He steps back. Nods once.
"Good."
"You staying through the weekend."
"Through Wednesday."
"You staying with us."
"If you'll have me."
Simone, from behind him, "Of course we'll have you. Where else would you stay."
He turns and lets her tow him into the booth. Venus pours him coffee. Sage takes his order without asking.
He settles in like he's been coming here for years.
Simone catches my eye across the table.
She does not say anything.
Her smile does the whole thing for her.
That night, on the porch, after Marcus has gone to the guest room with a beer and a book, I pull her into my lap on the porch swing and I wrap us both in the blanket she keeps out here for this exact purpose.
The sky is the kind of clear you only get on a Kootenay night. The Milky Way is a thick band across the top of the sky. The air smells like woodsmoke from somebody's stove a mile down the valley and like pine and like the faint edge of the first real cold coming in.
Her hand is on my chest.
Her thumb is tracing the pendant at her throat without thinking about it.
I've watched her do that a hundred times in ten months.
It is one of my favorite things.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Two weeks from Thursday."
"What's two weeks from Thursday."
"My birthday."
"Is it."
"Gray."
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"I know about the cabin."
"You don't know anything."
"Callum told Nadia. Nadia told me last Saturday."
"Jesus Christ."
