Yes

'Yes,' Marten said. 'Yes. I love you.'

He'd thought he'd have to work up the courage to say it. Now the answer was there, and he didn't know why he'd spent weeks circling it. He pushed back his chair and took her hand. Fenna stood before he could ask.

They met beside the table. He laid his hand against her face. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and looked at him so directly that he couldn't imagine having wanted to do anything else. He kissed her.

It wasn't cautious enough to seem a question. He felt her take hold of him and moved closer. There was familiarity, the place of her hand against his neck, and something new because they couldn't leave it to speak for itself any more. They'd missed each other. Now he knew it from more than her words.

When they parted, her forehead stayed against his.

'That's my entire clever argument,' he said.

'Very clear.'

'I had more.'

'Later.'

She kissed him again. He felt her laughing against his mouth and held her tighter. They stood for a while beside a table with two unfinished plates, as though they'd forgotten how people normally got through an evening.

He wanted to take her straight to the bedroom. She seemed to want to take him somewhere too, but stayed where she was when he moved.

'Wait. I need to hear it again.'

'That I love you?'

'Yes.'

He said it again. She looked at him with a face that almost made him shy. He'd often watched her win things. Here she couldn't pretend she'd expected it all along.

'I want to be with you,' he said. 'I want to be your boyfriend. Even when you leave next week.'

'I started counting on evenings you'd never promised,' he said. 'Then I thought you ought to do something about it. I'll have that ordinary life here. I want it. But I don't want to keep you out because you can't be in it every day.'

'You don't have to pretend it'll never be difficult again.'

'I couldn't manage that anyway.'

She nodded. 'No. Nor could I.'

'I want you too.'

'I'd hoped so.'

She rubbed her thumb along his cheek. He turned his face and kissed her hand. She didn't grow solemn. She said his stubble prickled, then put her hand back in exactly the same place.

They returned to their chairs, closer than they needed to be for dinner. The food was less warm. Marten found that an excellent problem to have. Fenna took a bite, then looked at him again. He asked what.

'I'm glad you still look the same.'

'I've done my best.'

'Don't joke your way out of saying it.'

He put down his fork. 'I'm glad you're here.'

She nodded and looked at her plate. Close up he could see her briefly struggling with something as simple as swallowing. He kept his knee against hers. She ate on, and after a few bites leaned her shoulder against him.

He asked how the conversation with Naja had gone. Fenna described going to stand by the window even though she was only in her own living room. How she'd wanted to know where to park her car. He laughed and realised he could imagine her arrival without disappearing from the picture himself.

'I want to visit you there,' he said.

'I'd like that.'

'I can't come in the first week.'

'I know.'

He began again, less hurriedly. He wanted to come at the end of February. Out on Saturday, back on Monday. He needed to arrange that Saturday with Koen; they'd discussed how it worked only this morning. He couldn't have every weekend off. He did want to choose a date she could genuinely make free too.

Fenna took out her phone. They looked first at her programme, then the calendar. There was a weekend that could work if his job allowed it. She still had a session on Saturday. He said he could perfectly well spend two hours alone in a country where he didn't yet know all the supermarkets.

'That sounds difficult for you,' she said.

'I'll send pictures.'

They moved closer to look at the screen together. They found a journey they could each afford for themselves and immediately agreed that arriving somewhere in the middle of the night couldn't be called a bargain without counting everything that followed. They didn't book before his day off was agreed. But they put the weekend in both diaries.

'I'll come to you too,' Fenna said.

'I hope so.'

'Not because otherwise you'd do all the travelling. I want to be here again too. With you.'

He kissed her shoulder. It helped that she wanted it too, that he didn't first have to persuade her coming home needn't mean making her life smaller. She would discuss her programme with Naja, she said. Next time they could settle it together once those first weeks were clearer.

'I still want to wake up beside you,' he said.

'So do I, idiot.'

He laughed. She pulled him towards her by his shirt. It didn't solve every morning when they couldn't do that. But he no longer had to save the wish for a better future before he was allowed to say it.

They cleared the table. Fenna kept standing closer than she needed to put down a plate. When he turned by the sink, her hand was beneath the hem of his shirt. He rested his forehead against her temple.

