Nothing

Adam laughs.

It comes out of him tired and real, the kind of laugh that has nothing left to prove.

“Hold your horses.”

Mia raises an eyebrow. “That was not a no.”

“It wasn’t a yes either.” He drops his head against the back of the couch. “Mia. I just spent the night fucking my ex in every position you pointed me at while you sat there giving notes. I came in her. I came in her mouth. I woke up and came in you. I am worn out. I want to be with my wife now. Not draft a roster.”

Mia watches him for a second, then laughs too. It breaks the last of the night’s heat into something ordinary.

“So the man who grinned through his own reviews is suddenly shy.”

“I’m not shy. I’m empty.” He squeezes her ankle. “You asked who I want next like I have a list in my phone. I want you. On this couch. In the kitchen. Doing nothing. I want a day that does not include another woman walking into our apartment.”

“You liked it.”

“I liked it,” he says, without flinching. “You liked it more than you thought you would, and I liked watching you like it. That doesn’t mean I want to start interviewing candidates before I’ve had breakfast.”

Mia traces a circle on his knee with her toe. “I wasn’t booking anyone. I was asking.”

“I know what you were asking.” He looks at her. “And I’m telling you the truth. If you put a name in front of me right now I would not do it justice. I would think about you the whole time and resent the question. Give me today.”

She leans in and kisses him, slow, no audience in it.

“Today,” she says. “You’re mine. No list.”

“Thank god.”

They get up eventually. The apartment looks like a night happened in it and then decided to become a Sunday. Mia strips the bed while Adam makes more coffee. They don’t talk about Lana in the bedroom. They don’t not talk about her either. Her name sits in the rooms and they step around it like furniture they are not ready to move.

In the kitchen he comes up behind her at the sink and puts his mouth on her shoulder.

“You’re going to ask me again tonight,” he says.

“Probably.”

“I’m going to say the same thing if my legs still don’t work.”

Mia smiles at the window. “Then I’ll wait until they do.”

The day stretches in small pieces. Groceries. Laundry. A nap they both fall into without meaning to, her hand on his chest, his hand in her hair. Late afternoon they cook something easy and eat it on the couch with their feet tangled. Every so often Mia looks at him like she is still seeing last night, and he looks back like he knows.

“You’re quiet,” he says once.

“I’m happy,” she says. “That’s different.”

Evening comes in through the same window Lana’s cab left by.

They are on the couch again, half-watching something neither of them could name, when the doorbell rings.

Mia frowns. “Did you order anything?”

“No.”

She gets up, still in his shirt, and goes to the door. She opens it without checking the peephole.

Whatever she expected, it is not this.

The look on her face goes blank, then stunned.

“Oh,” she says.