CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She had not slept badly, precisely. She had slept in the way of someone whose brain had agreed to rest but reserved the right to present occasional slideshows. Oliver at the counter, looking at the new stock. Oliver talking about the Cowardly Lion in that offhand way. Oliver's handwriting, which didn't quite match, but could.
She re-buttoned the cardigan, made the tea, and told herself today was a normal day.
Heathcliff watched her from the windowsill with the expression of a cat who could see through this.
At eleven o'clock exactly, she put on her coat and went out for her flat white. The cold hit her clean and direct. The street had its mid-morning rhythm: the butcher's door propped open, someone from an office on a call outside, two moms pushing their strollers who nodded at her as they passed with the knowing warmth of people who considered her theirs by association.
Freddie was doing something to the machine. He glanced up when she reached the counter. The usual nod. The usual slight compression of expression that was, she had come tounderstand over weeks of daily proximity, Freddie's version of a greeting.
"Morning," she said.
"Morning."
He looked as if he wanted to say more. But he pressed his lips closed and his Adam's apple bobbed. He turned to the machine and got to work on her order.
Wren watched his shoulders, which were doing the thing they sometimes did. He had the very slight tension of a man who had something in his chest that was not making it to his mouth. It was the same quality she'd noticed after the second committee meeting when they'd been caught in the rain.
"It's cold today," she offered.
"Yes."
He pulled the shot. His movements were precise, as always—Freddie did nothing carelessly, which she found she both respected and found maddening in alternating measure—but there was something slightly off about the usual rhythm. A beat too long on the tamping. A pause before he reached for the milk jug.
"The market's two weeks away," she tried. "I was thinking about the mulled cider situation?—"
"It's sorted." He poured the milk with the concentration of a man for whom this pour required significant mental resources. "Spoke to the supplier. They'll deliver the morning of."
"Oh." She blinked. "You didn't mention."
"I'm mentioning now."
He set the cup on the counter. Her flat white, perfectly made, the little leaf on the surface slightly less even than usual. She reached for it. Their fingers did not touch, which was normal. But it caused a crease in her forehead.
"Freddie."
"Yes."
"Are you all right?"
The pause this time was of a different shape. Not the pause of a man composing an answer, but the pause of a man deciding something. She could feel the decision happening, like a pressure change in the air, and then the resolution of it.
He looked at her, the gray eyes steady and direct and giving away absolutely nothing except, somehow, everything.
"Yes," he said.
It was the most complete no she had heard in recent memory. It had all the hallmarks: the slightly too-level tone, the eye contact held a half-second longer than a genuine yes required, the quality of a man presenting a word as a wall. She had done it herself enough times to recognize the architecture.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
"Right," she said finally. "Well, I'm here. If you wanted to talk."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"We are friends. Aren't we?"
