Work Text:
Drink deep, my love, for the water is gasping for your mouth
—L.V.
⁂
A few passengers gasp audibly when the plane dips. Dana isn’t one of them—she wasn’t jolted from sleep when the altitude shift happened, and she’s used to sudden surprises, and she’s practically too tired to move or react or care. Later, days after the trip, she and Robby will think to look up what happens when a plane seems to briefly lose its ability to stay suspended in the air. They’ll learn that in reality, a perceptible dip in altitude is almost never as dramatic as it feels. If no one goes flying, if the contents of the tray tables don’t hit the ceiling, then the drop amounts to a distance of several feet, or dozens of feet—certainly not hundreds, certainly not miles.
But now, in the middle of this nonstop from Pittsburgh to Seattle, hoping the pilot is successfully maintaining the plane’s position at approximately 40,000 feet, and with days to go before acquiring more data points about the relative safety of air travel, Dana’s stomach swoops when the plane dips again. This time, she gasps. So does Robby. And then he takes her hand, their fingers slotted together as if they’re lovers instead of work friends. Well. Friends who met at work.
It’s almost immediately silly—their hands clasped in the general vicinity of the armrest when it’s clear that absolutely nothing is wrong. Dana steals a glance at Robby, who’s looking down at their intertwined fingers with a faint little smile. When he clocks her looking at him, he meets her gaze and starts to pull his hand away. But she doesn’t want him to let go, not when she’s just started to notice she’s enjoying the warmth. She shakes her head no, the movement only slight, and holds on more tightly so he gets the message.
“I don’t fly much,” she says. “Not that I’m nervous.” She sighs. “Benji was a big road trip guy.”
Benji is a big road trip guy, Dana supposes. It’s not like he died. But she won’t be his co-pilot ever again, fiddling with the A/C controls because she’s always too hot then too cold then too hot again, maintaining the ideal Spotify queue because she needs variety while he’s content to stick to Springsteen’s greatest hits, taking a driving shift only when he admits his eyelids are too heavy to safely go on.
The divorce is the reason she’s here in the first place. It’ll be final within the next couple of months. All through the separation, she and Benji have kept telling their friends it’s amicable, that it’s absolutely fine to invite them both to cookouts and potlucks, that nothing really has to change that much. But the awkward quiet that overtook their marriage after nearly forty years of constant banter? The whiplash of daughters giving her the silent treatment one week and yelling at her for breaking up the family the next, loading her up with all their heartbreak and disappointment just like daughters have done to mothers for centuries? Sleeping alone in the narrow, unnervingly creaky rowhouse apartment she’s renting near the hospital? It doesn’t feel that amicable. And it feels like quite a change.
Dana’s friends have questioned why she had to move out of the house in the ‘burbs when she’s the one who’d planted all those roses, made all those block-party friends, ensured the girls posed together on the front porch every first day of school. She’s told every one of them the truth behind amicable and mutual and nothing having to change: she left the house because it was her decision.
She doesn’t always add that she left because she returned to work from health leave two months after Pittfest and Benji refused to understand why she needed to. That she left because the part of her that wanted to leave was stronger than the many parts that didn’t. It wasn’t just that he wanted her to retire, or find something less dangerous, or how he kept saying they could do just fine on his income, or the way his habit of showing concern was so aggressive it didn’t leave any room for you to actually explain how you were feeling. She could have handled all that—and had handled all that for a couple years before Pittfest threw their challenges into sharper relief. And it wasn’t that she didn’t love him. They’d raised three girls together, and done a damn good job of it, and she couldn’t imagine a world in which she stopped loving him completely after they’d been through so much together. The problem was that she knew deep in her soul that the person she’d become was someone who disappointed him, but she wasn’t disappointed in herself.
She’d tried until the end, though. And it’s a funny trick of the universe that her trying so hard on the marriage is the reason she’s on vacation—God, a fucking vacation—with Robby in the first place. She’d taken this week, the last week in May, off work months ago, planning to surprise Benji with an anniversary trip. She’d ruefully mentioned it to Robby at work last month, during a rare moment in which they had more than thirty consecutive seconds to catch up on life. She just didn’t have it in her to cancel her long-awaited PTO, even though she suspected she’d spend it moping, and he’d admitted that he’d booked off the same days for a trip to Bainbridge Island, WA. He didn’t have to spell it out: Dana was well aware that he timed this rare vacation to coincide with the first week of work after Collins exited the Pitt. Heather’s departure date for San Diego was May 23; she was eager to embark on a fellowship that seemed perfect for her. Dana already knew—because Heather had told her, in her oblique yet certain way—that she and Robby finally talked about their past for real, that Heather told him in very clear terms that there was no future in the relationship, that he needed to release himself from the idea of it as fully as she had released him.
“I don’t have my flights yet,” Robby had said that day back in mid-April. “And I’m staying in a cottage and I’ll be wandering around in the forest most of the time, so there’s room—”
His choice of travel timing might not have been much of a mystery to solve, but it had taken Dana a little longer to understand that this was apparently Michael Robinavitch’s best attempt at inviting her to join him on vacation. When she felt confident she’d accurately read between the lines, she agreed to go without giving it much thought, relieved that someone else’s plan could distract her from her own lack. Later that week, they’d stood side-by-side at the nurses’ station with the Alaska Airlines site open on both their phones, picking an aisle seat for him and his long legs only after she assured him eight times that the middle was fine with her. There was something a little bit sexy, she’d thought at the time, about booking travel together—although she’d have burst into laughter if she’d tried to express the thought, and Robby would have too. No one had to know she appreciated seeing Princess in her peripheral vision, watching them with one eyebrow raised.
And here they are. Hurtling toward vacation at a perfectly safe cruising altitude.
Robby doesn’t say anything about Benji when she brings up his penchant for car travel, just shrugs his shoulders and nods, then shifts a little in his seat, presumably to get more comfortable without having to adjust the position of their hands.
Dana squeezes the hand she’s holding, an experiment. She’s been watching Robby’s hands for decades, knows their dexterity, strength, focus, constant motion. She still remembers the frantic gentleness of his fingertips when he checked her face for injuries after D- —after that asshole punched her. Now she knows that his palm emits a steady heat and there’s a pleasant little tension where his fingers stretch the spaces between hers.
He squeezes back.
