I arch a brow at him.
“Fine,” he sighs, pulls a hand through his hair, and leans back staring up at the stars. “I was lost, Crazy.”
“How lost are we talking?”
“Like, a-manhole-cover-in-the-middle-of-Tokyo lost.”
“That is lost,” I agree, but can’t help the smile. Three months ago, I’d have needed subtitles to follow that deadpan.
I swirl the wine in my glass. “I didn’t know it then, but I think I was lost, too. Before him. Sometimes I wonder if I've always known he was there.”
“Explain.”
“I dunno. Him not being here now feels different from before I knew he existed. Before the mountain house, before any of it,” I trail off, searching for the right shape of it. “I think I always had this feeling. Like the air behind me was occupied. I used to chalk it up to paranoia. Living alone in the city, you know?”
Ian’s quiet. Watching me the way he does when he's decided to let me arrive at something on my own.
“Now that he's gone—actually gone, not hiding in the shadows two blocks away—the absence has a different texture.” I look at the Tower. “It's like I spent years being held by someone I couldn't see, and I only realized how safe I felt once the hands let go.”
I take a sharp inhale, that black hole inside my chest pulsating. Ian never adds to the heaviness of a conversation, choosing to sidestep anything that has to do with feelings. But he listens, and that’s all I need.
Ian gives me a beat, then clears his throat. “So, you're telling me you had a sixth sense for a six-foot-whatever stalker with a knife collection and a staring problem, and your takeaway is that it felt like safety?” He shakes his head. “Fuck therapy. All you need is acryptic killing machine in your peripheral vision at all times, or you’ll bake yourself into a carb coma.”
I toss the last of my wine at him. It's barely a few drops, but it catches him square in the chest, a scatter of red drops blooming across his white shirt.
He looks down. Looks up at me. “Really?”
“You deserved that.”
“I deserved—” He gestures at the stain. “This was clean. I put this on twenty minutes ago.”
“Then you should've been funnier.”
“I was extremely funny. That's why you threw wine at me. People don't throw wine at unfunny people. They just leave.”
I give him a pointed look. “Well, I can't leave, can I?”
“Not with the way you speak French, no.”
“My French is getting better.”
“Your French is a crime against the Republic. Last week you told the butcher you wanted to kiss his grandmother.”
“I asked for a leg of lamb.”
“That is not what came out of your mouth.” He dabs at the stain on his shirt with his thumb, making it worse. “At least my French is better than yours.”
“Oh,” I pour myself more wine, “you mean when you asked the waiter where the bathroom was in French and got a cheese plate?”
“My French is perfect.”
“Ian. You asked for the toilet and they brought you Roquefort.”
He picks up the bottle and refills his glass, taking a long, deliberate sip before answering. “And it was the best Roquefort I've ever had, so who really won that exchange?”
I frown at him.
“You know what else?” Ian says. “You have questionable taste in art. That museum we went to on Tuesday?—”
