I gulp a cup of coffee,get dressed, brush my hair, brush my teeth, change my outfit into something less embarrassing but still casual, brush my hair and teeth again, gargle some mouthwash, frantically collect all the cat fur that accumulated in the corners since last night, and brush my teeth again just in case I have coffee breath.
I’ve barely started looking for the scarf when there’s a knock on the door, and my heart leaps into my throat. I open the door.
She’s alone.
“I haven’t actually found your scarf yet,” is what I choose to lead with.
“Oh,” she says. Her winter coat is on but unzipped, her hands in its pockets. Her cheeks and her nose are pink. “Maybe I didn’t leave it here? I could have dropped it on the way to the?—”
“I’m still looking,” I blurt, because it sounds a little like she’s about to offer to leave. “If you want to come in and also look?”
“Thanks,” she says and walks into the room. Her eyes track up the walls to the ceiling. “You have such good light in here. I didn’t get a good look yesterday, with the chaos.”
“It’s the windows,” I say and immediately wish I hadn’t becauseno shitit’s the eight-foot windows. “Do you know where you might have left it?”
Madeline clears her throat, like she’s nervous, still looking out one of the massive, beautiful windows. Through them there’s a parking lot and then a tangle of trees and, somewhere beyond them, the river. Though it’s late in the year, there are still a few orange-and-brown leaves left, twisting in the breeze on their branches.
“Could be anywhere, really,” she says, with this funny little half smile. “Guess we’ll just have to…look?”
That’s accompanied by a single eyebrow raise, and—god, she’s here, alone, “looking” for her “scarf” and raising one eyebrow at me, and I’m not oblivious. But Iamsomeone who remembers the last time we were alone together and the finality of that air mattress.
“Madeline,” I say, and even though we’re alone my voice is pitched only for her, low and quiet. “What, exactly, do you mean bylook?”
She takes a deep breath and glances out the window before she faces me again.
“They’re not marriedyet.” She looks me dead in the eyes.
Madeline is standing about three feet away from me, the cold still coming off her, cheeks and nose bright. Her hair’s still blue threaded with green, like she’s a mermaid. More appropriately, a siren. I give her a long, hard look: winter coat, wide-necked soft-looking shirt, leggings.
“No,” I agree. “They’re not.”
“We’re going to that folk art exhibit today, and my dad wants to leave by ten, so I should be back at the rental before then,” she says. “If I leave by nine thirty, I should be there in plenty of time. Which gives us half an hour.”
She trails off. I’m staring at her mouth, the way it shapes around her schedules andshoulds. It’s all suggestions and hints. I want her tosayit.
“Half an hour to do what?” I ask, settling myself against the back of a couch.
Nowshe rolls her eyes. “What do youthink?”
“Watch an episode ofSchitt’s Creek? Make some avocado toast? Play a round ofSettlers of Catan?”
“Settlerstakes way more than thirty minutes.”
“Then I have no idea what you want,” I say and swallow. “Unless you tell me.”
Madeline’s eyes lock onto mine, and it feels like something snaps into focus. Her lips part and she scrapes her teeth along the lower one. She shifts her weight and her hips. My whole body feels like a compressed spring.
“I want to have sex.” Her face turns bright red. “Again.”
It’s hard to breathe, hard to stay in one piece. “I thought we decided not to.”
“We did,” she says lightly. “But what’s one more time going to hurt?”
I know exactly what it’ll hurt, but her hair’s a little messy, like she hasn’t been awake long, and there’s a tiny freckle by the edge of her right eye, just where her eyelashes sweep over it.
“Nothing much,” I say, and I finallylookat her the way I want to, slow and open and hungry, and she tilts her chin up as if to saygo ahead.
“C’mere,” I tell her, and now, suddenly, I understand what I’m doing.
