The Break-Up Retreat(98)

Most mornings, I make fun of him for that straw, and he responds by quoting countless studies showing it reduces staining; today will not be one such morning.

I sit down on the chair next to him, and he turns to me and smiles.

“Morning,” he greets me. His cheeks are covered in stubble; he hasn’t had time to shave yet.

I’m tempted to reach out and touch it, but I recognize the shadows under his eyes, the tense tilt to his mouth.

“Bad night?” I ask him.

He doesn’t always like to be touched, after the nightmares. I asked him, once, what happens in those dreams; he just shook his head.

I understood. I have dreams, too. In some of them, I’m back in that office, drugged and helpless; in some of them I’m being chased through the woods.

But most of them are about him. About finding him unconscious by the pond, so still I thought he was dead, that Susannah had killed him, too.

In the nightmares, she did.

“Not the best,” he admits. “But I’ve had worse.”

I smile, and he reaches out and takes my hand, his fingers cool to the touch.

The sky outside is high and bright blue, the trees below aflame with autumn color. When I go over to the fridge, I see that he’s already taken care of last night’s dishes, and scrubbed down the counters as well. There’s a pod already prepped for me in the Nespresso, and a clean cup waiting to receive the coffee.

“I was going to clean the kitchen,” I tell him, without turning around.

“Yeah, you always say that. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“How am I going to learn if you always do it for me?” I ask him.

He snorts in response.

Once the coffee is done, I fill the rest of the cup with milk and sit back down next to him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask him.

“Nah.” Armin stirs his coffee with his straw. “It was the usual. It really wasn’t that bad, last night.”

I know he’s lying. I don’t push it.

“When are you going into the office?” I ask him.

“Tenish,” he responds. “Do you want me to drop you by your apartment?”

“That would be great. I need to pick up something to wear. I’ve got that lunch.”

“You sure you don’t just want to grab something from my closet?” Armin asks.

“Yeah, it’d be good for me to stop by home,” I say. “Water my plant.”

“That plant is plastic,” Armin points out.

“Still,” I respond. “He gets lonely.”

“Mhm.” He nods. “Don’t want the plastic flower to feel neglected.”

“Hey.” I laugh. “Don’t talk that way about Robert Plant. He’s family.”

Then I lean over, lingering and drawing in the smell of him before I kiss him softly. He tastes like coffee, and home. His fingers touch softly at the base of my neck, and I feel a quick frisson, my breath shortening and my lower stomach tightening.

When he pulls back, he’s smiling. It’s a special smile, one I’ve only gotten to know in the last few months, and I feel the same one on my own face.

“See you after work?” he asks me.

“You’ve got therapy,” I point out.

“Fine,” he agrees. “See you after therapy?”

“Sure. I’ll cook something. What do you feel like eating?”

Armin gets up from the table, grabbing his own cup to put in the dishwasher.

“Anything, as long as you don’t burn the coating off of my nice frying pans,” he says, and I yell after him:

“That was one time !”

As I put yesterday’s clothes back on, quickly brushing my teeth while he’s in the shower, I’m struck by the thought, as I am, sometimes, these days, out of nowhere, that we’re not the same as we were.

I don’t know if we would have gotten here had Himlafall not happened. That doesn’t mean it was worth it.

I brought it up with Leyla on the phone the other day. She’d just dropped off Clara at her parents’ house, and called me from the car on the way home.

“Do you ever feel guilty when you feel happy ?” I asked her. I’d asked Katarina the same question a few days earlier over lunch.

“Why should I feel guilty ?” she asked me back.

“Because you met Clara at the scene of a massacre ,” I said. “Because we’re still here, and we get to be happy. At least sometimes. ”

“You think too much ,” Leyla responded. “That’s your problem .”

“Yeah ,” I said. “Maybe I should get treatment for that. Go away to a clinic somewhere .”

We both laughed at that. A little bit too loudly.

When Armin comes out of the shower, I’m already done, sitting on the bed and taking in the sight of him as he gets dressed.

“Are you objectifying me?” He pulls a sweater vest over his dress shirt.

“You’d think it would be impossible to objectify a man in a sweater vest,” I say. “But yes.”

“Good.” Armin grabs his briefcase. “Let’s go, before you get any ideas.”

In the car on the way to my apartment, Armin clears his throat.

“Are you feeling okay about it?” he asks.