Page 12 of Crosswind

It's good. I tell him so once, which is sufficient.

He smiles at his plate.

We eat. We talk about small things and then larger things and then small things again, the way conversations go when there is enough space in them. At some point the plates are empty and neither of us has moved to clear them.

He has gone quiet.

I know this quiet. Patrick is not a quiet person by default, he fills space warmly, easily, without effort. When he goes quiet it is because something is occupying him that he hasn't said yet. I have been watching this particular quiet build for the last twenty minutes and I have been waiting for it to resolve.

I wait.

"I leave Tuesday," he says. "Cape Town layover. Three days on the ground."

"I know," I say. He told me the roster.

He looks at his glass. Then at me. "I don't want to go without you."

The room is quiet.

"I've done the route a dozen times," he says. "Hotel, gym, too much time in my own head. It's never bothered me before." He holds my gaze. "It bothers me now."

I look at him. At the honesty he brings to things like this — no performance, no hedging, just Patrick saying what is true.

"Come to Cape Town," he says. "Tuesday. Three days. Come with me."

I am quiet for a moment.

I think about the quarterly report, which is due Thursday. I think about the leave I haven't checked. I think about the other hemisphere and the forty-three countries Patrick has been to and the particular Atlantic light I have seen in photographs and never in reality.

"I've never been to Cape Town," I say.

He stares at me for exactly one second. Then he is across the table.

"Then you have to go," he says. "Jan. It's … the mountain, the light, the Atlantic, there is nothing like it. I've done the route twelve times and I still—" He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. "I can see if I can extend the layover. Stay through Saturday, come back Sunday morning. That's five days. I can make some calls—" He pauses. The expression of someone who has just thought of something they find very amusing. "And I'll be there. You like watching me."

"Patrick."

"—the hotel is good, I know the area, there's a place on the waterfront I've been wanting to—"

"Patrick."

He stops. Looks at me. He is bright with it — the planning, the wanting, the way he gets when something has made him happy and he hasn't yet decided to moderate it.

"I'll sort it with my team tomorrow," I say.

"Jan."

"I'll sort it with my team," I say, "and then I'll pack."

He reaches across the table and takes my hand. I let him. Outside the canal is dark and the city is quiet and in forty-eight hours I will be on a plane to Cape Town and none of this is something I planned.

Tuesday.

We leave my apartment at eight. The alarm was at six-thirty. I woke up beside him for the fourth morning and found it no less significant than the first.

He is in uniform when we leave. I have seen him in it before, he came straight from Singapore on Friday, but there is something different about watching him put it on in my bedroom, check his bag in my hallway, become this version of himself from the inside of my apartment. He is the same Patrick who fell asleep on my sofa on Saturday. He is also this.

We take the train together. He has his crew bag. I have my carry-on. We sit side by side and he talks about the route — the approach into Cape Town, the mountain that appears suddenly on descent, what the Atlantic looks like from altitude at that latitude. I listen with full attention and look out of the train window and think about the fact that I am going to Cape Town on Tuesday because Patrick Sutton didn't want to go without me, which is a fact I have been sitting with since Sunday evening and which has not yet become ordinary.