Houseguest

The book was open on my knee and the words wouldn’t stay in order. I’d been on the same paragraph since Nate turned the radio down. From the kitchen came the sound of water and then Allison’s laugh, the short one she uses when she’s already lost an argument and doesn’t mind.

“That’s not how you dry a plate,” Nate said.

“It’s my plate.”

“It’s a plate. It has one job.”

Something snapped, fabric, and she yelped. I looked up. Through the doorway I could see both of them at the sink, Nate with a dish towel in one hand and his other hand up like a referee. Allison had the second towel and was winding it for another swing. She was in the gray sweatshirt she wore after work, sleeves pushed past her wrists. Nate was barefoot, still in the shirt he’d cooked in. The radio was playing something old and quiet.

She got him on the shoulder. He caught the end of the towel and didn’t pull hard. For a second they were just holding opposite ends of it, both of them grinning, water shining on the counter between them.

Then Nate looked at her. Not at the towel. At her face. It lasted half a second too long. I saw him catch himself. He let go of the towel, turned back to the sink, and picked up a glass as if the glass had called his name.

“You’re banned from drying,” he said. His voice was even. “You’ll chip them.”

“I will not.”

“You will. I’ll do it. Go sit.”

She didn’t go. She stayed and wiped the counter while he finished the glasses, and they kept talking about a restaurant that had closed on Fourth Street, nothing that mattered. He didn’t look at her again. Not once. He’d told himself not to, and he was keeping the promise where I could see it.

I liked him more for that than I wanted to admit. Sixteen years of knowing the man, and the thing that got me was the way he put his eyes back on the sink.

I shut the book. On the couch the cushion had gone flat under me. Down the hall the guest-room door stood open a crack, the way he left it when he wasn’t in there. His coat was on the hook by the side door. Next month he’d be in the place across town. That had been settled before any of this, before the three weeks, before the dishes. I didn’t want to think about the date. I wanted to think about the half second, and about the laugh that had come before it, and about what it had done to me to hear both from the other room.

Allison came through with two mugs of tea and set one on the table by my knee.

“He’s ruthless about plates,” she said.

“I heard.”

She looked at the book, still open to the same page. “You’re not reading that.”

“I’m considering it.”

Nate called from the kitchen that the leftovers were in the fridge, and then the guest-room door clicked shut. The television came on low. Allison kissed the top of my head on her way past, the way she always did, and went down the hall to our room. I sat with the tea until it cooled, listening to a sitcom laugh track leak under his door, and I did not open the book again.

In bed she had her glasses on and a paperback braced against her knee. The lamp on her side was the only light. I’d shut our door. The house felt smaller with it shut, the way it did when we wanted the evening to be ours.

I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. The crack over the closet hadn’t moved. I opened my mouth.

“When you and Nate were—” I stopped. That wasn’t it.

She turned a page.

I tried again. “I’ve been thinking about the kitchen, and how—” No. Worse.

A third time, quieter. “If I said something that sounded—” I let it die. My hands were on the blanket. I could hear the television through the wall, a commercial, then the show again.

Allison closed the book on her finger. She took her glasses off and set them on the nightstand, folded, the way she does when she’s done pretending to read.

“You’ve been staring at the ceiling for a week,” she said. “Is it Nate? Do you want him out?”

“No.” It came out fast. “No. It’s not that. It’s the opposite.”

She waited. The lamp made a small pool on her side of the pillow and left mine in shade. I could see the line of her mouth. Waiting.

“I hear you two in there,” I said. “The dishes. You laughing at him. Tonight he looked at you and then he made himself stop. I saw it. And I didn’t want him to stop.” I had to swallow. “I wanted to keep hearing it. I wanted—I don’t know how to say the rest without sounding like I’ve lost my mind. I like that he looks at you. I like that he won’t do anything about it unless somebody tells him he can. I like what it does to me, sitting on the couch, knowing he’s in our kitchen with you. That’s the thing. Not that I want him gone. The opposite of that.”

The words sat in the room. I didn’t take them back. My face was hot, but I kept my eyes on the crack in the ceiling so I wouldn’t try to read hers too soon.

She didn’t speak. The television down the hall went to another commercial, then back. A car passed on the street. Her breathing was even. I counted nothing. I just lay there and let her have the quiet, because I’d had three weeks of not saying it and she could have as long as she needed now that I had.

When she did talk, her voice was the one she used at work when a scan didn’t match the note.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Is this a thing you want, or a thing you’re testing? On me. On him. On yourself, to see if you flinch.”

“I want it.” I turned my head then. She was on her side, facing me, one hand under her cheek. “I don’t have a name for it. I’m not testing you. I’m telling you because if I don’t, I’m going to keep sitting out there with a book I don’t read, and that’s not fair to you.”

“And the morning after?” she said. “The three of us. Coffee in the kitchen. Him at the table. You. What happens to that?”

I didn’t have a good answer. I’d turned it over on the couch and gotten nowhere useful. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d still want him at the table. I’d still want you. I don’t know what the morning looks like if we do anything with this, and I know that’s not enough.”

She nodded once, as if she’d expected the hole in it.

“I noticed him two weeks ago,” she said. “Not the way a guest looks when he’s being polite. The way he looks when he thinks I’m not watching. And I noticed you noticing. You’ve been very quiet about a man who is not quiet. I haven’t decided anything. Not about him, not about you, not about what I’d do if either of you asked.”

“I’m asking now,” I said. “Not him. You. Whether any of this is even a door you want open.”

She studied my face. I didn’t fill the space. Down the hall the laugh track rose and fell.

She put her hand on my chest, over the T-shirt, flat, the way she does when she wants me to stay where I am. Then she leaned in and kissed me.

It wasn’t a goodnight kiss. Her mouth was warm from the tea she’d had earlier, and she didn’t pull back after the first press. I kissed her back. My hand found her wrist where it rested on my chest, and I held it there to have it. She made a small sound against my mouth and shifted closer. Her other hand came up into my hair, fingers at the side of my head, and she kissed me again, harder, like the sentence she’d been holding had finally found a place to go.

I turned onto my side. Our knees bumped. I touched her face, thumb along her cheek, and she caught my hand and brought it down between us, our fingers linked on the sheet. The lamp was still on. I could feel the heat of her through the T-shirt, her palm spread where my heartbeat was doing something undignified. She kissed the corner of my mouth, then my mouth again, and I answered her the only way I had, pulling her in until her hair brushed my jaw.

We stayed like that. Kissing. Her hand in my hair, mine on her wrist, then on her hand, then back. Nothing past that. The want was plain in how she didn’t let the kiss go thin, and in how I didn’t either.

She drew back just far enough to look at me. Her mouth was redder. Down the hall, the television was still on.

“He’s still up,” she said.

She got out of bed. The robe was on the chair. She put it on over the T-shirt she slept in and tied the belt, and she stood with her hand on the door. The lamp lit one side of her face. She didn’t open the door. She looked at me over her shoulder, the same look she’d had when she asked about the morning, except now her hand was already on the knob.

“What would you do if I went out there and sat down next to him?”