It's just there's a part of me that's learned to be careful with the feeling. That's fair, he said. I'm not saying I'm pulling back. I'm saying I'm I'm going in with my eyes open all the way open. Her voice was steady.
I need you to know that about me, that I won't pretend I'm not watching. Not because I don't trust you, because I trust myself more than I used to. And I won't give that up. He sat with that for a moment. Felt the weight of it and the respect of it simultaneously.
I don't want you to give it up, he said. I want you to keep it. All of it. He paused. And I want you to watch because if I'm getting it wrong, I want someone who will tell me a beat.
Then most men don't say that. I'm not most men. No, she said softly. You're really not. The conversation moved from there into easier territory.
She told him about a client email she'd woken up to that was either going to be a small problem or a large disaster, depending on what they decided to do with the kitchen. and he listened and asked one question that she said was exactly the right question. And by the time they hung up, 40 minutes had passed and he was standing in his kitchen making morning eggs and feeling something that was not complicated at all. Lily came downstairs at 9:53 in her sloth pajamas and one sock, the same situation she'd been in last night, which suggested the second sock had been lost in the bed somewhere and was no longer considered a priority. You're smiling," she said, climbing onto her stool. "Good morning to you, too.
You're smiling at the eggs." "The eggs are good, Dad." She looked at him with that forensic attention. "You were on the phone." "I was, was it, Clare?"
He slid her plate across the counter. "Eat your eggs." "That means yes," she said, picking up her fork with satisfaction. He let it go, which was also a yes, and they both knew it. and Lily ate her eggs with the quiet contentment of someone whose suspicions have been confirmed. The next 6 weeks moved like current, not slow and not fast, with purpose, with direction, carrying things forward at the pace that things needed to move.
He and Clare didn't rush. This was a decision they didn't make explicitly. Neither of them sat down and said, "We're going to take this slowly." It was just the shape they both naturally took. the way two people who've both been through some take up space together carefully with attention making sure the ground is solid before adding weight to it. She came to dinner twice at his house.
The first time Lily was there and spent 40 minutes before Clare arrived rearranging her stuffed animals on the couch as though this were a formal presentation and then denied doing it when Ethan pointed it out. Clare arrived with a bottle of sparkling cider and the information that she'd looked up Lily's current favorite book series and had opinions about which installment was the strongest. And Lily looked at her for a long moment and then said with the gravity of a sentencing judge, the third one. If you say anything other than the third one, this dinner is over. Clare said the third one, which was in fact her actual opinion, and Lily declared dinner open, and that was that.
The second dinner Lily wasn't there. Mrs. Delgado telenovlla's three kinds of chips. Ethan cooked, which he was better at than he usually admitted. Clare sat at his kitchen counter while he worked and they talked the way they talked when there was no audience and no performance required.