They hold hands for the rest of the flight, an hour and a half of wordless escalation. His thumb smears the stress out of the meat of her palm, then her right hand joins the party to pull tension from each of his fingers. When the second of two beverage services happens, the flight attendant handing over Robby’s bloody mary mix and her Coke smiles down at them with the sort of congratulatory gaze strangers show to people who are visibly in love, with everything figured out. The misplaced appreciation amuses her.
It’s a long travel day, made strange with the shift to Pacific Time compressing five hours in the air into just a couple of hours on the timeline. The plane lands with a solid thud and they stay seated and connected until it's finally time for their row to disembark. She texts her daughters that they landed safely with one hand, letting go of Robby only when it’s time to pull carry-ons down from the overhead bin. Robby unfolds himself to full height and hoists her suitcase down before she can even ask. He seems to want to maneuver both their suitcases down the aisle himself, but he’s good-natured when she teasingly snaps that of course she’s going to manage her own bag from here. They let the backs of their hands brush together on the walk up the jetbridge and through the airport to the SeaTac light rail, the train ride, the half-mile walk from Pioneer Square to the ferry station.
Robby notices her looking around at the tall buildings nestled in the hazy air; she’s never been to Seattle before. “We could come back into the city any of the days,” he says. “Or you can,” he adds quickly, “if you’d rather be on your own.” A lack of presumptuousness—paired with small bursts of something that goes too far in the opposite direction—has always been one of Robby’s biggest problems. To hear Heather tell it, he didn’t put up a fight at all when she broke up with him. Sulked for weeks (or years), but agreed immediately to the distance.
Robby sticks close by while Dana smokes a cigarette before they buy their ferry tickets. She happens to know he’s quit everything but too much coffee and the occasional whiskey or beer, but he doesn’t let her apologize for needing the smoke. They’ve decided to wait ‘til they get to the island to find their first coffee since early this morning at the airport, and with fresh nicotine in her system, Dana can almost convince herself that coffee is the only thing she craves, too.
The ferry is lovelier than she knew to imagine. The sky is an insistent grey, clouds spitting misty rain, but they stay on deck for the entirety of the ride, leaning against the railing together as Seattle fades and the island materializes. Dana feels like a different person, or a heightened version of herself. She’s been brave every day since September. She’s exhausted. But she’s wide awake here in the seaspray and whipping wind, feeling little frissons of amusement and interest because whatever’s happened between her and Robby’s hands today is more intimate than the last two years of sex with her husband.
⁂
The cottage is simple and small but well-appointed. She’d wondered, knowing Robby had booked the rental when he was planning for a solo trip spent mostly outdoors, if the trade-off for free accommodations to a part of the country she’s never seen before was going to be an outdoor shower and a toilet that was only a step or two up from a campground latrine. But this cottage, set a fair distance back from the road, is a sturdy little breadbox with shingled siding and dark green trim on the big windows. The inside is modern, one floor with tall ceilings, the open floor plan revealing a minimalist yet cozy living space that gives way to a sizable kitchen. The interior walls are such a bright white that the owners must repaint every couple of years.
“Nice place,” Dana mutters, brushing a palm against the cool dark stone of the kitchen island countertop as she follows Robby to the back of the kitchen, where a door leads to the hallway that separates the common spaces from the rooms at the back of the house.
“You should take this one,” Robby says when they get to the first door, gesturing at what’s clearly the master bedroom. A king-sized bed neatly made with a cloudy white comforter takes up the majority of the room, which is so pretty that Dana knows there’s got to be a gorgeous shower with excellent water pressure just past the door of the ensuite.
“If you insist,” Dana says easily. It’s certainly true that she has every intention of sleeping in this bed. She rolls her suitcase just inside the room and sets her backpack and purse on the dresser so they can continue the tour.
The second bedroom is far smaller—it was clearly an office or nursery once, repurposed by sheer force of will to just barely contain a double bed and a narrow chest of drawers. There’s no ensuite off this room, only the communal bathroom which is accessible by the third and final door.
There’s a screened-in porch they haven’t stepped into yet, and a lush, wildflower-spiked yard to explore just beyond it. After they see that, they’ll want to freshen up, get that coffee they’re both craving, strike out in search of groceries, and actually talk about how they’d like to approach feeding themselves during this trip. But there’s something she wants to settle first—or if not settle, there’s another door she’d like to peer through.
She’s right next to Robby, looking into the room. He’s already just past the doorframe, his backpack taking up space, but his suitcase remains at the threshold. She sets her hand on the handle. Doesn’t push or pull. “You could leave your stuff in the other bedroom,” she says.
Robby looks at her, his expression open nearly to the point of going blank. “Yeah?”
When she nods, he mirrors the gesture and follows her back to the big bedroom so he can set his stuff down next to hers.
⁂
The porch is pretty, as is the yard and the view of the road that leads to the water, and the afternoon passes pleasantly. Although she and Robby have never spent this many consecutive hours of leisure time together, all their practice working side-by-side at a frantic pace makes it easy to navigate low-stakes questions such as where to walk to for coffee. They end up placing a to-go order at Pegasus, drinking their very good coffee while looking out at the harbor and talking idly about the week ahead. They discuss food, hikes, books, the possibility of a movie, the list of Seattle restaurants Robby’s been keeping in a note on his phone, everything but the current of energy buzzing between them.
As lovely as the day has been, Dana’s jittery. It scares her, hearing herself suggest they walk to the grocery for sandwich stuff and breakfast food and a prepared meal for tonight while thinking only about whether she and Robby are going to have sex. She’s known Robby far too long to be scared of him. But for decades, the life she and Benji had together allowed them to sink more and more comfortably into well-worn grooves. That relationship is the shape she knows best. The previous time she had first-time sex with someone, she was a nursing student, and now she’s well into her fifties and all the way across the country from the girl she was then. This is a particular type of jittery she hasn’t felt since the very start of her adult life, when she met Benji in the campus student center like she was starring in a movie about being eighteen. She doesn’t know how to make the leap again, even if all signs point to needing to get real comfortable with exactly that.
“Robby,” she says quietly, adding her voice to the rhythmic lapping of the water. “Whatever happens on this vacation—”
She stops when she senses him shifting uncomfortably next to her. She looks at him, expecting he'll say something, but he tilts his gaze up to the sky and laughs. “Oh, I am definitely waiting for you to finish that sentence.”
Fair enough. She finds some words. “Whatever happens on this vacation, it—it can’t change anything. Okay?”
