The Distance Between Them

The screen went dark in Toria's hand.

Four digits stood between her and the truth. She tried his birthday. Wrong. She tried hers. Wrong, of course. Why would he ever use hers?

The shop bell chimed.

Chriss filled the kitchen doorway, breathing hard. He crossed the room in three strides and took the phone from her fingers. He didn't look at it. He looked at her.

"What did you read?"

"Enough." Her voice shook. "Told me what?"

A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Not here."

"Then where?"

"Not tonight." He pocketed the phone. For one second he looked almost afraid. "Please, Toria."

Please. He had never said it before. It frightened her more than any threat.

She slept in the guest room that night, with the door locked.

She woke in the wrong bed.

Cream sheets. Their bedroom. Chriss's side was empty, but the pillow still held the dent of his head, and the sheets were warm. She was still in yesterday's dress. He had moved her in the night and slept beside her. He hadn't touched her.

She sat up and the room swung.

She gripped the headboard until the floor stopped tilting. When had she last eaten a real meal? Days. Her stomach growled, then clenched.

Downstairs, she tried to make toast. The smell of melting butter hit her like a fist. She barely reached the sink before she was gagging, one hand flat on the cold counter.

Her eyes drifted to the calendar on the fridge. She counted. Counted again.

No. No, no, no.

Nine days late.

She thought of two pink lines six months ago. The blood. The relief, and the shame that came after it. Terror and something dangerously close to hope tangled in her chest, and she couldn't tell which was which.

Not now. Not like this.

She fled to the only place that had ever been hers.

The sunroom at the back of the house was small and unglamorous, and she had never invited anyone into it. Pliers lay in a neat row. Silver wire coiled in jars. Sketchbooks were stacked beside a lamp, and on the bench a half-finished ring waited, a tiny moonstone caught in a cage of silver leaves.

She sat, picked up a file, and let her hands remember what to do. For ten minutes the nausea eased and the world narrowed to the width of a ring.

"What is this?"

She nearly dropped the file.

Chriss stood in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, holding one of her sketchbooks open. He turned a page. Another. His brows drew together.

"Give that back."

"You made these?" He lifted the ring from the bench and turned it in the light. "Toria. These are good."

Her face burned. "It's a hobby."

"This isn't a hobby. Who taught you?"

"Nobody. Videos. Since I was fifteen." She snatched the ring back. "Why do you care?"

"Because I didn't know." He said it like an accusation, but it landed like a confession. "Eighteen months. I didn't know you did this. You should show it to someone. A professional. Someone who'll tell you what it's worth."

Something inside her snapped, bright and hot.

"You didn't know because you never asked. And now you stand in my room and decide I'm interesting?" She stood, trembling. "Fine. A test. When is my birthday?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

"March?"

"June ninth."

"Toria"

"My favourite colour. My favourite food. Do I take sugar in my tea?"

Silence. A clock ticked somewhere in the house.

"Your mother is allergic to shellfish," she said, quiet and merciless. "You hate coriander. Gabe's wife is expecting twins in spring. You sleep on your left side, and you have never once told another living soul when you are sad. Eighteen months, Chriss. I paid attention. I paid so much attention it hurt."

He stared at her as though she had hit him again.

Then he crossed the room and stopped a breath away. She felt the heat of him, and hated that her body remembered it.

"I know what I don't know," he said, low. "Let me learn."

"You can't learn me with a hand on my back." But her voice had thinned.

"Then tell me what I got wrong."

The truth rose before she could stop it. "You have never kissed me."

He went still.

"Not at the altar. Not on our wedding night. You turned off the light and did what you came to do, and I lay there afterwards thinking, what is wrong with me?" Her eyes burned. "Do you know what that does to a woman?"

"I know," he said hoarsely. "I know exactly, because I did it on purpose." His throat worked. "I was angry. I felt trapped. And you were the only person in the room I could punish."

The words hung there, ugly and honest.

"I'm sorry," he said.

And then he kissed her.

It was slow, unsteady and nothing like she'd imagined. His hand slid into her hair and her fingers closed on his shirt before she'd decided anything at all. The sketchbooks scattered. The ring rolled off the bench and she did not hear it land. She thought, dizzily: this is what I wanted. This is the whole thing I wanted.

Afterwards, in the cream…coloured quiet of the bedroom, his arm lay heavy across her waist. She let herself breathe. She let herself think, just once: maybe.

His palm drifted down to rest low on her stomach.

"Perhaps this time," Chriss murmured. "A son."

The word went through her like cold water.

She lay perfectly still while the warmth drained out of her, inch by inch. The kiss. The apology. The tenderness. It had all been walking toward this sentence.

She stared at the ceiling and understood. Nothing had changed. Nothing, except that now she knew exactly how much it could hurt to be held by someone who was counting.

And under her ribs, something she hadn't told him yet began, impossibly, to matter.