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He spotted her immediately: leaning against a column, sipping something pink and looking at her phone, dressed for comfort in athletic trousers, a t-shirt, her braided hair half-pinned up, the rest swept over her left shoulder. He slowed as he took in the sight of her, letting the crowd pass him by. It really hadn’t been nearly as long as it felt.
He was just a few meters away when she looked up and met his eyes immediately, breaking into a big grin, and he felt himself smile automatically in response, too. She slipped her phone into her pocket and hurried up to him as he took a few more steps in her direction, and then she threw her arms around his neck, hugging the breath out of him. Relieved and greedy, he returned the embrace.
“Hey, Book,” she said, pulling away and still grinning, holding onto his shoulders with one hand and one cup of pink drink. “Looking good.”
He lowered his head, shaking it, his whole body feeling warm radiating out from his shoulders. “You’re too kind, Nile.” She looked good too, of course, in a certain variety of how she always looked good, but for the moment the words to tell her escaped him. “It’s been too long,” he said anyway, perhaps more revealing than telling her how beautiful he found her.
“Practically forever,” she teased him, letting him go so they could start walking. “How was the flight?”
“Alright.” He glanced to his side. “Glad the plane stayed up in the sky.”
“The mysteries of modern technology,” she said with laughter in her voice. “Can you believe all these flying machines and shit?”
“I can’t.” She elbowed him, making him smile again. “Didn’t wait too long for me, did you?”
“Nah, it wasn’t too long. Got this thing,” and here she held her drink up and gave it a little shake, “it’s guava. And a bunch of other stuff, but mostly guava. Really good.” She took a sip from her straw, then held it over for him. He hesitated until she shook it again and poked at his cheek with the straw, and so then he gave in and took a drink. “See?”
“It’s good,” he agreed, glancing to his side once more, at her profile and her smiling mouth and bright eyes.
They left the airport, took a bus then the metro then a short walk to her place, and as she unlocked her front door, he took a moment to appreciate the quiet of the building she lived in, the steadiness of the floor beneath their feet, the simple stupid creature of happiness milling about in his brain at being near her again.
“You’ve gotta be starving,” she said as they walked in and she shut the door behind him. “I know I am.”
“I could eat,” he admitted. “Do you want me to fix something?”
She gave him a sweetly pointed look. “You’re my guest, I’ve got better etiquette than that, thank you.” He acquiesced with a smile and raised hands, apologizing profusely and silently, and she laughed. “We’ll order something, ‘cause I do not feel like cooking anything either.”
“Sounds good.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and he looked around. He’d been there before, but it was a lot more lived in than the last time he’d seen it. Real furniture, art on the walls, her shelves slowly filling up with books and things. She seemed happy there.
“I moved stuff around,” she said as she came back out carrying a stack of takeout menus, “so the guest bed’s in a different room now.” She left the living room and he followed her. “Can I say, just.” She paused at the open doorway to what must have been her new spare bedroom. “Kinda dumb, I guess, but I still can’t get used to having all this space all mine, just for me.”
“Is it too much?” he asked, studying her face.
She gave him a half-smile. “Not... really? I like it. I love it. It’s just so different from what I’m used to, I guess. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” he said. “Not really. It takes time to adjust.”
“Yeah,” she said, then sighed. “But I mean, I do love it. It’s nice to just... stretch out. Feels like I’ve never really gotten to do that.”
“And now you can.” He smiled when she wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Everything looks good.”
“Thanks.” She looked pleased with herself when he looked over after setting his bag down. “That’s another thing I’ve been loving, just kinda slowly getting stuff I like and then living with it all. I just bought a frying pan yesterday and got so damn excited.” She laughed. “I get why mom would get so excited about getting kitchen stuff for Christmas, now.”
He felt so incredibly fond. “A good frying pan’s worth its weight in gold, or so I’ve heard.”
She gave him a little snort, then handed over the menus. “Don’t act like you don’t know your way around a pan, Mr The Book. I know your secret, you’re a good cook.”
He began to sort through the menus with a smile. “Thank you. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Never,” she said, miming zipping her lips when he looked up. “Pick out whatever, I’m up for anything.” He nodded, and she gave him one more little grin before she left him to decide on dinner.
“I’m thinking about adopting a cat.”
He looked up from where he’d been dumping his container of rice out onto his plate. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, and she thoughtfully tapped the end of her chopstick against her bottom lip. “Like an older cat? Since I’m gonna be working, probably not a good idea to go for a kitten.” She tilted her head, fixing him with a curious look. “Do you like cats, Book?”
“I like cats,” he said, smiling slightly. “Haven’t had a pet in a long time, but I do like cats. We always had them around when I was little.”
She grinned, lifted a healthy bite of rice and tangerine chicken. “I can see that. Cute little blond boy running around ancient France surrounded by cats going, like, le miaou.”
He laughed, and she ate her food, her eyes bright. “Yes, yes, running around in ancient France saying the meow.”
“Right,” she said, laughing a little herself too. “You see why they hired me to teach English to French kids, right? I’m so damn good at language.”
“You are,” he said, shaking his head and feeling the remains of his laughter warmly coursing through his brain. “Maybe not right now, but--”
She threw a balled up napkin at his head, which he didn’t bother to duck, instead grinning to himself as he ate. “The greatest hype man.”
“At your service,” he said.
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said. “Anyway, new place, regular person job, gonna adopt a cat. It’s like we’re normal.”
