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“You are going to crack your head on that rock,” I said.

Dev stood on the swim step with his arms out, water running off his shoulders. The canyon wall behind him was the color of a brick left in the sun. Late afternoon light sat on it and did not move.

“I have done this,” he said.

“You have done it off a dock that was not floating.”

“Same idea.” He bounced once on his toes. The houseboat shifted under us. “Watch.”

He went in clean. A tuck, a white splash, then nothing but the green-brown water and the slap of it against the hull. I waited. A hand came up first, then his face, grinning like he had won something.

“See?”

“I saw a splash,” I said. “The judges are still out.”

He swam to the ladder and hung there, breathing hard, pleased with himself. I sat on the edge with my feet in the water. It was colder than it looked. September on the lake did that. The air stayed warm and the water remembered the night.

“Your turn,” he said.

“I am drinking this.” I lifted the glass. Lemonade, too much ice, a slice stuck to the side. “Someone has to keep score.”

He pulled himself up and shook his head over my legs on purpose. I yelped and kicked at him, and he caught my ankle, laughing, and let it go before I could spill the glass.

“Ten years,” he said, “and you still flinch like a tourist.”

“Ten years and you still show off for an audience of one.”

“Best audience I have.”

He meant it. That was the thing with him. The brag was half a joke and the other half was just how he moved through a day, sure of his body, glad to be looked at by me. I had always liked watching him. I liked the way he checked the ropes without being asked, the way he came back to the step and waited to see if I would get in.

I set the glass in the cup holder and slid off the edge.

The cold took my breath. I came up swearing, and he was already there, one hand on the ladder, the other reaching like I might need it. I did not. I pushed his hand away and swam out until the red wall filled the sky. When I turned, he was floating on his back, eyes closed, one arm drifting.

“Don’t fall asleep,” I said.

“I’m forty-two. Naps are a skill.”

“You’re forty-two and showing off cannonballs. Pick a lane.”

He cracked one eye. “You liked it.”

“I liked that you didn’t die.”

We stayed out until my fingers pruned and the shadow of the wall reached the boat. He climbed up first and held the towel open. I walked into it because that was what we did, and he wrapped it around my shoulders and kissed the top of my wet hair, quick, the way he always did when the day had gone right.

“Pasta,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

“You’ll boil water and call it cooking.”

“Correct.”

By the time the sky went dark the pasta was gone and the dishes were in the little sink below. We took what was left of the lemonade up to the upper deck. The canyon had gone black at the base and red only where the last light caught a ledge. Stars came out in a strip between the walls. The boat rocked, small and steady. Somewhere down the canyon a fish jumped and the sound carried.

Dev stretched out on one of the deck chairs, bare feet on the rail. I took the other chair and pulled a sweatshirt over my suit. My hair was still damp at the neck.

“Quiet,” he said.

“That’s why we came.”

He turned his head. In the dark I could see the line of his mouth more than his eyes. “You all right? You’ve been thinking at me since dinner.”

“I think at you most nights. You usually miss it.”

“I never miss it. I wait to see if it becomes words.”

I turned the glass in my hands. The ice had melted. The lemonade was thin and sweet and cold.

“All right,” I said. “Words.”

“I’m listening.”

I almost laughed it off. That was the easy road, the one we had used for a decade when a thought felt too large for a deck chair. I looked at the stars instead, then at him.

“What would happen,” I said, light, like it was nothing, “if we switched?”

He did not laugh.

The boat creaked. Water tapped the hull. I heard my own pulse in my ears and told myself that was the swim, the climb up the ladder, the cold.

“If I led,” I said. “For once. Just to see.”

He set his glass down on the deck between the chairs. He did not look at me. His hands rested on his thighs, still. I had seen him still like that on a ridge when the wind changed and he was working out what it meant.

A long pause. Long enough that I thought I had stepped on something I should not have.

“I’ve wondered too,” he said.

My mouth went dry. “You have.”

“More than you’d guess.” He turned his face toward me at last. Even in the starlight I could see he was not joking. “Following.”

One word. Plain. It landed between us and stayed there.

I sat up. The chair creaked under me. “Say that again.”

“Following,” he said. “You. I’ve wondered what that would be like.”

The lemonade sweated in my hand. I put it down so I would not drop it.

“Dev.”

“I know.” He rubbed his jaw. “I didn’t plan to say it like that. You asked. I wasn’t going to laugh at you and then lie.”

“How long?”

“Years.” He huffed, not quite a laugh. “I don’t have a date. Somewhere in the middle of us. I’d be on top of you, doing what I always do, and I’d think, what if she told me to stop. What if she told me what she wanted and I just did it.”

“And you never said.”

“You liked it the way it was. I liked giving it to you. I didn’t want to hand you a problem that wasn’t a problem.”