”Yeah,” he says. “Everything has to be normal when we go back to work.”
Dana wants to point out that there could be dozens of different ways to interpret both of their most recent statements. And Robby’s got a quizzical look on his face despite being the one who spoke most recently. But she only nods, glad he’s brought the conversation back to work because their ability to function in the Pitt really is a factor here. She polishes off the last of her coffee and holds out her hand for Robby’s empty cup, which he passes to her with politely muttered thanks, the sort he gives her at work all the time in-between the more profuse expressions of appreciation.
“Exactly,” she says, keeping his attention as she steps away just long enough to toss the cups in the trash, entirely unsure what she’s confirming. “We should go onto the store, dunno how late stuff stays open around here.”
They hurry through the shopping trip, although they’d agreed during coffee that one of the best parts of vacation, hands down, is eating like you’re on vacation. They’re as efficient as they can be in an unfamiliar store, sticking mostly to the basics and a few snacks and drinks they’ve already discussed. There’ll be time to wander these aisles later in the week, but it’s clear that for now they’d both like to head back to the cottage.
Dana supposes it isn’t surprising that sex happens pretty much the second it’s on the table as an option; the bed really is beautiful, and it’s the very start of vacation, so far from the normal they’ll need to achieve when they’re back at PTMC, and everything from the scent of the air to the color of the sky is different here, and nothing feels quite real. They’re still putting groceries away when she decides she’s ready to finish making her desires entirely clear. Clearer, maybe, than they even are to her. Because Robby’s driving her insane, his palm brushing against her shoulder every time he passes by to grab something from one of the grocery bags. She knows him, knows he could easily spend the next six days flirting with her but not taking it further, and the regret will become yet another thing he can’t figure out how to talk about. If they’re gonna do this, she has to help them start.
And so, as Robby stacks the final can of La Croix in the fridge, Dana maneuvers her body so she’s close to him, just on the other side of the refrigerator door, and when he shuts the door she closes the distance. She kisses him, an apology stored in her back pocket in case it’s the wrong thing, and he kisses back, and it feels as natural as it had to hold hands.
There’s an immediate pull between their mouths, then their bodies.
“Damn,” Robby mutters against her lips, encircling her back with his arms.
“Bed?” she murmurs. Might as well.
“Yes,” he says, so emphatic that she laughs in delight.
When they’re naked in the last dredges of afternoon light and crawling under the covers together, a bit of reality sets in—Robby is tall, and broader than he looks in his hoodies and scrubs and baggy cargo pants, and he’s big. She isn’t entirely convinced she’ll be able to get wet enough on her own to take him, but everything in her wants to try.
There’s a moment of blur as they lie down, as he kisses her again, as she reaches out to him and strokes her palm against the line from his neck to shoulder. Words form inside the blurriness, an Are we really doing this? that bubbles up inside of her and nearly makes its way out.
But then Robby curls his body next to hers, encouraging her to stretch out on her back while he lies on his side, and after they’ve kissed a while longer he starts to touch her, lingering against her collarbones and breasts and belly, smiling so contentedly at the little noises she makes that she wonders if he’s using them to gauge how turned on she’s getting before settling between her legs. When he’s there, he’s gentle at first, so patient and focused that the initial strokes against her labia, then the deeper ones that part her, are meditative even as she feels him getting hard against her hip.
“Robby,” she says after he’s been rubbing her a while and an orgasm starts to nudge at her, the promise of it delicious. Saying his name reminds her: this is Robby. They’ve been through hell together. And now he’s responding to her voice by whispering a kiss against her forehead. “I’m, um—”
“Yeah?” he says. “What do you need?”
”I’m gonna come if you keep going.”
”Oh. Good.”
It’s not exactly nonchalant, the way he says it, but it comes out so relaxed and happy that she can’t help but take pleasure in it. Robby speeds up his fingers because she’s getting slicker and it’s easier to move against her. She grabs his wrist and nudges his fingers up a little higher, right where she needs it, and he understands what she wants then, knows she needs him to make generous strokes that dip down into her wetness and back up to circle her clit. By the time she comes her thighs are shaking a little, and she’s desperate like she hasn’t let herself get in a long time. She turns her head to the side and presses her face into his bicep and moans as the orgasm races through her, bracing yet calm, like the relief of taking a break after hurrying for a long time.
The desperation doesn’t abate even a tiny bit as she comes down, because he’s brushing her hair back from her face and grinning at her but it’s obvious he’s so hard it hurts.
A shiver ripples through him when she touches his cock for the first time. She keeps her hand there, light strokes she hopes are tantalizing, learning his texture as she rubs her thumb against the precum collecting at the tip. By the time she’s figured out how to tell a new man (but also, Robby) that she wants him inside her he’s already pulling at her, helping her get situated on top of him, letting his head drop back against the pillow when she takes hold of him and brushes his cock against her folds. It takes a little while to sink onto him, willing herself to relax until the head is inside her, and they both cry out when she’s able to slide down more fully.
She breathes deeply as she adjusts to the fullness, and on a particularly loud intake of breath he asks if she’s okay.
“Yeah. You good with slow?” she murmurs.
Robby’s eyes have been scrunched shut, but the question makes him open them and look at her. She knows that look—appreciative and caring and a little sad but also a little bit like something’s funny. “Fuck,” he manages. “Yes.”
So he’s good with slow. And that’s great, because every drag of him against her flesh is exquisite. He reaches up to palm her breast, she leans down to kiss him, and it’s like how it is at work, where he can tell if she’s got one of her headaches and she’s paying attention to whether he’s eaten. The way they communicate at the hospital has made all kinds of difference, not only in their days but also in terms of whether someone lives or dies, because their attentiveness makes for better outcomes. But this is vacation, this is only pleasure, and if survival is a part of this thing between them it doesn’t occur to her now.
She can feel Robby getting closer to his own release when his hips start to snap up and their rhythm shifts into something faster. He gets a hand between their bodies, and when there’s a little too much friction against her clit he brings his hand up to his mouth and sucks two of his fingers until they’re wet enough to feel perfect against her skin.
“Shoulda thought about lube,” she says, out-of-breath but absolutely capable of speech. She can’t imagine a circumstance in which she and Robby would be incapable of yakking at each other.
“Tomorrow,” Robby agrees. “But you’re, you’re so—ohhh, fuck, where should I come?”
