Page 58 of Crosswind

I look at the canal. I look at Patrick. I look at the canal.

"I'll think about it," I say.

"I'll think about it too," he says. He kisses me again, briefly, warm, entirely unbothered. "We'll figure it out."

He goes back to the sofa.

I stand in the kitchen for a moment.

Last two weeks of August.

We.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PATRICK

Jan chose Bali. He came back to me three days after the holiday conversation with a single word ‘Bali’ delivered in the tone he uses when he has reached a conclusion and is informing rather than discussing. I said yes immediately. He sat back down and opened his laptop.

That was, apparently, the whole decision.

Three weeks later Jan is on my lap.

This is the current situation. He is sitting sideways across my knees with his laptop open, researching something — Bali, I think, or possibly a specific temple complex, or possibly the optimal route between two locations given traffic patterns on a Tuesday in August, which is absolutely something Jan would be researching in advance of a trip that is still three weeks away.

I have my arms around him. My chin is on his shoulder. I am, if I am being entirely honest, not paying attention to whatever is on his screen. I am paying attention to Jan, who is warm and solid and entirely absorbed in the logistics of a holiday he is already approaching with the focus of someone planning a military operation, and I am thinking about the fact that this… this… Jan on my lap on a Thursday evening in his apartment, is the shape of my life now. Here is what I know, from the inside:

At some point in the last few months I stopped going to my own apartment. Not as a decision, I didn't sit down and decide that I lived at Jan's now. It just became true, the way certain things become true with Jan — without ceremony, without a named moment, one day simply the case. I noticed it for the first time when I realised I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept in my own bed. Then I noticed it a second time when I had to go back to my apartment for something and stood in the hallway and felt like a visitor.

That was the week before we booked Bali.

I have thought about what this means. What I want it to mean. Whether I should say anything or whether Jan will say something when he is ready to say it, which knowing Jan, will be after he has thought about it carefully for the appropriate amount of time and decided precisely what he wants and then stated it with the particular Jan directness that I have come to find one of my favourite things in the world.

I could move in. I would move in. If Jan asked me I would have my boxes out of that apartment within a week and I suspect nobody would notice the difference since most of them are probably still unpacked.

But that is a conversation for another time. Jan's time.

For now: Jan on my lap. Bali on his screen. His shoulder warm under my chin.

"You've been on that page for eight minutes," I say.

"I'm reading," he says. Not looking up.

"You read fast."

"I'm taking notes." He says it with the mild patience of someone explaining something obvious.

I look at the screen. Then at Jan — focused, efficient, entirely in it.

"Jan."

He glances up briefly. "Yes."

"We're going on holiday. Not submitting a report."

He doesn't look up. "There are seventeen significant temples in the Ubud region. I want to know which three are worth the journey and which ones are primarily for Instagram."

"They're all worth the journey," I say. Generously.