Page 27 of Crosswind

"It's his thing to say. Not mine."

He looks at me. "The old Jan would have needed to know every word in advance."

I consider this. "The old Jan didn't have Patrick."

Something shifts in Tomas's face. "No," he says. "He didn't."

We eat the pastries and talk about ordinary things until the bedroom door opens.

Patrick comes out in his shirt from this morning, hair slightly wrong, the expression of someone who has just done something difficult and is on the other side of it. He stops when he sees Tomas.

"Oh… sorry, I didn't know…”

"Patrick," I say, "this is Tomas. My closest friend. Tomas, Patrick."

Patrick crosses the room and shakes Tomas's hand with the ease he brings to everything social. "I've heard a lot about you," he says.

"Likewise," Tomas says. He is doing the thing he does when he is assessing someone — present, attentive, giving nothing away.

"How did it go?" I ask Patrick.

"Good, I think." He runs a hand through his hair. "Third take. I didn't want a whole long video… just a few minutes, Instagram and Shorts. The first two takes were too rehearsed." He looks at me. "The third one just came out."

"Okay," I say.

He looks at me for a moment with the look he has when he wants to say something and decides the room isn't right for it. Then he turns to Tomas. "Do you want coffee? I can't personally vouch for it but Jan seems very serious about it."

"I have some," Tomas says. "Thank you."

"I'm going to go for a run," Patrick says. He picks up his jacket from the hook. Then he pauses, comes back to the kitchen, and stands beside me for a moment. He puts his hand on the back of my neck, warm, unhurried, and I feel him look at me the way he looks at things he wants to remember.

"You okay?" he says. Quietly. Just for me.

"Yes," I say.

He holds my gaze for a moment. Then he kisses me, not briefly, properly, both hands on my face, like Tomas isn't there, like the kitchen isn't there, like there is nothing more pressing in the world than this specific moment, and then he pulls back and says: "Call me after you watch it."

"Okay," I say.

He looks at me once more. Then he nods at Tomas. "Good to meet you." And he goes.

The door closes.

Tomas and I sit in the kitchen in the silence that follows.

Then Tomas says: "Jan."

I look up.

"Yes."

"That man is completely crazy about you." He says it simply, not as a revelation but as a fact he has been sitting on and has decided to put on the table.

I look at my coffee. My hands around the cup.

"Jan." His voice is gentle. Not pressing. Just present.

"Yes," I say. Simply. Because it is simply true and Tomas has earned the truth and there is no useful reason to complicate it.