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“If I try it and feel ridiculous—”

“You can tell me.”

“And if I never use it?”

“We’ll survive.”

There was no disappointment he expected me to soothe. If he felt any, he kept it his own.

I wrote Names optional near the margin.

My version of spontaneity apparently required footnotes.

He glanced at the growing page. “Need another sheet?”

“Probably.”

He got one without comment.

I watched him cross to the counter. There was a slight hitch when he reached toward the upper shelf, small enough that I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching too closely.

“Your shoulder,” I said.

He turned back with the paper.

“What about it?”

“Did carrying me hurt it?”

His expression gave him away before his mouth did.

I sat straighter.

“Cash.”

“It aches sometimes.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

He set the sheet down. “A little.”

I looked at the left shoulder, then at his face.

“You should have told me.”

“You were mostly asleep.”

“You could have helped me walk.”

“Yes,” he said.

No joke. No explanation about how little I weighed. No attempt to turn an old injury into a compliment.

The agreement lay between us, full of things he had promised not to hide inside good intentions.

I tapped the heading with his name beneath it.

“Help accepted without argument,” I said.