'I'm not finished with you,' she said.

'That's good news.'

She drew him with her. In the bedroom he switched on the light and turned back to her. He wanted to see her. He'd spent the past days thinking so hard about her absence that the simple presence of her body overwhelmed him. Her shoulder beneath the fabric, the brief movement as she took her hair from her face, her look when she saw him watching.

'Come here,' she said.

He went to her. They had little patience with each other's clothes and laughed briefly because both wanted something at once. Then it grew calmer. He asked whether this was all right and felt her answer against his mouth. She could reach him without having to know everything in advance.

It hadn't erased those days or made it possible to pretend nothing had happened. He still felt fear when she wasn't holding him for a moment. She saw it, laid a hand on his chest and stayed. He kissed her until he heard her breathing change again. She said his name in a way that asked nothing of him except to be there.

When they lay beside each other later, for a moment he didn't know the time. He was on his back. Fenna had an arm over him and was looking at something by the window. He stroked her back. There was no hurry in the movement, which felt so new he wanted to draw her closer still.

'Will you stay?' he asked.

She turned her head. 'Yes.'

'I mean tonight.'

'So do I.'

She smiled and kissed him briefly. He pulled the duvet over them. Apparently the word stay could exist beside her departure without anyone having to explain immediately what kind of time it meant.

Later he turned towards her. She lay with one hand beneath her cheek and looked back. He knew there was something he had to say, though he had no idea what to say after it.

'I was angry because you wanted something I couldn't easily fit into,' he said. 'Then I acted as though you were doing something to me. It wasn't fair.'

Fenna nodded slowly. She brushed a hair from his face and lowered her arm again.

'It hurt,' she said.

'Yes. I know.'

He kissed her forehead and stayed beside her.

'I wanted to get back at you,' Fenna said. 'I thought it might help if I could say something that hurt you too.'

'It worked.'

'Yes.'

They lay without talking for a while. He put his hand on her hip. She moved towards him and pulled part of his pillow beneath her own head.

'I wouldn't have wanted to miss this,' she said. 'You. What we've had. Even if I'd known beforehand how awful that Sunday would be.'

He looked at her. That wasn't what he'd been telling himself over the past week. Every good memory had ended at the point where it all went wrong. She lay here, still thinking the good part belonged to them too.

'Nor would I,' he said.

Fenna kissed him. She held his face in her hands, then let her head sink back onto the pillow. He watched until she lifted a corner of her mouth and asked whether he intended to stare at her all night.

'Probably not all night.'

'You need to sleep now and then.'

'You're making it difficult.'

She pulled him against her. He let himself be drawn into a kiss that began much less softly than she'd just looked. He was still laughing when she drew him closer.

'I'm not suddenly good at missing you,' he said.

'Nor am I.'

'I found that very annoying this past week.'

'That I was bad at it too?'

'Mostly that you looked so good while I was feeling like that.'

She snorted with laughter and pushed him. He caught her hand, held it, and she moved closer again of her own accord.

When they got out of bed the living room was less tidy than they remembered. A serving dish still stood on the table. Fenna put on his shirt and went barefoot to the kitchen. She asked whether he wanted anything else. Before he could turn it into a joke, he said he wanted her here.

'That's a very unhelpful answer when I'm looking in the fridge.'

'There's bread.'

'There. Something I can work with.'

They ate at the table together. He watched her pick up a knife, hold the bread, lift a crumb from her plate with a fingertip. He wasn't trying to remember everything she did for later. He liked it now. They sat so close her elbow touched him when she moved her hand.

Fenna said her mother wanted to see the actual medal. Marten asked whether he could come when she took it to show her. She looked up.

'Yes. Of course.'

The answer was small and immediate. He hadn't first had to prove his worth before she left. He would sit there as her boyfriend. Someone would put food on the table and ask when he started. The thought made him so happy Fenna asked why he was looking like that.

'I can see us sharing a lot of meals.'

'You ask a lot.'

'I know.'

She laughed and pushed her plate a little away. She drew him up by the hand, asked whether he was coming with her again now, and didn't wait for a better line.