“How’s your back?” Rory asks me now.
My lower back has been aching from some combination of period cramps, sitting at a computer for too many hours, and approaching my thirty-second birthday. “It’s alright,” I say, though it’s not feeling great at the moment.
“Turn over,” Rory says, seeing through the lie. “I’ll give you a back rub.”
“No, you have to get to sleep. You have a big day tomorrow.”
Rory makes a face. “I wouldn’t call the primary school science fair a monumental occasion.”
“Of course it is,” I counter. “It’s a big deal.” He’s shown me the demos and dioramas that he’s helped the students make, including a balloon-powered toy car for Mala.
“I’m not going to bed until you accept my back rub,” Rory says resolutely, so I gratefully accept the massage.
Rory isn’t the best at giving back rubs, to be honest. Scared to hurt me, he doesn’t knead forcefully enough to get the knots out. But his gentle touch heals something deeper in me than my muscles.
“Alright,” I say with a yawn, pretending to be tired so he can get some sleep. “Time for you to get home.”
I want him to stay, of course, but I know he’ll feel better if he keeps with his routine of being at his own place tonight, and I like the trust that comes from taking things slowly. After he checks my flat a few times to make sure he hasn’t left anything, he heads out, kissing me goodbye on my lipstick-free mouth, and then my shoulder, through my old T-shirt.
It’s a light little peck, but I feel it with force. Because the real power of love comes from its gentleness. The small, quiet moments when it doesn’t think anyone is watching.
Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips touched, and my body relaxes in that way it only does around Rory. Locking the door behind him and watching at the window until he gets on the bus, I can start to feel just how clenched and cold I’ve been for so many years.
I didn’t even know I was frozen until I started to thaw.
In the midst of the bliss, there’s something weighing on me, attempting to sabotage the happiness. It has to do with the future and logistics of how Rory and I will maintain our relationship after my case and his school year wraps up and we might not be living in the same place.
I try to stash the fears away, but I end up voicing them to Rory the next day, when we’re seated next to each other on the morning bus. Though it’s not my most efficient commute, I’ve boarded at St. Mary’s so I can spend some time with him before work.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, looking intently at me as the stormy thoughts brew. “Don’t like this seat?”
He said I could pick somewhere new for us to sit, since he knows I like variety, and we’re seated up in the front. It’s the best view from the bus, with the windowpanes facing out on the foggy London morning as the bus jostles along. Everything has a silhouette quality about it, and I can almost feel the cloudy vapor seeping inside the bus, clinging to my fears.
“It’s not that,” I say, slouching in my seat. “It’s just … I’m trying to figure things out.”
“Figure what out?”
“Everything.”I sulk. “You’re moving back to Michigan in June, right?”
With our relationship so new, we’ve been too swept up, or maybe just too scared, to tip the balance by broaching the subject of the future. But as Jules and Nina prepare to tie the knot, I want to be reassured that Rory and I have a viable future too.
“That’s been the plan,” Rory says. “To keep teaching in Kalamazoo next year. But if you’re staffed on another London case, I could see if I could stay over here a bit longer.”
“But you want to go back.” It’s a statement, not a question, and he doesn’t dispute it.
“Ideally, yeah,” he admits, “but we could do long distance.” He rests one of his hands on top of mine, which are clenched together in my lap.
“I don’t want to do long distance,” I say, more curtly than I mean to. Maybe I’m tainted from how things ended with Mateo, but I feel like relationships are either moving forward or backward, and long distance sends them in reverse.
“How about this?” I ask, feeling desperate to figure this out right now. Like if we don’t resolve it immediately, we never will. “I could get staffed on remote cases and work from Michigan.”
“But you don’t like Michigan,” Rory points out.
“I didn’tusedto like it,” I clarify. “But I do now. Things change.”
It’s true that the idea of living in Michigan has been starting to appeal rather than appall, especially when I picture being there with Rory. I’m increasingly ready to go home. Ready for that quieter life near my family, on the country roads that are never congested with traffic. The vision that’s been popping up since Christmas takes a more defined shape now, and I feel myself grasping for it.
Rory looks like he wants to believe me but doesn’t quite. “Didn’t you say that remote cases aren’t as good for your career trajectory, though, because you don’t get the same kind of visibility?”