“Inside,” she says, tremulous and prayerful, a tone which would be a little embarrassing except for how crazy it seems to make him: he reacts to receiving explicit permission to release inside her by driving his fingers fast against her as she starts to climb again, soaring into a longer and deeper orgasm that makes her muscles squeeze him until he’s coming too.
Another blur of time and light. Strange new bliss.
“Are you okay?” Robby murmurs, concerned, and Dana realizes it’s because she’s still on top of him and shivering uncontrollably as his dick softens inside of her.
“I’m okay.” She huffs out a little laugh. “But that was a big deal.”
She doesn’t really want to remind Robby of the decades-long relationship she’s just left, not when they’re naked in bed together, chests still heaving from the exertion. But she wants him to feel how massive this was for her, choosing to be with him today. This week.
“Yeah,” he says softly. He helps her ease off of him, warm hands gentle at her hips. “I know.”
⁂
From the time she started working as an RN, Dana and Benji nearly always managed a week of vacation in the summer. When the girls were young, the family would head to the Jersey Shore or Rehoboth Beach in Delaware for four or five nights of a hotel room and salt-water taffy and cheap boogie boards in the tourist shops and taking the van to the car wash as soon as they were back in Pittsburgh so she could vacuum all the sand out of the backseats. Although Cait was the oldest she was the most afraid of the ocean, and Dana would spend half the week helping her get brave enough to wade in past her knees while Benji swam out farther, making sure that Sam, their little fish, didn’t go too deep in the surf. By the time baby Izzy came along, Cait wasn’t afraid anymore and she and Sam were in cahoots, gunning for boardwalk walks and cash for pizza by the slice, making friends with the kids from whatever family had set up beach chairs nearest theirs.
They graduated to quieter, less touristy spots once Izzy was in high school and the older girls were proper adults with significant others to bring along. They spent their last pre-Covid family beach week in a small rental house on Tybee Island, Georgia in 2019 and never resumed the tradition even after travel was safer again. At the time, Dana hadn’t had the slightest suspicion it would be the final week of its kind (at least until Cait’s kid is old enough for some version of the tradition to kick off again) and she’s glad she’d been unaware. The trip had been hard enough without anticipatory nostalgia making her emotional. Sam had spent the whole week annoyed because she was convinced Dana favored Caitlin’s girlfriend over her boyfriend. (She was right about the preferential treatment, Dana could admit later, but her instincts had nonetheless been spot-on—that girlfriend is now Cait’s lovely wife, while the trifling boy was gone from Sam’s life before the end of the summer.) Izzy had felt jealous of her sisters and their focus on their partners, and was eager to grow up but melancholy about childhood’s relentless fading, and Benji had been irritable, bothered by some problem at work he couldn’t shake off and that left him uncharacteristically distant.
Dana remembers having a bitter little cry alone in the bedroom the afternoon of the last day in Georgia because in six days she’d barely gotten a hundred pages into her novel. Everyone had spent the whole week needing her (frustrating, distracting) but also not needing her (frustrating, distracting), and she just wanted to sit on the beach and read without anyone stirring up any drama, and even Izzy would be leaving the house in a few years, and what would life be like then? She remembers laughing at herself at the end of the crying jag, when she realized she could’ve spent the time to herself reading her damn book instead of having an emotional breakdown. She has no memory, now, of the title of the book she’d brought along.
She reads a hundred pages of the newest Jodi Picoult on the first morning in her and Robby’s cottage.
It’s a good day. They wake up very early, already accustomed to early mornings on the East Coast, but as soon as she remembers they don’t have to work or worry about anything in particular a sweet sleepiness retakes her. She’s wearing the big black t-shirt Robby had handed her from his suitcase when she’d been cold in bed last night, and the fabric is so soft and smells like his detergent even after she’s worn it for hours, and it feels like he’s holding her even though he’s turned away in sleep and she’s looking at the broad expanse of his back. She holds him, kissing the back of his neck as soon as she feels him relax into her touch, and they stay like that until the programmable coffeemaker turns on and the smell of coffee becomes a compelling reason to get out of bed.
”You’re a genius,” Robby remarks in the kitchen. “I never bother programming these things.”
“Oh please, knowing the coffee is gonna make itself in the morning is one of my top five reasons to live.” She’s barely exaggerating. It’s been especially true in her new place; the mornings are too quiet, and without the coffeemaker burbling to life in the other room she’d probably stay in bed until she absolutely had to get up.
Chatting about the day ahead over their toast and coffee, Dana waits for things to feel weird, but by the end of breakfast nothing feels unnatural at all.
Mid-morning, Robby walks to the ferry terminal so he can take a bus to Grand Forest, where he’s planned a six-mile hike. Dana opts to stay behind and read. It’s the most luxurious day she’s had in a long time; each minute feels like a whole entire sixty seconds, precious yet abundant. She sits in the screened-in porch and feasts on her book. When she’s hungry, she slices up some of the early strawberries and eats them with crackers and sharp cheddar.
Robby comes back after a few hours, looking slightly sheepish as he sets a small brown bag on the kitchen counter, the gesture intentional enough that she knows she’s meant to walk over and peer at what’s inside. There are almond M&Ms (Robby’s heard her complain about how they aren’t in every store), a pack of cigarettes (her brand), a bottle of lube with a pump top.
“How was your hike?” she asks archly.
“Ha,” says Robby. “It was good, but I was supposed to be out in nature so I could contemplate everything that's happened to me in the last 53 years.”
“And?”
“And I just kept thinking about you.”
⁂
Dana can’t recall ever having had a week this easy.
Almost immediately, the little joys of the trip start to collect into something special, something that feels sacred. Like tradition, even if it’s for this week only. A cigarette in the garden. Coffee on the porch. Sex, once or twice a day—or thrice, on a particularly spectacular Wednesday that marks the midpoint of the trip. The big white bed is the nucleus of the cottage, and of the whole experience. It’s fun, learning Robby in this new way. It’s a lot like the old way, only now she knows what it feels like to tease him and spar with him while he’s thrusting inside her and peppering her with kisses.
The trip isn’t perfect, but it’s only a notch or two down from perfection. The problems are vacation problems. A reservation website glitch means they hadn’t actually booked a table at a spot on the island she’d wanted to try, so they get (delicious) takeout instead. The faucet in the spare bathroom drips, and the owner of the cottage has to send someone out to fix it. Every day around three o’clock in the afternoon, Robby gets a little sullen, just like at home. The bad mood vanishes as soon as he eats something, but she’ll be damned if she wastes space in her cute little vacation purse packing granola bars for a middle-aged man who hasn’t learned to regulate his blood sugar. When she calls him out, he’s chagrined, and his ability to preempt his hangry spells improves for the remainder of the trip.
