Then a couple days later she stepped out of the office and there he was in the parking lot, leaning against her car on a freezing afternoon. His cheeks were red, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a navy-blue pea coat. She wondered how long he’d been waiting. “You look cold,” she said, and smiled.
He didn’t smile back, his expression so serious that he almost seemed angry. “I don’t really know why I’m here.”
“I’m glad to see you,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Good.” For the first time, he seemed unsure of what to do next.
Grace said, “Seriously, you really do look cold.”
“Do you think—” he said, then stopped. “Look, can we go somewhere?”
Grace nodded, unlocked the car, and, not knowing what else to do, drove them to her apartment. Once inside, Tug took off his coat, accepted a drink, and sat on the couch. He didn’t look around the place or make any small talk. She sat down next to him, acutely conscious of his closeness. He was wearing a collared shirt and a V-neck sweater, and she could see that his throat had completely healed.
“So, how are you?” she said.
“I’m better.” Looking at her, he took a sip of his wine.
“Your whole situation — it’s a little confusing to me, Tug.”
At the sound of his name, he smiled. “Do you wish you’d never stopped when you saw me there on the mountain?”
“No.”
He nodded slowly. “You really don’t care, do you? About what I did. What I almost did.”
“Of course I care,” she said. “It just doesn’t discourage me.”
His lips were dark pink, almost red, and she wondered if they were chapped or raw from cold. But they weren’t. They were soft, and he was kissing her. Barely able to make any sense of it, she put her hand on his arm and felt the knit of his sweater, telling herself, This is real. I’m touching him. His other arm went around her waist, and her leg was on top of his. She stopped kissing him, almost sick to her stomach with an excess of wanting.
“Are you all right?” he said, his mouth against her ear.
“I need to stop.”
“Okay.” He sat back and watched her.
She took a breath, trying to calm down. Her nerves were singing, plucked like too-tight strings. It had been a long time since she’d been with anyone.
“Should I leave?” he said. “You can tell me to.”
“No.”
“No, you can’t tell me, or no, I shouldn’t leave?”
“You know which,” Grace said. She went to the kitchen, drank some water, then came back to this person she hardly knew, this dark and difficult person, and kissed him. Some things were too intense to do slowly.
Afterward, they got dressed. It had happened very fast, the two of them panting and desperate and not especially well coordinated, and when it was over they still felt like strangers. Tug lounged on the couch, looking a little drowsy. Grace still felt off-kilter, feverish, her cheeks burning from his unshaven face. She poured them each more wine and wondered what she had gotten herself into. If she were her own patient, she’d tell herself to put an end to this situation as quickly as possible. Instead, she pulled her legs up beneath her and watched him. She didn’t want him to go.
“So,” she said, “how’ve you been?”
This made him laugh and he set down his glass, giving her the first real sense of accomplishment she’d felt in quite some time.
“Grace,” he said, “do we have to talk?”
She couldn’t imagine what else, in fact, to do.
Sensing her confusion, Tug patted the couch next to him. She felt summoned and, obscurely, condescended to. But she moved over and laid her head on his shoulder, waiting for him to say something. Then she heard a faint whistling sound. He was snoring.
With his head resting on the back of the couch, he had fallen asleep and left her just sitting there. She tried to curl gently into him, and his arm pulled her closer. She was uncomfortable but didn’t want to move — he always looked so tired, so beaten down — though after ten minutes, her right leg was tingling and she desperately wanted to scratch her nose. Tug’s snoring was light and sibilant, like a faraway train. Slowly, hoping not to wake him up, she straightened out her leg. In response Tug shifted, suddenly jerking his head forward, and, with the hand wrapped around her shoulder, slapped her in the face. “Jesus!” she said. “What the hell?”
“What happened? Did I hit you?” He was still half asleep and confused. “Are you okay? My God, I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek gently. “It’s all red.”
“That’s not from your hand. It’s from your face.”
“My face?”
“Your beard. I mean, your stubble.”
“Oh, Grace,” he said, and kissed her sore, mottled cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m glad you slept.”
“I didn’t know how tired I was.” He kissed her again, this time on the lips, and soon they were together again, more slowly, in the bedroom, without any awkwardness or rush, more like she’d wanted. And when they finished, she was the one who fell asleep.
Over the next two weeks, he’d show up at her apartment or invite her to his, usually late at night. They rarely went out to dinner; they just drank wine and talked before heading to bed. Mornings, over coffee, were silent. She might have considered herself tangential to his life, except that in the middle of the night she’d wake to find him twined around her, his leg over her hip, his arm over her shoulder, the heat of his chest pressed against her back; or, as they lay side by side, he’d clutch her hand in his sleep; or he’d pull her to him, her head against his chest, and as she nestled there, he’d sigh.
Grace moved through these days in a fog, shrouded in secret emotion. With her patients she was kind and warm, trying to make up for her wandering attention, and if anything they seemed grateful when she dived back into the conversation sympathetically, probing the intricacies of their situations with inexhaustible thought and care. The only one who seemed to notice a change was Annie. Since the night she’d shown up at the apartment, she’d treated Grace with a familiarity that implied both trust and condescension. It was the ease of someone used to having hired help, the scornful confidence of a girl in her housekeeper. More open and less respectful, she knew now that she could get away with things, and it bothered Grace.
When she tried to get her to talk about how she was feeling about the decision she’d made, Annie asked her, “Are you pregnant?”
“Me? No,” Grace said, too surprised to say anything else. “Why do you ask that?”
“You look different,” Annie said, sprawled across a chair — she even sat differently now — with her legs flung over the side. “It’s like you gained weight, but in a good way.”
“And the first thing you associate with that is pregnancy,” Grace said, “rather than just plain good health. Why do you think that is?”
“God,” Annie said. “Take a compliment.”
“I wasn’t sure it was a compliment, at first.”
“Or maybe you’re in love.” She said this snidely, like a twelve-year-old boy.
“That’s beneath you, Annie,” Grace said.
This seemed to get her attention. She swiveled in her chair, sat up straight, and said, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Right. Therapy means never having to say you’re sorry.”
“You might have to, actually, maybe even a lot. But mostly you have to figure out why you did whatever you’re sorry about.”