I pulled my knees up and rested my arms on them. The deck was cool through the sweatshirt. Down in the cabin a timer we had forgotten beeped once and went quiet.

“It isn’t a problem,” I said.

“It might be. That’s the part I don’t know.”

We talked the way we talked about big things. Not fast. Not in a speech. A sentence, then the water, then another sentence. He told me he had pictured it on ordinary nights, after ordinary days, when nothing was wrong. I told him the question had not come out of nowhere. Last month I had stood in our kitchen with a mug of coffee gone cold and asked myself, out loud, what I actually wanted when I stopped being polite about it.

“And?” he said.

“I want to know what it feels like to be the one who decides.” I heard how sure I sounded and was surprised by it. “Not forever. Not instead of everything we already like. Once. Maybe more than once, if we both want that. I didn’t know how much I wanted to find out until I said it to the cabinets.”

He smiled at that. Small. “The cabinets give good advice.”

“They said talk to you. I packed something anyway. Just in case. After that conversation with myself.”

He blinked. “You packed something.”

“In the side pocket of my bag. I have not taken it out. I might lose my nerve and leave it there all weekend.”

He stared at me. Then he laughed. It started in his chest and got away from him. He tipped back in the deck chair, one hand grabbing for the arm, and the chair skidded an inch on the deck. For a second I thought he was going over the rail. I lunged and caught his wrist. He caught the rail with his other hand and hung there, still laughing, feet braced, ridiculous and safe.

“You packed a plan,” he said, breathless.

“I packed a maybe.”

“Mara.” He got the chair under him again. I did not let go of his wrist right away. His pulse was fast under my fingers. “I nearly went swimming with my pride.”

“Your pride is fine. Sit down.”

He sat. The laugh faded into something quieter. He looked at our hands. I let go, and he turned his palm up on his knee like he was not sure what to do with it.

“What scares me,” he said, “isn’t the thing itself. I can take being told. I think I want that. What scares me is you looking at me after and seeing somebody else. Less. I don’t want to come back from it and find you’ve filed me under a different name.”

I shook my head. “I won’t.”

“You don’t know that yet.”

“I know you.” I shifted my chair closer until our knees touched. “Ten years. I know the man who checks the lines twice and pretends he didn’t. I know you like being good at things. Following me for a night doesn’t scratch any of that off. If I looked at you and saw less, that would be me failing, not you.”

He was quiet. His knee stayed against mine.

“I don’t want anything mean,” I said. “I don’t want to make fun of you. I want to kiss you the way I decide to kiss you, and I want you to let me, and I want us to laugh if we get it wrong. That’s the whole offer.”

“That’s a good offer.”

“Do you want it?”

He met my eyes. “Yes. I want to follow you. Tonight, if you’re still sure. You say stop, we stop. I say stop, we stop. No points for pushing through.”

“Agreed.”

“And if I get proud in the middle and try to take it back—”

“I’ll notice,” I said. “You can have it back if you need it. I’m not collecting a trophy.”

He let out a breath. Some of the stiffness left his shoulders. “You really packed something.”

“Don’t start again or you will go over the side, and I am not jumping in after you in the dark.”

“What is it?”

“You can find out downstairs. Or not. We can also just sleep. I would still be glad we said this.”

He studied me. The starlight caught the gray at his temple. I had watched that gray arrive and had never once thought it made him less himself.

“I don’t want to just sleep,” he said. “I want to see what you do when you stop waiting for me to start.”

The want in me answered before I had a sentence for it. I was surprised by the size of it. Not a blush I could laugh off. A clear, bright pull toward the man in the chair, toward the fact that he had said yes in his own voice and was still sitting there, nervous and willing and mine.

I stood. The deck was steady under my feet. He looked up, and for the first time all night I was the one above him, and neither of us joked it away.

I put my hand on his jaw. His skin was warm. A little stubble. He did not lean in to take the kiss the way he always had. He waited. I felt the difference in that wait, ten years of the other way stacked behind it, and then I bent and kissed him.

I led it. My mouth on his, unhurried, my hand keeping him where I wanted him. He made a small sound and kissed me back, but he did not take over. His hand came up and held my wrist. I slid my other hand into his hair. He let his head tip into my palm. When I deepened the kiss he opened for me and stayed with me, matching me.

I pulled back enough to see his face. His eyes were open. He looked undone in a way I knew and did not know.

“Okay?” I said. It was a check, the way we checked ropes.

“Yes,” he said. His thumb moved once over the inside of my wrist. “Do that again whenever you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

I kissed him once more, shorter, because I could. Then I straightened. The stars were stupidly bright. The canyon held us in its narrow dark. Below, the cabin light we had left on made a small gold square on the water.

I held out my hand.

He looked at it. Then he took it, and I felt him choose, the same way I had felt him choose every hard thing we had ever done together.

“Downstairs,” I said. “My turn.”