren't thinking you'd get me to do everything.”
He shook his head.
“I wanted it too,” he said. “The boring bits. Or I wanted to find out what they were.”
She looked toward the villa. The bed they had occupied together on Thursday was neatly made. Her party dress hung on the wardrobe door, its back button open. A whole evening waited for them to become people who could wear things, order food, laugh at Bill. She couldn't yet see how to get there from the chairs.
“I don't want to find out,” she said.
“All right.”
“I don't think it would be a life I want, even if I loved the child. And I'd want to love the child. I wouldn't want to make someone spend years being the thing I hadn't wanted.”
She wiped her face with her free hand, annoyed by how clumsy it made her. Theo reached for the napkin, looked at its size and offered it anyway.
“Luxury service,” she said.
He tried to smile. She took it and pressed it beneath her eyes. It smelled faintly of the fruit they had eaten last night.
“You don't have to make a better case,” he said.
“I know. I just wish it would sound different.”
He nodded. Then he let go of her hand to rub his own eyes, and the absence of his fingers made hers cold despite the sunlight.
Mara moved her chair at last, dragging it into the shade beside his. The scrape was too loud. They both looked down at the legs, then at each other.
“I was about to catch fire,” she said.
“I noticed.”
“You could have mentioned it.”
“You said you were fine.”
She laughed once, badly, and leaned against his shoulder. He put his arm around her. For a while they did nothing except sit close enough to feel one another breathing.
She thought of asking whether he could put fatherhood away for now. It would only be a question. He could say no. She had asked versions of it for years, not so plainly at first, more often through not asking when another conversation might lead there. Later. After the wedding. Once work was different. They had lived comfortably inside her qualifications until she couldn't offer another one.
“I don't want to start saying maybe again,” she said against his shirt.
Theo's hand stopped on her arm.
“I liked maybe,” he said.
“So did I.”
He kissed the top of her head. She shut her eyes, breathing through the new pain of having said something neither could correct.
“I don't want you to say it if you don't mean it,” he said.
“I know.”
She sat up. His arm fell away, and they looked at each other in the chairs which had become the entire room.
“What did you want Sunday to be?” she asked.
He considered the question longer this time.
“At first? Another morning.”
“And after that?”
“I didn't want to get that far.”
“I haven't wanted to either.”
He nodded, looking down at his watch. It lay face up beside the phone. She couldn't see the time.
“I suppose,” he said, “I wanted to come home together.”
“To the flat?”
“Yes.”
She took a breath. Part of her had been waiting for him to ask so she could give him something. Part had hoped he would never say it, because now the life they could still have was present in a complete sentence.
“I miss you there,” she said.
He looked at her.
“When I'm working. When I'm not. I still buy too many tomatoes.”
His mouth moved, but the smile didn't finish.
“It's a good flat,” he said.
“It is.”
She remembered the kitchen lamp reflected in the window, Theo standing at the sink, the part of his sleeve which always got wet because he forgot to push it up. No dramatic new future, just the one she already knew how to enter. She could ask for it and he might say yes. They could put the books back, use the spare keys, explain nothing to anyone for a while.
“I don't want us to get engaged again,” she said.
The sentence left her with an emptiness larger than her breath. Theo sat quiet. She wanted to reach for him, then waited because he deserved a moment in which she did not make him comfort her for saying it.
“No,” he said eventually.
She looked at him.
“I want what I wanted when I asked,” he said. “I still want you. But I haven't stopped wanting the rest.”
He swallowed. She could see the movement.
“I don't want to come back and spend years asking if you're sure.”
“I would hate that.”
“So would I.”
She nodded, and the tears came again, quieter this time. He didn't offer the napkin because she already held it. She pressed it into her palm and let her face be wet for a moment.
Theo reached toward her, stopped and then touched her cheek. She turned her face into his hand.
“Sunday?” he asked.
She shut her eyes.
One more day. Not a wedding. Not a child. Just an afternoon in the water and somebody bringing coffee while she pretended to be asleep. There was no rule which made that impossible. They could do it, and she could want it all the way through.
“I think we should go home,” she said.
His hand stayed against her cheek.
“On the flights we've got.”
He drew a slow breath. Then he nodded.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don't want to leave here.”
“No.”
“But I want to go. If that makes sense.”
She opened her eyes. “It does.”
They sat looking at each other, the empty room beyond them still worth what he had paid. Nobody had made the choice for them. There was no broken booking, no missing seat, no sudden return of the guests who could distract them until the morning had gone.
Mara put her hand over his and lowered it from her face. She held it in her lap.
“I'm glad we came,” she said.
Theo looked down at their hands. “I am too.”
She wanted to add something about Thursday, about every good hour they could keep without making it permission to resume. But she was tired of finding words which carried more responsibility than they could bear. She held his hand instead.
After a while he said, “I need to speak to my mother.”
“Yes.”
“Properly.”
She nodded. Her phone vibrated once on the table. Neither looked at it. The sound of the band came faintly through the resort, a few notes, then somebody calling something they couldn't make out.
“I'll have a shower,” she said.
“All right.”
“It might take a while.”
“Take a while.”
They stood. For a moment she held him, both arms around his waist, face against his chest. He held her back. It was not farewell yet, which made it possible to let go.
He went inside to collect his shirt. She took the fish dish from the table and carried it to the kitchen, although it didn't need washing. The napkin was still in her hand. She put it in the bin.
Theo came past her on his way out. He touched her back, and she turned to kiss him on the cheek before he could go. He closed his eyes when she did it.
Then he left.
Mara stayed at the sink. The little water mark on the dish was shaped like a thumb. She rubbed it away with the cloth, put the dish down and went to shower while the afternoon was still warm.