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There’s a difference between hearing your name and being given it.

Her hand works the base of me and her throat closes around the rest, and whatever I had left to hold with goes.

“Astrid.”

It’s the only warning I manage and she doesn’t want it. Her fist closes hard and her mouth stays exactly where it is, and I come in her mouth with my good hand fisted in her hair and her eyes on mine the whole way through it.

She takes all of it. She doesn’t hurry about that either.

The chord dies out on its own somewhere behind me.

I run my good hand through my hair.

I don’t know what to do with my hands.

Afterward she stands. She’s composed and I’m not, and she’s in no hurry to fix that.

“Come here,” I say, when I can. “Let me.”

“No.”

She takes my wrist and brings my hand down and puts both of hers against my face.

She waits until I look at her.

Then she kisses me.

Chapter thirty-three

Astrid

Colt is in St. Louis.

I know this from the schedule under the boot magnet on the refrigerator, which I have never been seen reading.

I am standing in the kitchen with one shoe off and one still on, and my phone goes.

“Astrid.”

“Gabi.”

“Put your shoes on. I’m outside.”

I go to the window. Her car is at the curb with the engine running and the dome light on, and she is looking at her phone as though she has been sitting there for some time.

“I did not ask you to come.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

I put the shoe back on.

At the door I type to him, because he will be on the bench in an hour and will check his phone at the first intermission whether or not anybody has written.

Out with Gabi. Back by ten.

I read it before I send it. No explanation of where I am sleeping. No question of whether he minds. Nothing about tomorrow.

Back.