In the apartment, Alexandra pursed her lips, tidy, but her pulse was elaborate with wanting to know where he’d been. She was in one of her old college T-shirts, and her legs were moist with lotion applied with the productive fervor of not knowing what to do, where he’d gone. He came to her. Got on the couch. He put his head in her lap, and she didn’t touch him.
“I just needed to speak to a friend.”
“You needed to speak to a friend in the middle of the night, outside.”
“It wouldn’t work to speak in the flat.”
“Because you can only speak secretly, in secret places?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
In the standing, her knee knocked his chin, and even then, there was a flicker of wanting to reach out, apologize. But she did not apologize. She watched him touch his smarting face.
“What are you hiding?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not hiding as you speak secretly, in secret places?”
He rounded through the spine, fingers laced. He leaned his forearms against his knees. “Maybe I was nervous,” he said. “Don’t be sore.”
“Nervous.”
“We’re getting married,” he said. “It’s normal.”
She braced her face, swallowed. Holding the doorframe stilled her hand. It was normal, his feeling, and it opened an eerie hole she did not want to peer through.
She looked at her hands, now wrung smooth. “I thought we were better than that.”