Page 96 of Crosswind

"Of course," I say. "We'll make it work… Christmas with my parents, then here. Or the other way around. We'll figure it…”

I stop.

Jan has stopped walking.

He is looking at me with the expression he has when something has landed and he doesn't know what to do with it yet.

"What," I say.

"You just said we," he says.

“I…” I think about this. "Yes." A pause. "You didn't think we were spending Christmas separately, I hope. I don't even want to hear the answer to that, actually…”

He elbows me in the ribs.

I make a sound that is, I am aware of this, considerably more dramatic than the situation requires.

"Patrick," he says.

"That hurt," I say.

"It did not."

"It did a little."

He looks at me. The corner of his mouth. "We hadn't talked about it," he says. "That's all."

"We're talking about it now," I say.

"Yes," he says. "We are."

He takes my hand again and we walk and I am, quietly and completely, the happiest I have ever been on a pavement in Brno.

I hold his hand the rest of the way back to the hotel and feel something very large and warm and simple that I have no intention of qualifying.

— — —

Sunday morning, before we fly back.

Jan takes me to the castle.

Just the two of us, the October morning, the hill above the city. Jan walks beside me and points at things without needing to explain them — this is where the markets were, this is the view I used to look at on Saturday mornings, this is the city that was mine before I had to learn to leave it.

We stand at the top and look down at Brno spread below us.

"I used to come here," he says. "When things were bad. It helped to be up high. To see how small everything was."

I stand beside him and look at the city and think about a boy with a list and one suitcase and a self-containment built, stone by stone, out of necessity.

"Thank you for bringing me here," I say.

He looks at me.

"Thank you for coming," he says. Simply.

I take his hand.

We stand at the top of the castle hill above the city that made Jan Novak and I hold his hand and the October morning does its quiet thing around us.