Page 128 of Full Contact

She almost smiled. “Then I’m doing nothing.”

“Good call.”

“I guess we wait to see if she does it again.”

“She won’t do it on purpose,” I said.

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Leah said.

***

At home, I changed into worn jeans and the gray sweater with the frayed cuff that Felix had twice insisted I retire. I poured the soup into a saucepan and set the burner on low.

It was already dark. My phone buzzed.

Trier: Cross’s dinner is off. Their youngest has a fever. Anna says she can stay late. Would you like company?

I could picture him already. He’d hang up his coat and go to the windows the way he always did, as though he worried that the lake might have moved since his last visit. Then he’d turn around and tell me something ridiculous Varga had said at practice.

Mark: Yes. Come.

Trier: What are you eating?

Mark: Soup. There’s enough for two.

Trier: I’ll stop at the Greek place by your building. What do you want with the soup?

The soup had just begun to steam around the edges.

Mark: Pastitsio.

Trier: Twenty-five minutes.

I turned off the burner to wait for the pastitsio.

Trier arrived with a paper bag in his hand and snow melting in his hair. He was wearing the deep green sweater, the one I’d first seen the day Carla approved everything.

I kissed him before I took the bag.

“Hey,” he said. He hung up his coat and walked past me to the windows. He looked out at the black water and the lights strung along Lake Shore Drive for a moment, then turned around. “Varga has decided Rook’s retirement gift should be a boat.”

“Does Rook want a boat?”

“No. Varga says that’s how you know it’s a gift.”

I turned the heat back on under the soup, and I put the pastitsio in the oven on low to keep warm. We ate at the walnut table, Trier in the chair beside mine.

“I’m still trying to conquer the orange route under the overhang,” I said. “The bottom half is generous, but I keep arriving at the next section with my weight in the wrong place, reaching for a hold that’s just beyond me.”

“Where are your feet when you start the reach?”

Nobody had asked me that. Felix had told me I was hauling.

“Too low,” I said. “Both of them. I think I’m—“ I shifted on the chair to show him and brought one knee up toward the table edge, which was closer than I’d judged. Trier caught my knee in one hand before it connected.

“Like that?”

“Roughly. With a wall instead of furniture.”