“We,” he said with mild emphasis, and she rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “You, perhaps.”
“Yeah yeah,” she said. “I mean, you’re gonna do the same thing. Maybe not a cat... Or...?” She raised her eyebrows, leaning forward a little, lips curving into an easy and convincing smile. “You could adopt a cat too.”
“I could,” he said, hopefully vaguely. It wasn’t that he was specifically opposed to the idea, he guessed. But neither was he specifically as drawn to it as she seemed to be. “Maybe.”
“Maybe.” She looked at him a few moments longer, her smile taking on a mysterious note to his overeager brain, before she looked back down at her food. “You know, I missed you.”
He looked up through his eyelashes, feeling briefly caught off guard. “I missed you too, Nile.”
She gave him a quick look, friendly and very her. “And I’ve really been looking forward to this after everything. Trying not to feel guilty about it. Just... taking time off, I guess.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. Unnecessary but he couldn’t let it go unsaid. “You’ve already done so much.”
“There’s that hype man coming out,” she joked, and he smiled but didn’t deny it. “I’m trying.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, and he ruminated. It would just be a semester for both of them, him trying out teaching again, her doing it for the first time. He had helped her with assorted background paperwork but otherwise she’d handled actually getting the work, and now here they both were in the same city, soon in similar jobs, pretending for almost a year that they were similarly regular people.
He wasn’t following her around. He really wasn’t. It was just... when they had all agreed to take this break, everyone had decided so quickly what they wanted to do while he hadn’t a clue. He’d been sleeping so well since Quỳnh, with only the regular people nightmares to deal with, and it’d left his mind regularly blank, as if a giant lump of meat had been carved out of his brain without replacement. He hadn’t known what to do with himself.
But he wasn’t following her around. She certainly knew what she wanted to do, and so she had inspired him. She was good at that.
“I think I know where I’ll live,” he said to finally break the silence, and she looked up with curiosity. “I won’t be bothering you here too long.”
“Not worried about that,” she said. “None of that though, that shit’s illegal here.”
“Which part?” he laughed.
“The Eeyore thanks for noticing me thing,” she said with a grin. “Oh I won’t be a bother, mademoiselle, désolé désolé, that thing. That’s illegal.”
He was laughing again. “Oh,” he said, then paused, and as if testing out his words, added, “Désolé, désolé?”
“Very good!” she said, voice pitched slightly higher, a very teacher-appropriate enthusiasm in her words. “Can you say it in English?”
“I can say many things right now,” he said, hunkering down a little lower as she laughed. “None very polite, mademoiselle.”
“You’re going to time-out,” she said, beaming when he gave her a skeptical look. “Back-talking your teacher, so rude Book.”
“It’s not back-talk,” he said, shaking his head slightly, making her start laughing again. “I was... restrained.”
“Uh huh,” she said, between sips of her beer. “Very admirable.”
Her new guest room was a small room right next to her bedroom. Meant to be a child’s room, he supposed. He appreciated the size, the quietness of it as he settled into bed that night. A bit cocoon-like, with the bed he just fit in and the small high window letting in cloudy moonlight.
She’d already gone to bed earlier, and since then he read in the living room until his eyelids began to droop and then had to shake himself awake to avoid spending the night sitting up in an armchair. It was comfortable, but he wanted the bed.
But despite everything once he was in that bed he found himself unable to fall back into sleep. The sheets smelled like her laundry, the room smelled like the candles she liked. An absurd couple of thoughts to have, he thought: of course her home smelled like her. Felt like her. Warm. Difficult to avoid. Hard not to follow. He’d missed her.
He stared at the ceiling, then the wall, then the opposite wall. He got up, peered out the window, lay back down, rubbed his eyes and tried to turn his thoughts into simpler sentences. Counting sheep. One, two, three. He thought of the stack of early childhood teaching textbooks he’d seen on her coffee table. She’d be good with kids, he knew it in his veins. She would have made a good mother.
He got out of bed again, frustrated, and left the bedroom as quietly as he could, making a brief game out of how slowly he could click the door shut behind him. He slipped into the bathroom across the hall, pushed the door shut, leaned over the sink, and cupped his hand under the running water. A couple drinks, a couple splashes on his face, and he felt a little more awake. Exactly what he hadn’t wanted to do. Perfect.
When he opened the door again, she was there out in the hall, standing in the doorway to her bedroom, rubbing her face and giving him a bleary smile.
“Sorry,” he said, sighed. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’okay,” she said, waving her hand lazily up and down. “I’m a light sleeper sometimes, I dunno. Everything alright?”
“Everything’s alright.” He paused, for a moment his tongue catching on his voice. “You can go back to bed, Nile.”
“I need something to eat first,” she said, leaning against the wall and laughing a little. “My stomach’s wide awake now, I gotta.”
“Okay, come on,” he found himself saying, lulled by the nighttime and by the sight of her in her pajamas, her hair wrap, her house slippers. Face clean of makeup and comfort easy in her eyes. It was a sight he’d never tired of, before, and hadn’t really been able to appreciate for hundreds of years. The shedding of armor, an alluring intimacy. “I’ll make you something.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, but she walked with him toward the kitchen either way. “Thanks, Book.”
He hummed, thinking of what to fix for a midnight snack, thinking about the woman at his side.
For a few minutes, he guessed, he could pretend they were normal people, too.