Page 79 of Crosswind

He looks at me. "You took the afternoon off."

"And Friday."

He stares at me. “What… why? Is everything okay? Did something happen?"

"Everything is fine," I say. I put my bag down. "I have enough vacation days. I planned this."

"You planned taking days off." He says it the way he says things he is still assembling slowly, turning each piece over.

"Yes."

"In advance." He looks at me steadily.

"Wednesday evening."

He is looking at me with the expression of someone who has several follow-up questions and cannot decide which one to ask first. "What happened to responsible Jan who treats annual leave like an emergency measure."

"That Jan," I say, "got something…” I stop. "Someone. More important than work in his life."

He goes very still.

I go to the kitchen to put the kettle on and I hear nothing behind me for a moment — a silence that means something has landed. I fill the kettle. I don't turn around yet. I give him the moment.

"We have a spa appointment at two," I say.

I turn around.

He is still in the same spot. Jaw slightly tight. Eyes bright. The expression of someone trying not to make too much of something and not entirely succeeding.

"Couples massage," I say. "Full body. Facial. Barber treatment after. We should leave by one-thirty."

He is looking at me with the expression of someone who is not yet sure what to do with what he has just been given.

"It's not complicated," I say.

He looks at me for a long moment. "It's not complicated," he says. "It means a lot. Those aren't the same thing."

"I know," I say. "That's why I planned it."

He crosses the kitchen and puts his arms around me — properly, both arms, his face in my neck. I feel him breathe out against my shoulder. I put my arms around him and let it be what it is.

"Don't make a thing of it," I say.

"I'm making a thing of it," he says. And kisses me.

— — —

The spa is good.

I have not been to a spa before, which Patrick finds remarkable and I find simply a fact — I have never had a reason to go to a spa, which is different from not wanting to. The massage therapists are professional and entirely unbothered, which I had confirmed in advance.

Patrick is on the table beside me. Within approximately four minutes he is completely unconscious — the surrender of someone who has been carrying more tension than he admitted. I listen to his breathing slow and feel my own shoulders doing something I didn't know they were doing, which is: holding. Everything. All the time. The massage therapist works through it and I look at the ceiling and find that here, beside Patrick's slow breathing, I can think about nothing.

Forty minutes later I am not entirely sure I am still a solid object.

The facials happen. Then the barber, Patrick in the chair, the full process, and I sit and watch and he catches my eye in the mirror.

"Jan," he says.