She joins him for a hike on the second day, an easy meander on the waterfront trail, hands clasped together. Another afternoon, they walk the labyrinth at the Halls Hill Lookout, silent but for their footsteps on the stone.
They ride the ferry back into Seattle a few times—taking their time wandering the stalls at Pike Place, eating maple-frosted donuts at Top Pot, laughing at nothing on the monorail. Every time they approach a counter to place a coffee order or smile up at a waiter arriving at their table, Dana has the fleeting yet potent sense that they’re pretending at a togetherness that’s starting to feel real, that they’re falling into it, and everyone who interacts with them here sees nothing but the vacation glow of morning sex and being caught up on sleep for the first time in years, and only she and Robby know the truth, which is that another reality lies in wait back in Pittsburgh. They’ve both been burnt out, surviving stomach churning upheaval after stomach churning upheaval, and she isn’t sure how she’s supposed to feel anymore. But she brushes these thoughts aside. It’s not hard to do when there are delights and distractions at every turn. During one of the Seattle trips, they buy a prerolled joint at a dispensary; that evening they sit in the fading light of the garden and pass it back and forth until everything is funny and time is all stretchy. “Can we go inside so I can eat you out?” Robby asks, unguarded from the pot, so they go inside and lie down together and he licks an orgasm into her that feels like it lasts for years.
Through it all, they talk. Their unspoken agreement to avoid discussing the hospital means they plunge into weightier topics, things they’ve never really talked about before.
Sitting across from Robby having whiskeys at Canon, she asks “Do you think Heather would be mad at us?” Robby shakes his head no, seeming only a little bit uncomfortable with the question, and his gesture is enough to remind her that the decision to move on is sticking this time. Mutual this time. Still, Heather is the only topic they back out of rather than going deep; they’re both aware that desire is going to keep overtaking them while they’re here whether or not they’re actively feeling weird about her, and there’s nothing to be done about it but deal with it later. Or not.
Every other topic makes Dana feel like a diver plumbing the depths. At the dinner table one night, over a plate of lemon-glazed fish Robby grilled while she roasted asparagus and potatoes, she tears up while telling him about losing her mother young, how it still eats at her that her daughters will never get to know her. There’s a family resemblance that feels a bit haunting—out of the three girls, Sam looks especially like her mother did, and she’s nothing but grateful for that even though it hurts. In turn, Robby tells her about his parents’ absence from his growing up, the way the abandonment was like a different kind of death although his mother and father are also dead in the traditional way now. He talks about the grandmother who raised him, how he relied on her for everything for a long time and felt completely secure in her love for him, but then something somebody at his high school said during his freshman year made him realize maybe it wasn’t supposed to be that way, a grandmother burdened with the child of her child. From then on he felt guilty about her delayed retirement, all the time she spent at his baseball games instead of playing mah jongg with her friends.
Dana tells him it probably was really hard for his grandmother, but completely worth it, too. “If something happened to Cait and Sonia and I had to raise Avery, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Total honor. No question.” Robby’s eyes soften at that, so she keeps going. “She still got to play mah jongg sometimes, right? Weekends?”
”Yeah,” Robby says with a smile, and Dana hopes he’s remembering the sound of the tiles and wine glasses clinking and old lady laughter floating down the hallway to his bedroom. “She did.”
“Good.”
Another night, this time seated at the restaurant that’s fixed their website since the prior attempt, Robby asks “How’re your girls doing with the divorce?”
Dana shrugs. “They’re…pretty fuckin’ angry about it. All three of ‘em. I mean, they hearted the photo I sent from the trail the other day, it’s not like we aren’t in touch, but it’s hot and cold.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Cait’s especially upset. She—she told me a month or so ago that marriage is about ‘weathering challenges together.’ Like I hadn’t known that. And jeez, no offense, but she’s married to a lesbian who takes care of pretty much exactly fifty percent of everything that needs to happen at the house, with Avery, etc. Not to mention who worships her.” She sighs. “But Benji had me on a pedestal for a lot of our marriage, too. I dunno, it’s—”
“A pedestal’s not a great place to be.”
“You always fall off eventually.”
“Yeah. Hey, how’s Izzy doing?” Robby squints. “College sophomore?”
“Sophomore, yep, and she’s okay, I think. Although she asked me if we’d been waiting to separate until she’d moved out and that just about broke my heart. At least I could honestly tell her that it wasn’t that at all.” Suddenly, she’s hit with a memory. “Oh, you remember how I’d have to have her at work with me sometimes, like if after-school care got snowed out and my neighbor’d drop her off? And you’d give her the little notepads the pharmaceutical reps would leave out so she could draw?”
“Of course I remember. She drew me a little comic about me one time, with ‘Dobutrex’ emblazoned across the top of every panel. I still have it somewhere; it was on my fridge for years.”
Dana wants to reach across the table and take Robby’s hand in hers. There are still two nights left, she reminds herself. So she does what she wants to do.
⁂
When the vacation draws to a close it’s almost impossible to comprehend that it’s happening, that they really did have only a finite number of endless-feeling days to spend here. They try to form a plan for their last full day on the island, but flounder over the details for the first time all week—should they go back to Seattle one last time, or stay close to the cottage and take it easy, or walk a new trail, or return to the places that became favorites on one of the earlier and therefore more fully free days? It takes them until mid-morning to decide that the ferry—which they’ll have to take early tomorrow anyway—consumes a significant enough amount of time that it would be better to stay on the island instead of venturing farther out.
It’s a perfectly good day, all things considered, but their easy patterns become brittle with the awareness that everything’s about to come to an end.
When Dana wakes up the next morning, Robby’s already looking at her. All these hours west of home, and this morning they still manage to wake up well before the alarm that’s going to tell them it’s time to drink last coffees and pack bags and head to the airport. No alarm yet, she thinks, scooting closer and nudging at the waistband of Robby’s underwear. She’s surprised when his hand joins hers, not to speed up the process of undressing but to ask her to pause.
