Neither of us spoke.
The streetlights were starting to come on along the avenue, the early-evening orange that turned the windshield into something blurry and forgiving. I drove with one hand on the wheel and one in hers with Bonnie asleep in the back.
I pulled up at her building, parked, and turned off the car.
Sabrina was already unbuckling her seatbelt. “I’ll take her up.”
“I can carry her.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got her.”
I nodded and waited.
Sabrina opened the back door and lifted Bonnie out. Bonnie woke — eyes open, half-confused, her hand patting the seat for Walter — and Sabrina found Walter and tucked him against Bonnie’s chest. Bonnie put her face in her mother’s neck and went back to sleep.
Sabrina carried her up the stoop, got her keys out one-handed, opened the door, and went inside.
I sat in the car with the engine off, watching the windows. The fourth-floor windows came on. They went off again, and they came back on. A figure passed across the glass — Sabrina, putting Bonnie to bed — and then the lights stayed on.
I waited.
The next thing on my list was going to the hospital, sitting in Mom’s chair, and holding Dad’s hand.
I sat with my hands on the wheel, and the door of the building opened.
Sabrina came out and walked down the steps slowly. Her hands were in her jacket pockets. The streetlight overhead was the orange that had been on her face at the diner. Her hair was down, and her face was up.
I got out of the car.
She walked up to me on the sidewalk, put her hands flat on my chest, and walked me back into the side of the Range Rover.
I went.
She got up on her toes. Her hands stayed on my chest, and her mouth was on mine.
I kissed her back. My hands went to her hips, and her hands went up into my hair.
“Beau.” She said it against my mouth.
“Yeah?”
She caught my wrist and pulled me along the sidewalk to the gap between her building and the next — a narrow alley with two trash bins, a kitchen exhaust fan, and not enough light to be visible from the street.
She put her back against the brick and pulled me in.
I caught the brick over her shoulder with one hand to keep from crushing her. The other hand went to her hip. She had me by the front of my jacket, and she was pulling me down onto her, and I let her.
She bit my bottom lip, and I let out a sound I hadn’t given anyone permission to hear.
One of my hands had slid under the back of her shirt. The skin at the small of her back was warm, and the warmth went through me. The other hand was on her ribs under her jacket, working its way up. Her hands had gone to the front of my belt.
My mouth came back to her mouth, then went to her neck. She made a sound — short, low, in the back of her throat — and her right hand came up to the back of my neck and pulled me harder against her. Her leg came up around my thigh. The brick was cold against the back of my hand. Her hand on my belt had moved to the side.
We were six inches from a decision neither of us was going to be able to walk back from.
Her hand came up to my chest.
She pushed.
