67

Marianna.

Silence. The good kind. The kind that's full instead of empty.

Outside, Montreal is doing its nighttime thing—quiet but present, the city's breathing just audible through the window. The candle throws slow shadows on the bathroom wall.

"Marco's in 308," I say, because apparently I cannot help myself.

"I'm aware."

"He would—" I stop. "If he knew. He would—"

"I know."

"We're going to have to—"

"I know," Duane says. His thumb traces a small circle on the back of my hand. "Not tonight."

"Not tonight," I agree.

Another silence.

"Duane?"

"Mm."

"Why paper airplanes?"

A beat. The deciding-whether-to-tell-the-truth beat.

"My father used to make them," he says. The words come out even. Controlled. But with something underneath—a specific gravity that tells me this is a real answer, not a deflection. "When I was young. Before—" He stops. "He'd fold them from whatever was nearby. Napkins. Receipts. He said the point wasn't the paper. It was the arc. That you could take something flat and give it direction."

I'm very still.

"He gave me one the morning of my first kart race," Duane continues. "Said to throw it when I got nervous. Watch it fly. Remember that everything flat can be given direction if you fold it right."

I turn my head to look at him. His profile in the amber light. The sharp jaw. The eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"How old were you?" I ask.

"Seven."

"And your first race?"

"Eight." A pause. "He died three weeks later."

My chest does something that doesn't have a clinical name.

I turn onto my side. Face him. He's still looking at the ceiling.

"The paper airplanes," I say quietly. "You've been making them since—"

"Since I was eight, yes."

"And you throw them at my window at 2 AM."

"When I have something to say that I don't have words for," he says. Matter-of-fact. Accurate. "Yes."

I look at him for a long moment. At this man who has been carrying his father in folded paper for eighteen years and never told anyone and just told me in a vanilla-scented hotel room in Montreal while his best friend sleeps three floors below.

I reach out. Put my hand on his chest. Over his heartbeat.

He goes very still.

"Thank you," I say. "For telling me that."

His hand comes up. Covers mine. Presses it closer.

We stay like that for a long time.

His heartbeat under my palm. Slow. Steady. The specific rhythm of someone who has finally, actually let go of something.

The candle is burning lower in the bathroom—I can see it in my peripheral vision, the amber light doing its slow, inevitable diminishing, the shadows on the wall softening as the flame shrinks. There's maybe twenty minutes left in it. Maybe less.

I don't move.

He doesn't move.

The vanilla is still in the air but gentler now, less present, the way a feeling becomes background once you've stopped being afraid of it.

I'm watching the candle shadows on the bathroom wall when he shifts.

Just slightly. Just enough that his mouth finds my forehead.

Not a kiss, exactly. More like— a press. His lips against my hairline, right above the fading scar from the stitches, and he stays there. Breathing. His breath is warm against my skin, slow and even, and I feel it more than hear it—the soft exhale that says I'm here, I'm still here, this is still happening.

Then he turns his face slightly. His mouth moves to my temple. My hair.

And he just— stays there. His nose against my hair. Breathing me in with the unhurried quality of someone who has nowhere to be and has decided this is where he wants to be anyway.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

Against my ear.

I close my eyes.

This is the most intimate thing that's ever happened to me.

This is the thing I didn't know I was missing.

"Your heartbeat is slower," I whisper. "Than usual."

A pause. His breath continues, warm and steady.

"How do you know what my usual is?" he murmurs. Against my hair. The words are barely sound—more vibration than voice.

"I've had my hand on your chest before," I say. "Professionally."

"Mm."

"It was faster then."

"Different context."

"Is it slower now because you're relaxed or because you're tired?"

His chest moves under my palm. A small exhale. Almost a laugh.

"Both," he says.

"Clinically speaking, that's a good sign. Resting heart rate is an indicator of—"

"Marianna."

"I know. No narrating."

"Go to sleep," he says. Into my hair. Soft and low, the voice he uses at 3 AM, the voice that doesn't belong to Formula 1 or press conferences or the cold public face of Duane Richter Three-Time World Champion.

Just him. Just this.

"The candle's almost out," I say.

"I know."

"It's been a good candle."

"It has."

Another slow exhale against my ear. I feel my own breathing begin to match his without deciding to—that automatic synchronization that happens when two nervous systems have been in close proximity long enough. My inhale when he inhales. My exhale following his.

The amber light on the bathroom wall gets smaller.

Smaller.

He presses his lips to my temple once more. Stays there. His breath warming my skin.

"Sleep," he says again. Barely audible. The word dissolving into the dark.

The candle goes out.

I wake up at 5 AM.

The room is dark now, the candle long finished, the Montreal pre-dawn doing something blue and early through the curtains.

Duane is asleep.

This is—I don't have a category for this. I've seen him unconscious in the technical sense, the restless non-sleep of someone whose brain doesn't fully power down. But this is different. His face in sleep has lost the last layer of control, the final piece of armor, and what's underneath is—

Younger. Simpler. A face that remembers being seven at a karting track with a paper airplane and a father who is about to leave.

I watch him for approximately thirty seconds. Which is twenty-nine seconds longer than I should.

Then I get up. Find my clothes—mostly unfolded, which I take as a personal victory. Dress in the blue pre-dawn quiet.

I write on a piece of hotel notepad. Fold it.

Not as well as he does. My folds are uneven, my creases approximate, my wingspan asymmetric in a way that would make an aeronautical engineer cry.

But it's an airplane.

Sort of.

I set it on the pillow beside him.

Take a photo of the St. Lawrence through the window because the early light is doing something I want to remember.

And go back to my room—room 219, standard, no river view—to shower and pack and be a professional adult who is in Montreal for work purposes.

My phone buzzes when I'm in the elevator.

Duane: Your airplane would not achieve meaningful lift.

I smile so hard my stitches pull slightly.

Me: It's the thought that counts.

Duane: The thought was crooked.

Me: The thought was genuine.

A pause.

Duane: Yes. It was.

I step out of the elevator on the second floor.

Lean against the wall.

Feel the specific, terrifying, wonderful weight of something that's becoming real.

Me: Flight's at 11.

Duane: I know.

Me: Marco's at breakfast downstairs.

Duane: I know.

Me: We're going to have to—

Duane: I know, Marianna.

Me: Okay.

Duane: Okay.

A beat.

Duane: The airplane is very bad.

Me: I KNOW.

Me: I'm not an engineer.

Duane: I could teach you.

Something in my chest does that thing. The full thing. The lamp-in-a-dark-room thing.

Me: Yeah?

Duane: Next time.

Next time. Like it's certain. Like it's already planned. Like the future contains this, contains us, contains vanilla candles and asymmetric paper airplanes and the long grammar of learning another person.

Me: Next time, I say.

I push off the wall.