“Show me?” he whispers, voice still sleep-rough. “Please? Like if you were—”
Alone, he must mean, although he doesn’t finish the sentence. Part of her wants to ask if he’s asking her for something to remember her by, something he can look at that doesn’t involve him, but she’d rather give it to him without hearing him answer or, maybe worse, hearing him deflect the question. So she takes her hand away from him and pushes down her own underwear, leaving her t-shirt on and not even bothering to peel back the covers so he can see. He’ll have enough to focus on with her eyes boring into his as she touches herself.
She thinks he intends to look without touching, but then he involves himself and it gets so much better. He reaches over her to pluck the lube from the nightstand, letting a big squeeze of it drip lazily onto her fingers, and lies close enough that his hard-on is pressed against her thigh, and drops little kisses to her temple, his breathing and the pressure of his lips timed nearly perfectly with the rhythm of her strokes.
He murmurs her name. It sounds nice. But she can’t say anything back—as aware as she is that she hasn’t spoken yet, she has to cocoon inside this moment and hearing herself speak might break it. She doesn’t pay attention to how long it takes her to come, letting it sneak up on her even though she’s been aware of every sensation that’s gotten her there. She whines when it hits, a broken and wordless little explosion of sound that seems particularly loud after it’s been so quiet.
Then and only then does she speak, and it’s an echo with a twist: “Show me,” she says, the phrase a demand whereas his version was a question. He shows her, shucking off his briefs and lubing up his palm and fucking into his fist while she kisses and clings.
⁂
Dana tries to nap on the plane, welcoming the strange half-asleep state when it overtakes her. The memories from a week this good should be sustenance, not just for the journey home but for months into the future, but she doesn’t want to dwell on them much at all because from the ferry ride onward it’s been clear that handholding and flirting and togetherness are no longer possibilities. She can’t tell if she’s pulling away because of signals from Robby or vice versa or both, but she doesn’t reach out and neither does he. Apparently they’re lurching back to the normalcy they agreed upon. Just like she said she wanted. So she curls in on herself, uncomfortable in her middle seat, and lets the flickering grey-orange of sun rays against her shut eyelids lull her closer to full slumber.
“Is anyone here a doctor?”
Dana jolts awake as soon as the shout from a flight attendant rings out from somewhere near the back of the plane. Robby unbuckles his seatbelt just a split-second ahead of her, leaping up before crouching back down to pull his backpack out from under the seat. He opens the middle compartment and takes out his stethoscope. She had no idea he’d brought it with him, but she’s hardly surprised. She’s been wrestling with the zipper on her own backpack—just her luck that it’s caught on something—and finally yanks hard enough to be able to open the bag and grab her travel first aid kit.
“Right here!” Robby calls as they rush down the aisle.
When they reach the row with the commotion, it’s clear who’s in distress. There’s a young man—a white guy in a crewneck sweatshirt, with a shock of messy brown hair—shuddering in the middle seat, still buckled, head propped against the headrest although his eyes are wide open, alert with a frantic confusion.
“Clear some space, please,” Dana says, indicating that the occupants of the aisle seats should stand and walk down the aisle. A flight attendant, the middle-aged woman who called for assistance in the first place, helps maneuver several passengers a reasonable distance away.
“He was freaking out all of a sudden, shaking and stuff,” says the guy next to him in the window seat. “Thought he was gonna pass out. Or maybe he did for like thirty seconds. I dunno, it was really scary—”
“All right, thanks,” Robby says matter-of-factly before turning his attention entirely to the patient. “I’m Robby; I’m an emergency medicine doctor. This is Dana; she’s a nurse. What’s your name?”
“Uh, Nathaniel.”
“I’m gonna take your vitals, okay Nathaniel?” Dana says, maneuvering so she can reach well enough to check his pulse and assess the basics as best she can without the usual instruments.
“Yeah, sure,” Nathaniel says. The pulse in his wrist flutters against Dana’s fingers, insistent and bright. “What happened?”
“Have you ever had a seizure before?” Robby asks.
“I don’t think so.”
“So you aren’t on medication for epilepsy or any other seizure disorder?”
“No.”
“Any heart-related issues?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Do you take any other medications?”
“Just Tylenol and protein powder and stuff.”
“And has anything happened out of the ordinary in the last couple days? Especially today?”
Nathaniel shrugs. Dana counts his heartbeats.
”Not really, not that I can think of.”
“Pulse is 120 a minute,” Dana says.
“Thank you, honey,” Robby murmurs, and Dana’s never understood the phrase put a pin in it as clearly as she does right now. “That’s a little high, Nathaniel, but nothing too alarming. Blood pressure often elevates during a seizure. Is there anything else you can think of that might’ve contributed? Any substances in your system?”
“Um—” Nathaniel says.
“Tell them,” urges his friend. Then, more quietly: “Just in case.”
“We took molly a few nights ago. I’d never done it before. But nothing since then, I swear. Two beers last night. But that’s it.”
Robby nods. “Okay, thanks. That shouldn’t be doing anything major at this point, so you’re probably good there…”
Dana pulls the thermometer from her first-aid kit, pops a sterile wrapper over the tip, and asks Nathaniel to open his mouth. His temperature is slightly elevated—99.1, technically a low-grade fever—but it’s within the expected window. Robby listens to Nathaniel’s heart and lungs while collecting more details of his medical history so he can determine if there’s imminent danger. Dana takes his pulse a second time, then a third, satisfied that it’s normalizing. They consult with the flight crew, determining that with no active emergency taking place and only an hour left in the flight, there’s no need to divert the plane and land early. The flight attendant who’s been involved uses the intercom system to communicate with the captain about what happened, the other flight attendant approaches with the plane’s medical kit in case any of its supplies are needed, and before Dana knows it Robby’s saying “We’re in row fourteen if you need us again. And seriously—get in to see a doctor as soon as you possibly can. Call today, when we land, and go to an ER if you can’t get in to your regular GP.” Everyone thanks them as they walk back to their seats, even a few random onlookers seated in the rows between Nathaniel’s and theirs.
“You okay?” Robby asks when they’re settled again.
“Fine. You?”
“Yeah. And the kid’ll be all right.”
“Yeah.” She smirks, forcing a little chuckle. “Wasn’t expecting to go back to work a day early.”
Back to normal. But it had felt good, working side-by-side with Robby just now, stooped over in the cramped cabin making sure the poor guy was okay after his first and hopefully only seizure. She desperately needed a week away from work, but she likes who she is when she’s taking care of people. She likes that it’s something she shares with Robby.
