“Yes.”
“A husband who makes a good living now.”
I shrug and look away. Money talk is exceedingly awkward.
As playful and goofy as he can be sometimes, there is nothing but sincerity in his voice when he asks, “Then why would you need to depend on your father to do what you want?”
UPSTAIRS IN OUR apartment I follow him into the kitchen and lean against the counter as he reaches into the cabinet for a bottle. Ansel turns, shakes two ibuprofen tablets into my palm, and hands me a glass of water. I stare at my hands and then up at him.
“It’s what you do,” he says, offering a tiny shrug. “After two glasses of wine you always take ibuprofen with a big glass of water. You’re a lightweight.”
I’m reminded again how observant he is, and how he manages to catch things when I don’t even think he’s paying attention. He stands, watching as I swallow the pills and put the empty glass on the counter by my hip.
With each second that ticks by when we aren’t kissing or touching, I’m terrified the easy comfort we have tonight will evaporate and he’ll turn to his desk and I’ll turn to the bedroom alone.
But tonight, while we stare at each other in the muted light provided by the single bulb above the stove, the energy between us seems to only grow more electric. This feels real.
He scratches his jaw and then tilts his chin to me. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
My stomach flips. “I’m not sure I believe that I’m—”
“Stay,” he interrupts in a tight whisper. “I’m dreading the day you leave. I’m losing my mind thinking about it.”
I close my eyes. This is half what I’ve wanted him to say, and half what I was most afraid to hear. I pull my lip between my teeth, biting down my smile when I look back at him. “I thought you just told me to go to school to open my own business someday.”
“Maybe I think you should wait until I’m done with this case. Then we can go together. Live together. I work, you study.”
“How could I stay here until the spring? What would I do?” It’s been wonderful, but I can’t imagine another nine months living idly as a tourist.
“You can find work, or you can just research what’s involved in opening a studio. We’ll leave together, and you can defer school for one year.”
If possible, this is even more insane than my coming here in the first place. Staying means there is no end to us—no annulment, no fake marriage—and there is an entirely new trail blazed ahead.
“I don’t think I can stay here and be alone so much of the time . . .”
He winces, dragging a hand through his hair. “If you want to start now, go and I’ll come next spring. I just . . . Is that what you want?”
I shake my head, but I can see in his eyes he correctly reads my gesture to be I don’t know.
My first few weeks here I felt both like I was completely free, and also a bit of a leech. But Ansel didn’t invite me here only to be generous or save me from a summer at home or spent psyching myself up to start school. He did it for those reasons and because he wanted me.
“Mia?”
“Mmm?”
“I like you,” he says in a whisper, and from the slight shake of his voice, I think I know what he’s really saying. I feel the words like a warm breath across my neck, but he hasn’t stepped any closer. He’s not even touching me. His hands are braced on the counter behind him, at his hips. This bare admission is somehow more intimate from a few feet away, without the safety of kisses or faces pressed into necks. “I don’t want you to leave without me. A wife belongs with her husband, and he belongs with her. I’m always selfish with you, asking you to move here, asking you to wait until it’s good for my career before you leave, but there it is.”
There it is.
I tear my eyes from his and look down at my bare feet on the floor, letting the heavy drumming of my heart take over my senses for a beat. I’m relieved, terrified . . . but mostly I’m euphoric. He told me he couldn’t play the other night if I said it out loud, and maybe it’s the same fear again, that we can’t keep it light, can’t let it go in a few weeks if one of us says love.
“Do you think you could ever,” he starts after a few beats of silence, his lips pulled up to one side in a smile, “like me?”
My chest squeezes at the earnest vulnerability in his expression. I nod, swallowing what feels like a bowling ball in my throat before saying, “I’m already in like with you.”
His eyes flame with relief, and the words tumble out in a long, jumbled string. “I’ll get you a new ring. We’ll do it all over again. We can find a new flat with memories that are only ours . . .”