“It’s not cold.”
“The power is failing. The apartment is dropping. You’re going to get sick.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
I stepped back. I moved away from her slowly, the way you move when what you want is to stay exactly where you are and what you need to do is something else entirely. I walked to the bedroom. I pulled the blanket from the foot of the bed. I came back and held it out to her.
In the lantern light her face was flushed and her lips were swollen and her eyes were the eyes of someone who had just been kissed and was not done being kissed.
I said, “Sleep on the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
She looked at the blanket. She looked at me. She looked at the doorway to the bedroom like it was a test she might fail.
I said, “Go. Please.”
She took the blanket.
She said, “This is not over.”
“I know.”
“When the storm?—”
“When the power comes back. When your house is warm. When I can do this right. Then we finish.”
She looked at me for one long beat. Then she went.
I heardher moving around in the bedroom for twenty minutes.
I heard the bed creak when she sat on it. I heard her pull the blanket up. I heard her breathing slow from the rhythm of someone who was awake and aware to the shallow rhythm of someone who was awake but pretending not to be.
I lay on the couch that was too small for me and stared at the ceiling.
The wind rattled the windows. The generator hummed its steady work. The propane heater continued pushing warmth into a space that wanted to freeze. I did not sleep. I counted instead. I counted the seconds my hand had been on her back. I counted the number of times her breath had changed. I counted the ways this was going to complicate everything.
I had kissed Maple Sutton against the doorframe. I had put my hand on her in a way that made it clear the hand was not casual. I had let her believe, for minutes, that something was going to happen in this apartment, on this night, in the dark.
Then I had stopped.
I had stopped because the power was failing. Because three days of shared space was not the same thing as the foundation I needed for something like this. Because I was a man who had learned, in the thirteen years since my brother died, that you did not get to have the thing you wanted and the thing you needed to do at the same time.
I got to choose.
I chose her. I chose safety over want. Comfort over the memory of her hands in my hair. Peace of mind over the way she had said my name like it was the only word she knew. I chosethe couch that was too small for me. I chose the watching and waiting.
At three in the morning, the generator died.
I heard the sound of the cycle winding down immediately. The hum that had been constant — the background rhythm of the apartment — suddenly stopped. Silence filled the space. Silence that was almost louder than the sound had been.
I sat up on the couch. My body knew before my mind caught up. The temperature in the room had already started to drop. The propane heater was cycling down. The cold from outside the windows was going to start pressing in now, looking for cracks.
I walked to the office where the generator was sitting and I looked at the fuel gauge and understood that I had calculated wrong. That nineteen hours instead of twenty-four had been the real limit. That the storm was consuming fuel the way it consumed heat, the way it consumed everything.
I did not wake her. I did not want her to wake up cold, to wake up afraid, to understand that the only thing between her and the freezing was running out.
I refueled the generator from the jerrycan I had bought in a moment of clarity that was looking better and better with every passing hour. I twisted the cap off. The smell of gasoline filled the small office. My hands were steady even though they were not cold anymore. Fear and adrenaline kept them warm.
