Chapter 10: In Your Own Voice

I took the card out of his wet fingers.

His handwriting is small and square. He writes like he's signing a lease.

A MAN WHO WAS WRONG FOR TWO YEARS. A DOORWAY. FIRST LINE: "I'm sorry."

I read it twice.

The rain came down between us, hard enough to bounce off the sidewalk.

[HE WROTE HER A CARD]

[the fridge wrote a card. the fridge is LEARNING]

"You said no more cards," he said.

"I said I wasn't writing them."

"So I wrote one."

"You're soaking wet."

"I've been out here twenty minutes. I couldn't decide on the place."

"You picked a doorway."

"I was standing in it."

I laughed. I didn't mean to.

He took that as the cue. He always knew a cue.

"I'm sorry," he said.

His voice did the thing it only ever did inside a card.

It went low and rough.

"I'm sorry for every Friday. I'm sorry I cut my food. I'm sorry you had to look at me to see if I'd say something, and I never said anything."

My hand was shaking on the card.

"I'm sorry I made you a hobby," he said. "You were never a hobby."

[I'M SOBBING]

[this is not in the book. none of this is in the book]

He was close now. One step up from the sidewalk.

Rain was dripping off his jaw onto my robe.

"That's a good line," I said. "Who wrote it?"

"Hen."

"Because it reads like you wrote it with a card in your hand."

He kissed me.

Or I kissed him. I don't know who moved first.

The doorframe was at my back, his wet coat against my front, his mouth hot on mine after twenty minutes of cold rain.

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since the dresser.

It felt like a year.

He kissed me.

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