Adam opened the door with a broken plastic fork in his hand.
“I was checking the food,” he said.
Leah looked at the fork. One prong remained.
“Was it armed?”
“The bag was tied.”
“You have scissors.”
He glanced towards the kitchen. “Yes.”
She laughed before she could stop herself. Adam smiled, and for a moment it was Thursday again. He had been leaning against her shop counter, watching her try to get a stubborn stem into place, suggesting supper because he was tired of meeting her in rooms where one of them was working.
Then he stepped back to let her in, and she remembered why he'd been uncertain about whether she'd come.
She hung her coat on the second hook. His was on the first. There were only two hooks, an inadequacy he had discovered when she began staying. He had promised to buy more and instead started leaving his own coat on a chair.
Tonight it hung where it belonged.
“I'll get proper forks,” he said.
His flat was over a closed office. The sitting room and kitchen were one space, with a narrow table behind the sofa. He had bought the takeout they'd agreed on: noodles for her, rice for him, and the little fried things they both liked but neither could order without pointing.
Leah sat at the table. The window was open an inch, letting in the cool evening. There was no music. She heard a car pass below.
Adam put a plate in front of her, then opened the containers.
“Was that yours?” she asked, pointing at the rice.
“It was.”
“You've already made a theft allegation.”
He pushed the container towards her. “Take what you like.”
She took one small piece of chicken and put the container back. It was their oldest joke, barely seven weeks old: on the first date, she had liked his meal better, and he had liked hers better, and they had continued pretending this was a problem rather than a useful arrangement.
They ate. Adam poured water. Leah noticed how carefully he put the glass down beside her plate. She missed the man who sometimes stole the last fried thing from under her fork and then kissed her to improve her opinion of him.
“You can eat,” she said.
“I am.”
“You're moving rice around.”
He took a mouthful. She looked away to give him somewhere to put his embarrassment.
“Theo called,” she said.
Adam set his fork down.
“How is he?”
“Tired. In hospital. He didn't want to talk for long.”
“Finn told him you were sleeping with Mara. Before they fought downstairs.”
Adam stared at the table.
“Finn.”
“Yes.”
He picked his fork up, then put it down again.
“I didn't know where it came from.”
“I know. You told me.”
“The police asked me about the fall today. I told them the truth. Where I was, what happened.”
He moved the little fried things nearer her.
“I thought I was helping,” he said.
“You offered her my word. I went in because Theo was hurt. Suddenly everyone was looking at me.”
Leah looked at her food. It had begun to cool, and she wasn't hungry any more.
Adam took the bottle of water off the table, held it for a moment, then set it back down.
“My dad used to go quiet before he started,” he said. “Everybody else went quiet too. Mum would ask me to stay out of it. I did.”
Leah kept her eyes on him.
“When Mara said she needed to get away, that was what I thought of. I wanted somebody to get her out. Then I said your name.”
She had known there were reasons he didn't go home for family holidays. She had not known this one. She wanted to take his hand, and didn't.
“I'm sorry that happened to you,” she said.
He nodded.
“But I'm here too.”
“I know.”
He pressed both palms flat on his knees.
The food sat between them. Leah picked up one of the fried things and bit into it. It was still good. She finished it, took a few more noodles and asked him about the film.
“Still want to put it on?”
“If you do.”
“I came all this way to watch a giant sea creature knock over buildings.”
“It's a crab.”
“That makes it more frightening. I have personal experience with crabs.”
He looked at her.
“I was six. It was in a bucket. I was wearing sandals. The crab won.”
His smile arrived slowly. “Did Finn see?”
“He was two. He thought I'd done it for him.”
Adam laughed once, quietly. Leah laughed too, and the sound stopped hurting for the length of a breath.
They took their plates to the sofa. The film had been his suggestion, a black-and-white creature picture he had loved when he was little. On the screen, people in hats were taking a remarkably long time to notice that something larger than a house had come out of the sea.
“It would leave prints,” Leah said.
“Nobody looks down in this film.”
“That's their first mistake.”
Adam leaned forward to turn the volume up. The narrow sofa tipped her towards the space he had left. When he sat back, their arms touched.
Neither moved away.
She watched a tiny boat turn upside down. On the screen it looked like a bath toy, and she told him so. Adam said it had been a bath toy, surely, and they began looking for all the household objects disguised as scenery. She guessed a biscuit tin for the lighthouse. He thought it was a pepper mill. They paused the film to argue and ended up examining a frozen picture of an actor's open mouth.
Leah realised she was leaning against him.
He had one hand on the cushion beside her thigh. He left it there. She looked at his hand, then at his face. Without the bar between them, without Finn in the room or Mara at his elbow, he was terribly easy to want.
“I missed you today,” he said.
“I was angry with you.”
“I know.”
“I still am.”
He nodded. She touched the back of his hand with two fingers. His hand turned under hers, open. For a while they sat like that, looking at each other instead of the frozen film.
Adam leaned closer. She met him halfway.
The kiss was familiar, warm, and wrong in no simple way. Leah held his hand tighter. She knew exactly how the rest of the evening could go: the plates put on the floor, the film forgotten, his shoulder beneath her cheek in the dark. Tomorrow would arrive with all the same facts, but for a few hours they would have found a way not to speak them.
She drew back.
He let her.
“I should go,” she said.
“You don't have to.”
“Adam.”
His thumb stopped against her palm.
“I don't want you to go,” he said. “That's what I mean.”
She kissed his cheek. It made leaving harder. She stood and picked up her plate.
“Leave that,” he said.
She took it to the kitchen anyway. He brought his own after her. There was barely room for both of them beside the sink, so she moved back before he had to ask.
He stacked the plates. She went for her coat.
At the door he said, “Can I see you tomorrow?”
“I don't know yet.”
He looked down at the fork still lying on the little shelf by the door. She had forgotten he had left it there.
“Okay.”
He lifted her coat off the hook and handed it to her. She put it on without his help.
He opened the door.
On the stairs, she paused long enough to hear him close it behind her. He hadn't followed. She went down to the street and stood in the cooler air, her lips still warm.
Halfway home, her phone rang. Mara.
Leah let it ring. A message followed.
Can you bring my overnight bag to the house tomorrow? I'm going to leave for a bit. It would be lovely to see you before I go.
The bag was in Leah's shop. Mara had brought it there on Friday, saying she didn't want to go all the way home between appointments, then had ended up not using it. Leah had offered to store it in the back with the spare wrapping paper. There was nothing mysterious about where it was, and no reason to keep it from her.
Leah answered, I can bring it after I open up. About ten.
Thank you, sweetheart. Get some sleep.
Leah put her phone away. At her own door she found the right key first time, let herself in and hung her coat on one of the many hooks Finn had put up for her when she moved here.
She went into the kitchen and turned the light on.