Tuesday Wasn't a Promise About Everything

Micah cancelled their Tuesday walk because his new placement needed a final visit before the paperwork was completed.

He told Leila on Sunday evening, two days ahead. He suggested Wednesday or Friday instead. He had done everything reasonably, which left her nowhere respectable to put the disappointment.

She wrote: Fine.

Then she stared at the word. It had become a small, portable lie she used in too many different situations.

She added: I was looking forward to it. Wednesday works after four.

He replied that he had been looking forward to it too. The exchange should have ended there.

On Monday, she saw a photograph on his sister's account. Micah was in Jean's garden, holding a tray of food while several relatives laughed at something outside the frame. The picture was from Sunday afternoon. There was no reason he should not have been there. Leila knew this. Still, the ease of it made something tighten beneath her ribs: a family gathering in a garden, food that had been cooked in a kitchen, a boy whose future was taking shape while hers still required waiting for a floor to be repaired.

She did not message him about the photograph. She became quieter in the messages they did exchange, which was worse because he could not know what he was supposed to answer.

On Wednesday, he met her by the library. They walked towards the river. For ten minutes they discussed his placement, her panels and a dog that appeared to be carrying a glove it had not been given permission to own. Then Micah stopped beside the railing.

“Have I done something?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then why does it feel like I'm apologising without knowing what for?”

Leila looked at the water. She could hear how unreasonable the truth would sound. That did not improve the version where she made him guess.

“I saw the picture from Sunday,” she said.

“What picture?”

“At your gran's. With your family.”

He frowned. “What about it?”

“Nothing about it. That's the problem. It was completely normal, and I was angry because it looked easy.”

He leaned against the railing, keeping a little distance between them.

“It wasn't particularly easy,” he said. “My uncle was late, my sister was arguing with her boyfriend on the phone, and Gran burned half the potatoes. But I know that's not the same as what you're dealing with.”

“I don't need you to list problems to make me feel better.”

“I'm not. I'm telling you a photograph isn't the whole afternoon.”

She stared at the trolley in the water beneath the bridge. More leaves had gathered around it since she came with Esme.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

His question was not harsh, but it made her look at him.

“Sometimes I feel as though you decide what my life means before I get to say anything about it,” he continued. “Like having a room means I can't understand being worried, or being pleased about Calder means I don't care whether I see you.”

Leila's face became hot.

“I don't think that.”

“Maybe not on purpose.”

The river moved beneath them, indifferent to whether either found the right sentence. Leila wanted to tell him he was being unfair. Instead she thought about how she had felt when a stranger's careful sympathy turned her into the girl in the hotel. She had been flattening him in the other direction, into the boy whose life was easy.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

He nodded but did not immediately take her hand. She was grateful for that later. At the time it made the apology feel frighteningly incomplete.

“I like you,” she said. “And I keep behaving as though liking someone means I have to know where they'll be every week so I can stop being surprised.”

“I can't promise that.”

“I know.”

“I can tell you when plans change. I can make other plans. I can show up when I say I will.”

“That's enough.”

“Is it?”

She considered the question properly.

“It needs to be. Not because you don't matter. Because I can't make you responsible for everything that keeps moving.”

He looked at her for a while, then held out his hand. She took it without treating the gesture as proof that the conversation was erased.

They walked farther along the river than planned. Micah told her about the garden design he wanted to learn and the practical part of the course that frightened him because he had never used the equipment before. She told him about being late to the gallery and how ashamed she had been of a mistake that could be described in a single ordinary sentence.

Neither story fixed the other. They made room for both.

At the bus stop, he asked whether she wanted him at the exhibition.

“Yes.”

“As a boyfriend, or an unpaid carrier of objects?”

She smiled. “Are you applying for both?”

“I'd like clarity on the duties.”

“Boyfriend,” she said, trying the word aloud. “No lifting requirement.”

He kissed her quickly before the bus arrived. She went upstairs with her hand still warm from his. At the first stop, she messaged Esme to say that apparently relationships involved conversations she could not rehearse correctly in advance.

Esme replied: Terrible design. Submit a complaint.