Cole was edgy. He sat on the living room floor, in the middle of the Persian carpet, playing Hearts with Rennie and Maris. He was barely able to focus on the game. Every minute or so he needed to shift position. He was getting too old to sit on the floor. Outside, the rain spilled through the darkness.
The others were jumpy, too. Maris was on her second glass of wine, and Rennie cringed each time lightning pierced the sky outside the window. Janni sat in the overstuffed chair, a book upside down on her thigh, and her eyes on Jay, who was trying to get a second wind out of the dying fire.
It wasn’t the storm that had them tense, Cole thought. It was what he was coming to think of as the Kit’s-not-home syndrome. It was midnight. They should be on their way to bed, but here they sat, dragging out their activities in the unacknowledged ritual of waiting for Kit to come home.
They all started at an ear-splitting crack of thunder. With this rain it could be another couple of hours, he thought. The phone rang, and he set down his cards and walked toward the library.
“Please don’t be the hospital,” Janni said.
It was Kit. There was laughter in her voice. “Cole? We got out of the symphony and Orrin’s car wouldn’t start. So we’ve taken a room in a little bed and breakfast place and we’re trying to dry off. I’m going to have to stay here tonight. There’s no way to get home.”
“No, of course not. I was worried about you two driving in this storm anyway.” His mind was racing.
“You should see this room, Cole. There’s a fireplace and it’s very homey. So don’t worry about me. I’m not sure what time I’ll get home tomorrow, though.”
“You don’t need to hurry. Just be good, okay?” He grimaced. Why did he say that?
“Do I have to? I mean, is there any reason, physically speaking, why I have to be good?”
Damn it. She wanted to sleep with Orrin. He forced a laugh. “No, of course there isn’t. Enjoy yourself.”
The rain wouldn’t let him sleep. It sounded like waves breaking on his balcony. He tried to block out the picture taking shape in his mind—Kit and Orrin alone in a room with a fireplace and just one bed. Well, it would be good for her. She wasn’t feeling that great about herself lately. A little body image problem. This was probably just what she needed.
Was he jealous? He rejected the word, told himself it didn’t fit the situation. They were friends, very good friends, nothing more. He just missed knowing that she was right across the hall.
She came home the next afternoon, still wearing the blue dress she’d left in the night before. He thought she looked secretive. She was craving bouillabaisse, she said. She wanted to make it for dinner. She invited him to go to the fish market with her, and he jumped at the chance. He wanted some time alone with her.
He climbed into the passenger side of her car. She’d changed into a white jersey, sleeves pushed up above her elbows, a blue silk scarf tied at her throat. She’d pinned her hair up in back and it fell around her face in soft, honey-colored wisps. He studied her profile, the nearly perfect nose with its five or six pale freckles, the truly perfect lips. What had those lips done last night?
He looked back at the road. “How was the symphony?”
“Wonderful. Philadelphia’s not that far. We should go more often.”
He wondered who she meant by “we”. He felt so far away from her, so separate. He wanted to bridge the gap between them but had no idea how to go about it.
She parked the car in front of the pier, where shirtless men scrubbed the deck of a fishing boat. She switched off the ignition and turned to look at him.
“There’s an unasked question hanging in the air of this car,” she said.
“There is?”
She nodded. “And the answer is: I slept in the bed, he slept on the couch.”
He smiled, the muscles in his face giving way before he could stop them. “Oh,” he said. She had done it for him—cut through the distance.
She squeezed his hand. “Let’s buy some fish.”
He watched her in the crowded fish market, using skills she must have learned in Seattle—rapping clams together, sniffing scallops, lifting the gills of whole fish to peer inside. He stood apart from her, lighthearted, drinking in the rich smell of the sea. Occasionally she held up a crab leg or a handful of mussels and looked over at him for his opinion. And each time he nodded. He wanted to prolong her shopping so he could continue to stand there, leaning against the rough wooden wall, feeling good.
She paid for the seafood and handed him the heavy paper bag, but he blocked her path when she headed for the door.
“Let’s not go yet,” he said.
She looked surprised. “Why not?”
“I like it here.”
She laughed. “Come on, our fish will rot.” She pushed past him through the door, blue silk catching the breeze, but he took his time. He wanted to stay there for the rest of the day, with Kit, in a cold little shop filled with fish and crushed ice.