Chapter 6: Two Lines

For ten days Gavin and I had been polite.

We ate breakfast across a marble island and passed the salt.

He left at seven, came home at nine, and said good night through a door with a brass lock.

Neither of us said the word bird.

Now I stood in my bathroom holding two pink lines and shaking.

I'd taken the test early because I couldn't wait for the clinic's blood draw.

I took a second one, from the other box.

Same lines.

I opened my door and walked down the hall in my bare feet, past a painting of a ship, and knocked on his.

He opened it in grey sweatpants, with his hair standing up and a razor in his hand.

"Vera. Is it Mila?"

"No."

I held out the stick.

He looked at it for a long time.

The razor clattered into the sink.

"That's two lines," he said.

"That's two lines."

"Is that the one that means yes?"

"It's the one that means yes."

He sat down on the floor.

Not the edge of the bed, not a chair, but the carpet of the hallway, with his back against the doorframe and his hands hanging off his knees.

I had never seen a man sit down like that, as if somebody had cut a string.

"I didn't think it would work," he said.

"Thanks."

"No. I mean I didn't think I would be allowed."

"Allowed by who?"

He shook his head and pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes.

I knelt in front of him in my nightshirt.

"Gavin."

"Give me a minute."

"You've got all morning. It's Sunday."

He laughed, wet and cracked, and put his forehead against mine, and we stayed like that, breathing, two people who weren't supposed to be touching.

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