But not tonight.
Tonight, she's at my table, and the dust is in my hair, and the day was good. Everything else can wait until morning.
I put it back where I keep it, and I get up to clear the plates.
She helps me with the dishes even though I tell her not to.
We stand at my sink, her washing and me drying because she won't let me do both, and our arms keep brushing, neither of us moving away from it.
The water shuts off.
She sets the last plate in the rack and doesn't turn around.
Her hands grip the edge of the counter, knuckles going pale, and I watch her shoulders rise and set like she's deciding something.
"Njal." She says it to the window over the sink, not to me.
I hang the towel on the oven door. "Yeah?"
Her thumb works a slow circle against the counter's edge. "Last night, you stopped."
I turn to face her back. "I did."
"Why?"
"Because grateful isn't you saying you were ready." I take a step toward her. "And I wanted you, Sophie. Last night, in thatrain, soaked through and shaking on my floor. I wanted you so bad it kept me up half the night. But I wasn't going to be one more person who took something from you while you were too wrecked to know what you were giving away."
She turns around then.
The kitchen light's behind her, and I can't read all of her face, but I can read the set of her jaw, the thing she does when she's about to say a sentence she's rehearsed.
"I'm not crying now," she says.
"No."
"And I'm not grateful. I mean, I am, but that's not—" She presses her lips together. "That's not whatthisis."
"Then tell me what it is." I keep my voice low and even, the way I keep it for skittish things. "Use the words, Sophie. I'm not going to guess for you. I'm not going to decide for you. You've had a whole life of people deciding what you're allowed to want."
Her chest moves.
"I want this," she says. "You. I want—I want to feel good, Njal. For one night, I want to feel good and not think about any of it. The school, the leave, my name, all of it just gone for a little while." Her eyes come up to mine. "I want you to be the thing I think about instead. Is that—am I allowed to want it like that? Just to feel good?"
Just to feel good.
I hear the distraction in it. I hear a woman with her life on fire reaching for the one warm thing in reach.
And I'm not too proud to be reached for.
But I'm not letting her walk out of my bed tomorrow thinking that's all it was, either.
"You're allowed," I tell her. "And yeah, I'll make you feel good. I'll make you forget your own name for a while if that's what you need tonight."
I close the space between us and get a hand into her hair, tilting her face up to mine.
"But don't you dare tell yourself in the morning it was only that. Because it isn't only that for me. You hear me?"
Her breath catches.