"That's very kind," I say. "I'm sure it will be perfectly?—"
"It holds about four sips. I'm sorry. I have a very large travel mug if you want that instead, it's just got a Leeds Marathon logo on it and it's a bit embarrassing."
"The teacup is wonderful," I say. "I prefer it."
She looks at me for a moment and then walks over and sets both cups on the coffee table, her own mug a solid, practical earthenware thing that says something on the side I can't quite read from this angle, and then she sits on the other end of the sofa, tucking one foot under herself, and pulls a small throw blanket over her shoulders.
She is still wet. Her hair is flattened and dark against her cheeks, and she has taken her glasses off and set them on the coffee table, and without them there is something slightly unguarded about her face that is different from before, the careful, dry-witted assessment softened into something quieter.
I pick up the teacup.
I do this slowly and with full awareness of the physics involved. I use my thumb and the knuckle of my index finger to pinch the handle, which is delicate to the point of being essentially symbolic, a small ceramic loop that serves as a gesture toward the concept of a handle rather than a functional gripping mechanism, and I lift it and take a sip and it is, in fact, a good strong cup of tea, and the warmth of it spreads immediately through my chest in a way that my body registers with something very close to relief.
"How is it?" she says.
"Excellent. Genuinely." I lower the teacup, or attempt to, and it occurs to me that I have nowhere safe to put it down because my hands are significantly larger than the saucer on the coffee table and reaching forward to place it down without incident requires a degree of fine motor calculation that I am, in this moment, prepared to commit to.
She is watching me hold it.
There is a specific expression on her face that I am beginning to recognise, a controlled effort not to smile, the corners of her mouth pressed very slightly inward, her eyes bright with something she has decided, for politeness, to contain. I have seen it twice this evening. Once when I drank the cosmopolitan. Once when I apologised for the water glass.
"You can laugh," I say. "I recognise that the visual is somewhat?—"
"I'm not laughing," she says, and her voice is very careful.
"Livia."
She laughs. It is short and genuine and she immediately covers her mouth with the throw blanket, and I feel the sound of it go through me like something structural shifting, like a recalibration of weight, and I think, sitting on her small sofa with a tiny floral teacup between two fingers and my sodden vest still dripping quietly onto her upholstery, that I would produce the same situation deliberately if it would make that sound happen again.
"I'm sorry," she says, pulling the blanket down from her mouth. "It's just?—"
"The cup is comically small relative to my hand. Yes. I'm aware."
"It's not—" She pauses. "Okay, it's slightly that. But it's also the care you're taking with it. You're handling it like it's a bomb."
"It is an antique," I say, carefully. "The transfer pattern indicates it's pre-1960, probably part of a set, and the glaze has very fine crazing along the interior which suggests significant age and use. I didn't want to?—"
"I noticed the cabinet when I came in," I add. "I have some familiarity with ceramics. It's a secondary interest."
The room falls into a stretched, peculiar quiet for a moment, punctuated only by the persistent drumming of rain against the glass and the soft metallic ticking of the radiator cycling through its heating patterns in the corner.
"Narod," she says, very slowly, her tone careful and measured in a way that makes my shoulders tighten reflexively.
"Yes," I answer, setting the teacup down on the small side table with excruciating precision because my hands have suddenly become unreliable.
"You identified my grandmother's tea set," she continues, her eyes fixed on me, "by looking at the glaze crazing. In the span of about fifteen seconds. While dripping water onto my floor."
I shift slightly on the sofa, which protests faintly beneath my weight. "I didn't want to presume that it was sentimental in nature, but the pattern and the condition suggested that it might have personal significance, and I thought it prudent to treat it accordingly. The crazing is quite distinctive, and the?—"
"In the dark. While soaking wet. Having just been wedged between my bookshelf and my coat rack."
"It was a brief assessment. I didn't want to damage it."
She looks at me for a long moment and then she picks up her own mug and wraps both hands around it and looks out at the window, where the rain is pressing hard against the glass in rhythmic sheets, the city beyond reduced to smeared orange and white through the water.
"The coat rack is fine," she says, quietly. "For what it's worth."
"I appreciate you saying so."