Dana can tell her seatmate on her other side wants to ask what happened, but she keeps her mouth shut against her nosiness and Dana stares straight ahead, making it as clear as possible that she’s not going to offer up any details. She hopes they aren’t called back to help again while they’re still in the air, because that would mean things were more serious than their initial assessment suggested, and she hopes they made the right call in determining there was no need to divert the flight. She says as much quietly, only for Robby, and he nods in agreement, nudging her shoulder with his before they settle back into their own spaces for the rest of the flight.
Dana remembers they didn’t even drive to the airport together when they’ve disembarked and are about halfway through their quiet walk to the parking garage. The goodbye will take place even faster than she’d been assuming it would. The morning they left for Washington they’d come to the airport from two different parts of the city; although her new apartment is within walking distance of Robby’s, she’d watched Avery the evening before the trip while her moms were on a date and had stayed over that night, evading Cait and Sonia’s post-date grilling about what it really meant that she was going on vacation with Robby. She vaguely recalls the conversation in which she’d turned down Robby’s offer of a ride. On the morning of the trip, she realized she’d be cutting it too close to time to trust taking a Lyft and had chosen the luxury of driving herself and knowing her car would be waiting at the other end of the journey.
They both parked in the economy lot, but they make it to Dana’s spot first. She pops the trunk of her SUV and hoists her stuff inside, and then they’re just standing in front of each other by the open trunk and it’s awful.
“Thanks,” Dana says. She can’t wait for this moment to be over even as she longs for it not to end without knowing where they stand. “For—you know.”
“It was—of course.” Robby’s eyes are wet, although he’s not crying. He looks as tired as he did a week ago, peering at her, searching, clearly unsure of what to say. “And now it’s back to reality, I guess.” He sounds unconvinced.
“Like we talked about?” Dana hopes her tone is light enough. That she’s showing him it doesn’t have to be a done deal if they don’t want it to be.
She should say something more, she decides. What’s one more day of bravery? But when she starts to add something, unsure where to begin but talking all the same, he starts to speak too.
“Sorry,” they say in perfect unison, which makes them both laugh a little.
“Go ahead,” says Dana.
“No, no, uh—I don’t know what I’m talking about anyway.”
“But we should talk. Shouldn’t we?”
Robby nods, glancing around. A car honks in the distance. A family dragging suitcases walks onto the row, then stops only two cars down from Dana’s to start loading their luggage into the trunk.
“Maybe not here,” Dana continues. “But soon.” She cringes. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.” Robby smiles at her, apparently pleased by this prospect, and the expression reminds her of how he looked when they held hands for the first time, aware it was all ridiculous but no less appealing for the absurdity.
“Yeah.” She tilts her head in the direction of the driver’s seat. “Go get some sleep. We’ve got a twelve-fucking-hour shift tomorrow.”
“All right.”
He steps forward just slightly, then back again, then forward again, this time enough to close the distance. He leans down and brushes a kiss against her cheekbone. Their hands seek each other for a brief squeeze.
“See you in the morning.”
“See ya then.”
But Dana sees him only a couple of minutes later. As she’s driving towards the exit, she passes him (still on foot) while rounding one of the rows of cars, gets startled by his presence in the same moment that sees him visibly startle because she takes the turn a bit too close, and gives him an apologetic wave.
When she’s home, she cracks the windows to let fresh air inside before she does anything else, but forces herself to text him after that. Hope you got home safe in spite of my best efforts? Sorry for the garage. And thanks again for the trip and for everything.
Robby replies ten minutes later. Home safe. No worries. Hope you get good rest.
She doesn’t, really. She makes herself to head out for groceries because she’s working the next three days in a row and is going to be zonked, then rushes through getting ready for bed only to lie awake in the dark of her bedroom because her brain and body can’t decide what to focus on—being sad the trip is over, sad to be alone in bed for the first time in a week, nervous she’s going to fuck things up, nervous Robby’s going to fuck things up, scared it’s going to end, scared that if it doesn’t end it’s going to feel a lot more real and intense than whatever she’d pictured as her first post-separation attempt at moving on. And elated, in spite of or because of everything. And horny. And amused. Basically everything.
She finally drifts off well past midnight while zooming in on a memory: facing each other while lying in bed, his fingertips against the chain that holds her cross, hers against the chain that holds his Star of David. They’d fallen asleep that way on one of the nights of the trip, warm in the dark, tired enough they’d stopped talking using words minutes and minutes before.
⁂
Work is almost too good, considering she’s jet-lagged, sleep-deprived, smarting from the whiplash of the post-vacation letdown, and nervous enough about talking to Robby that she texts him before work to ask that they save the big conversation for after the shift is over, receiving a thumbs-up that tells her he’s likely already en route to PTMC.
She’s never one to let emotions get in the way of patient care, and there’s something perversely comforting about walking through chairs (teeming with patients) and seeing evidence of the 24/7 continuity of emergency medicine in full swing—there are people who’ve been here since yesterday, maybe even since she was still in the air, and within less than a minute of being there she feels her work mindset click back into place.
When colleagues ask, she’s more comfortable talking about the trip than she expects to be—she jokes with Perlah about being an on-duty healthcare professional during yesterday’s flight even though it had felt serious in the moment, accepts some gentle ribbing from Matteo about her life of leisure, and when Cassie asks her about the best part of the trip it’s easy enough to describe one of the restaurant meals in enough detail that there’s no time for anything else before the next crisis hits.
She works some interesting cases, it’s clear the team has done a good job with coordination and room assignments in her absence, the only patient she loses is ninety-two years old, and she and Robby barely dance around each other at all before instinct takes over and they go back to operating as smoothly as ever. It occurs to her that their frequent eye contact, flirtatious and wry, has been going on for years.
It’s only when she’s on her break, smoking a cigarette in the stagnant sunlight and wishing for a garden breeze, that she slows down enough to feel a real echo of the moods that kept her awake last night. The mutual gracelessness at the end of the trip, though understandable, still eats at her even as her heart thrums happily with possibility.
Robby approaches her by her locker at the end of the day. He must have seen her head to the locker room and made the choice to steal a minute of his own time, because she’s seen what he’s dealing with out there and knows he probably needs to work at least another twenty minutes.
“Should we make a plan to chat?” he asks, keeping his voice very quiet.
She looks over and sees that his face has gone pink and she can’t help but grin at that. She grabs the denim jacket she absolutely did not need to bring with her to work today and shuts her locker. “McCall’s?”
