"Good."
"Your editor called again. Wants to put you on the Globe and the CBC for comment tomorrow."
"I'll do it by phone."
"Okay."
I don't look up from the notebook.
He sits on the step below me. Quiet.
"Simone."
"I can't right now, Gray."
"Okay."
He sits there anyway.
Ten minutes pass. Sun drops another inch.
"I'm not going to be good at this," I say finally.
"At what."
"At leaving."
"Then don't leave."
"It's not that simple."
"It is."
"It's not, Gray. You live up a mountain and I live in a city and my career is in a building on King Street and your career is checking sight lines from a porch."
"I can move."
My pen stops.
I look at him.
He's looking at the tree line, not me. Mug in both hands. Hair still wet at the edges from whatever he did this morning.
"You can't move, Gray."
"Why."
"Because you built this. Because you came up here to heal. Because if you move for me in the first week of us, I'm going to be responsible for the next version of you that thinks he lost himself for a woman."
"That's not what this would be."
"You don't know that."
He turns his head.
"You're doing it."
"Doing what."
