We left our shoes by the door and curled up on the sofa, he on the left side, I on the right, a woolen blanket between us, covering our feet. The midday sun was full and heavy, the crackling of the logs collapsing into each other slow and sweet. And although we were both starving, we were also terribly tired from the trip, and the couch was too comfortable, the spell too lovely to break.
Reclining further back, Kai dropped his head on the armrest and closed his eyes. Dreamily, I watched him. The bare strength of his throat, the underside of his jaw, the semicircle of shadow fitting the side of his cheek. It was moments like this that I found him the most beautiful, when he was wallowing in all his unwitting sensuality.
“How do you spend your days here?” I asked him, disturbing at last our companionable silence.
“I read a lot,” he replied. “Take long walks. Cook the most ludicrously elaborate meals you can imagine. I swim too, but I have to warn you, it’s very cold this time of year.” Dark eyelashes fluttering, he looked at me from the other side of the sofa. “It’s kind of an art, you know.”
“What is?”
“Doing ordinary things to escape an ordinary life.”
“I thought you loved your life,” I murmured, drowsily playing with a strand of my hair.
“I do love my life,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t diminish my need to be somewhere else, someone else, sometimes.”
I shifted a little, and my toes touched his under the blanket. He sat up to make more space for me and continued, “I’m not sure how to explain it. In the city I feel more connected to the world, but here I feel more connected to myself. And to something else. Something I can’t put into words.”
“The sky is closer here,” I whispered, repeating his words to let him know that this, at least, I remembered.
Every moment of us, I remembered perfectly.
He gave me a small, intimate smile. “The sky is closer here.”
We slept for a bit, huddled together on that sofa, the fire crackling away, and woke up in the middle of the afternoon flushed, refreshed, and ravenous. We took turns showering—I went first so I had plenty of hot water—then we dressed warmly and ventured outside, toward the laneway, which stretched past the field behind the cottage.
For a while we walked in silence, keeping close to each other. Kai had left my sneakers by the hearth to dry while I’d been in the shower, and now the inside fabric was soft and toasty. The air smelled of salt and pine, and in the sky the albatrosses were rallying into arrow-like formations.
“It’s so beautiful here,” I heard myself murmur, not feeling fully awake yet, but like walking through a long, tender dream.
“I’m glad you like it,” said Kai. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“These fields are so neat,” I added, watching the rows and rows of golden stems sway against the faintly blue horizon.
“They’re grains,” explained Kai. “My mom says they grow by the sound of people’s footsteps.”
Fascinated, I asked, “Is that true?”
He laughed quietly. “I have no idea.”
The trip was shorter than I’d expected, a mere stroll down the provincial road and the sturdy balustraded bridge before the first few landmarks of the town started to show: pretty stone houses, a gas station, a pharmacy, a post office, and then the convenience store with its racks of fresh fruits and vegetables cluttering the narrow sidewalk.
Kai chatted with the elderly owner for a bit, who asked about hislady friendand regaled us with stories of a rowdy young Kai breaking hearts and wreaking havoc all over their sleepy town. I nodded and chuckled, feeling both awkward and delighted, until Kai picked up one of the plastic baskets stacked on the floor by the register, and the two of us sailed past the row of refrigerators toward the back of the store.
“I have a system,” Kai announced very seriously. “Packaged goods first, then fruits and vegetables, and then refrigerated items.”
“Ah,” I teased him. “The system.”
I let him do his shopping the way he liked while I browsed the soda aisle. After a few minutes, I sensed him rather than saw him come up behind me. “Find anything you like?” he asked.
Without turning, I let out a humorous sigh. “So many choices.”
“Take whatever. I can carry it.”
“Are you sure? It’s not that small of a distance.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve never had a guest here before. So let me play the good host for once,” he said, and just as I started to reach for a six-pack of lemon-flavored sodas, he grabbed it from the shelf and dropped it in his basket.
Incredulous, I turned to him. “Never?”