“I’ll be there soon as I finish.”
McCall’s Diner is a PTMC hangout, but the comfort of the place overrides any concern she has over eavesdroppers. She’s glad to be in the position of arriving first, requesting one of the more secluded booths and making sure there are two mugs of decaf and a slice of peanut butter chocolate pie (two forks) on the table by the time he gets there.
“Hey,” he says, slipping his backpack off his shoulders and sliding into the booth.
“Hey.”
“I miss vacation.”
She laughs. “Ugh. Me too.”
Robby’s face becomes serious. “When you said it couldn’t change anything…what did you mean by that?”
She takes her time thinking about it. “That I was afraid one or both of us would get spooked before it even had a chance to begin.”
A slow smile spreads across his face.
“And when you said ‘normal’, what was that about?” she asks.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“Have some pie.”
He takes a bite. “Oh, fuck, that’s good.”
“I know, it’s the best. One time I asked the old guy who used to run this place if he’d part with the recipe, and he said ‘hell no.’”
“You got any secret recipes in your family?”
“Nah,” Dana says. “Our brownie recipe’s printed right on the Ghiaradelli box for all to see. You?”
“Nah.”
“I think you should stay at my place tonight,” she says, and God, she already knew the man could blush, but this is next-level. “And I think—” She takes a deep breath. “—I think we should see where this takes us. Life’s hard enough without, uh—”
“Senseless deprivation?”
“Something like that.”
When she checks, he quickly assures her that he doesn’t have to stop at his place before heading to hers, that he’s got his dopp kit and whatever he’ll need for tomorrow with him since he’s never sure when a shift will have to extend. They don’t bother finishing their coffee, although they scrape the plate of every last morsel of pie, and she pays the bill before he has the chance to offer.
It’s a fifteen-minute walk home from McCalls’s. They spend it chatting about the day they’ve just had, with a little Seattle reminiscing peppered in, and the first tentative discussion about why it would probably be less stressful for them both if they keep things between the two of them for now. When they fall into a stretch of quiet it doesn’t feel nerve-wracking, like a sign of trouble that requires smoothing over.
“For the record,” Robby says when they’re nearly to her building, “I really don’t think there’s a world in which we aren’t able to work well together. No matter what else is going on.”
“Oh, absolutely. We’re too good,” Dana replies, letting him hear the bravado but see the genuine smile. At the front door, she slides open the keypad and enters her code. “I’m on the ground floor.”
As soon as they’re in the foyer, the heavy wooden door shut behind them, Robby takes her hand in his. She glances up at him. He doesn’t seem embarrassed, like he’s only willing to do this when they can hide. He seems happy, enjoying what it feels like to stop hiding because they’re alone together. But they only have time to hold hands for a few paces before they’re at the door to her apartment. She takes her hand back as gently as she can. “Just let me deal with the keys, honey.”
Inside, Robby looks around with a surprising amount of delight. “Oh, I really like this place,” he says with a sincerity so effortless that she knows he isn’t just being nice. “It’s got to be at least a hundred years old or what?”
“Thereabouts.”
They compare notes on after-work routines while she shows him around the apartment, relieved that they both prefer showering as soon as humanly possible after walking in the door, then eating something simple and reasonably healthy.
“I went to the store last night,” Dana says, “so why don’t you take the first shower and I’ll pull out something we can throw together.”
So he showers, laughing on his way to the bathroom at her detailed notes about the really fucked-up temperature indicator on the faucet handle, then expressing his appreciation when he’s back in the kitchen that she saved him from scalding himself. He’s changed into gym shorts and a t-shirt he must have packed in his bag; she wonders if he always has workout stuff with him in addition to what he needs for a shift or if he added the clothes to his bag this morning, perhaps more optimistic than she was about how the night would unfold.
“Broccoli’s roasting in the oven and this pasta just needs a couple stirs till the timer goes off,” she says, assuming correctly that he’s up for keeping an eye on things while she showers. “There’s a block of parm in the fridge, and dishes are right behind me.”
She doesn’t rush through her shower, enjoying as ever the relief of soap and hot water washing away the grime of the day. She changes into soft lounge pants and a grey tank top when she’s done. When she emerges, Robby’s plating the meal she started, and they eat side-by-side on the bar stools at the kitchen counter.
It isn’t until they’re done loading the dishwasher that the little blue light on the coffeemaker catches her eye. It’s the light over the Auto button, indicating that the coffee is set to brew tomorrow. Her heart swells, but she can’t help but check Robby’s work, opening the lid to see fresh-ground coffee beans in the filter, glancing at the side to check the level of water filling the reservoir.
“Robby!” she exclaims. “Look at you!”
“Just trying to keep up.”
It’s so refreshing, having someone over who isn’t a family member grappling with the apartment as a physical symbol of their familial foundation crumbling or a friend who’s “just checking in to see how you’re holding up.” Not to mention all the hours alone. Robby seems charmed by features she’s mostly found aggravating, and while she hardly sees herself living here forever, she finds it easier than usual to appreciate the dim lighting as intimate and the creaky wood floor as antique. He’s here because he likes her and wants to keep sleeping together, and now that the coffee’s made for tomorrow there’s nothing stopping her from pulling him to the bedroom so they can do just that.
“Wasn’t our bed perfect?” she says dreamily after they’ve cleaned up, turning down the quilt she took when she moved out. She made the bed right before vacation, so the burgundy sheet set she’s had forever is still quite fresh, but there was something perfect about the clean-slate brightness of the bed at the cottage. “I’ve always wanted one of those white goose down duvets, but they aren’t practical.”
“Why not?”
She actually doesn’t know why not. Not anymore. For better or worse, gone are the days of baby puke and purple juice boxes and uncontrolled chaos. Avery’s here a lot, but she’s hardly in the bedroom at all. This building even has big washers and dryers, the perfect size for the sexy vacation cloud that’s going to adorn this bed.
“You know what, maybe I’ll order one this weekend,” she says as they sit down in bed and pull the covers up around their legs.
“Good.”
“You can help me pick it out.”
Robby sweeps his hand through her hair, then rests his palm at the back of her shoulder and pulls her in for a kiss. She settles against him, unable to decide where to touch first—his chest, his belly, the nape of his neck. The press of their mouths is deep and warm. It’s easy. It’s a big deal. It’s the end of an interesting day and the start of a lovely night.