The phone buzzes again. Marco.
Tuesday confirmed. Ristorante Lucia. 8 p.m. Papà will have news about Milan.
I text Marco back.Confirmed.
I put the phone down and lie on the bed. Above me, the ceiling is white. The room is cold.
Cole chose the night, the house, the woman. The only variable he missed was the morning after, when his hand stayed too close to her thigh and his voice dropped in the kitchen.
The same way my bruised lip and the marks on my jaw told the truth when I came home from her apartment.
Sunday, I make one mug. Mine.
I drink it at the counter. When Cole comes down at seven, the left side of the counter is empty.
He looks at the space where his mug should be, then at me. Confusion registers first, brief enough to disappear if I wanted to pretend I missed it, a half-second where he reaches for the next step in the sequence and finds it missing.
Then his jaw tightens, and the ease leaves his shoulders.
He opens the cabinet, gets his own mug, and pours his own coffee. The fifteen seconds it takes him are the loudest fifteen seconds this kitchen has ever held.
"D," he says.
I drink my coffee and look at the window.
"Dante."
"I have reading to do."
"It's seven in the morning."
"International Relations. Three thousand words. Due Thursday."
I take my coffee upstairs and close the door.
Maya comes down at 7:50. I hear her from my room: the bare feet, the stairs, the kitchen. Then the pause. Ten seconds of silence while she sees the empty counter, opens the cabinet, pours her own coffee, and stands in a kitchen where the routine has been altered without explanation.
I hear Cole's voice. Low. I cannot make out the words. Maya's voice comes next, lower, a question. Cole answers longer, indistinct through the floor and the closed door.
The laptop opens in front of me. My paper waits. Economic sanctions as instruments of geopolitical control. The mechanics of withdrawal. The strategic value of removing access to resources a target has come to depend on.
For two hours, I write. Cole's footsteps pass my door, pause, then continue. In the den, Maya types. The printer runs. Occasionally, she makes a phone call to a source. Pipes shift when she showers. The front door opens when Cole goes for a run. Then his return. The kitchen.
At noon, the hunger is a dull weight I ignore. By two, it is the same. At five, Cole knocks.
"I'm making dinner," he says through the door.
"I'll eat later."
"Dante."
"Later."
His footsteps retreat.
I hear them eat through the floor: the clink of plates, the murmur of conversation, Cole filling the silence the way he fills every silence, Maya responding or not responding, the third place at the table staying empty through a meal built for three and served to two.
Monday, practice. Addison runs the power play. I hit my marks: the stops, the starts, the controlled violence of the drill, and every word I do not say goes into the ice.
