Page 98 of Crosswind

"Some airlines have seats that convert into a double bed," I say. "Side by side. No console. Fully flat." I pause. "That's what I'm researching. I want us next to each other the whole flight."

He is quiet for a moment.

"You're going to research this for weeks," he says.

"However long it takes," I say. "The product has to be right."

"I'm perfectly fine in economy," he says.

"I know," I say. "You don't have to be."

Jan looks at the ceiling of the Vienna airport lounge. But he is smiling. The real one, the quiet one, the one he keeps.

"New Zealand," he says.

"New Zealand," I confirm.

I take his hand across the table and we sit in the Sunday afternoon and drink our respective hot drinks and I feel, simply and completely, that everything is exactly as it should be.

CHAPTER NIGHTEEN

JAN

I have been thinking about it for three weeks. This is not unusual — I think about most things for longer than strictly necessary before saying them, which Patrick finds simultaneously endearing and maddening and which I have decided is simply how I operate. But this particular thing I have been turning over with care, because it involves Patrick's life and Patrick's choices and I have learned, with him, to be careful about the difference between what I want and what I should ask for.

The facts, as I have assembled them:

Patrick's apartment on the Czaar Peterstraat has been empty since approximately May. His rent is paid monthly by direct debit. His post goes there. Occasionally, two or three times in the last six months, he has gone back to collect something he needed and returned the same day. As far as I can determine, he has not slept there since July, and even before that only technically.

His things are here. His tea is in the third drawer. His clothes occupy a significant portion of my wardrobe. His charger is on my nightstand. His running shoes are in my hallway. His books are on my shelf between my finance texts — biographies, mostly, a few narrative non-fiction. We have been sleeping in the same bed for seven months.

He is, in any meaningful sense, already here.

He is also paying rent on an apartment he does not live in.

I am Head of Finance. I find this objectively inefficient.

It happens on a Thursday evening.

Patrick is looking for something a jacket, he thinks it might still be at his apartment, and he mentions, in passing, that he should probably go by on the weekend and check. He says it the way he has been saying these things for months: lightly, practically, as if the existence of a separate apartment is simply a logistical fact and not the thing I have been thinking about for three weeks.

I look up from my laptop. He is still looking at his phone, already mentally planning the weekend errand, entirely unaware of what I have been sitting with for three weeks.

"Patrick," I say.

He looks up. "Yeah."

I close the laptop. "You don't have to keep doing that."

He looks at me.

"Going back," I say. "For things. Or for any other reason." I close the laptop. "You don't live there. You live here. I've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and it makes no sense to maintain two apartments when you're in this one and the other one is empty." I look at him. "Move in. Properly. If you want to."

He is very still.

"I mean…” I stop. "I've thought about this carefully. I wouldn't say it if I hadn't. It's the correct decision. It doesn't make financial sense to…”

"Jan," he says.