"I need to tell you something and it's going to sound—"
"If you saystupidagain—"
"It's going to sound honest. Which is worse."
She waits. Her eyes are red and her nose is red and the mascara has achieved a distribution pattern across her face that I would describe as abstract expressionist if I knew art words, which I don't, because I'm a firefighter and my metaphors come from fire and hardware and the specific sound a building makes before it stops being a building.
"I can't protect you from my couch," I say. "That's — that's the real thing. Not the garbage. Not the bandages. I couldn'tget up.When the smoke alarm went off I tried to stand and my body said no and you were in a kitchen with hot oil and I was on a couch and if something happened—"
"Nothing happened."
"But if it did. If the oil popped. If you burned yourself. If you slipped." My hand has turned over on the floor. Palm up. Hers is still on my arm but the angle has changed — she's closer now, or I am, the gap between our shoulders has shortened into something that's more contact than distance. "I would have been right there and I couldn't have done a single thing. That's — do you know what that is, for someone who runs into buildings? To be stuck on a couch while someone you—"
Stop.
The word almost came out. The big one. The one that's been sitting behind my teeth since the kitchen floor, since before the kitchen floor, since that night when she whispered to a cat in the dark and I lay in bed knowing I wasn't supposed to hear the shape of it, and the ceiling was dark and the word was right there, fully formed, occupying space.
I'm not ready for that word. But I'm ready for this:
"—someone you can't lose." Three words. Blunt. Not enough. "That's why I told you to stop coming. Not because I didn'twant you here. Because I did. I wanted you here every time you walked in, and I hated that I couldn't tell whether I was asking for you or asking for help."
She's crying again. Or still. There's no clear boundary between the crying from before and the crying now — it's the same tears from a different place, like a river that went underground and resurfaced.
Her hand moves from my arm to my hand. The one that's palm-up on the floor. Her fingers slide between mine. The fit isn't elegant — our knuckles are at wrong angles and her hand is smaller and the grip is too tight and I don't care. I don't care about the geometry. I care about her fingers between mine and the pressure and the warmth and the way she's gripping me like she's afraid I'll let go, which I won't. Which I won't.
"You are not a burden," she says. "You are not — Ethan, you fell trying to take out garbage and called me instead of 911 and that is the least burdensome thing a person has ever done. A burden would be not calling. A burden would be lying on this floor for three hours pretending you chose to be here."
A sound comes out of me that might be a laugh. Or a cough. Something short and broken and real.
"I did consider that."
"I know you did." She squeezes my hand. Hard. "That's why I'm throwing your crutches out the window."
"Those are medically—"
"I don't care."
Bagel meows. Loud, this time. The meow of a creature who has been patient beyond all reasonable expectation and demands recognition for his service.
Nora looks at the cat. I look at the cat. The cat looks at both of us with golden eyes that contain, as far as I can tell, the complete emotional intelligence that two adult humans have been lacking for three weeks.
"He's been better at this than both of us," she says.
"He's been better at everything than both of us."
She laughs. It's a wet, messy sound — half laugh, half something else — and I feel it through our joined hands, through the floor, through the three inches of space that's left between our shoulders.
I'm going to kiss her. I know it the way I know procedure — not because I planned it but because the situation has produced a clear next step, and the next step is her mouth, which is right there, four inches from mine, and the mascara is everywhere and her nose is red and I have never in my life wanted anything more than this specific mess.
"Nora."
"Yeah."
"I'm going to—"
"Yeah."
III.
