The Part Where Nobody Goes Home Yet

October seventh. We both had the same kind of day, not bad, exactly, just the kind where you spend seven hours doing something that required your whole body and your whole face and a sustained amount of patience you didn't know you were spending until it was gone. Simone ended up at my kitchen table afterward. I don't think either of us made a plan. It just happened the way those things do when you live close enough to someone's routine that showing up isn't a decision anymore.

I made tea. She kept her jacket on for a while, which is always the sign that someone hasn't fully committed to staying, and then she took it off and slung it over the back of the chair, and that was that. We talked a little. About nothing, mostly. The specific kind of nothing where you're filling the air because silence feels like work and work was the thing we were both trying to put down.

the second cup is always the one that actually helps

At some point I got up to refill my mug and looked back at her sitting there, elbows on the table, that expression she has that reads as skeptical until you've known her long enough to know it's just what her face does when she's tired and comfortable at the same time, and I thought: this is a Tuesday. This is just what a Tuesday looks like. I made a second cup and didn't say anything about it.

Gerald looked fine. The bowl was where it always is. Simone left around nine, put her sneakers back on properly, and I stood in the kitchen for a few extra minutes before I cleaned up the mugs. Not doing anything. Just standing. That's the part I'm not sure how to explain, but it felt like something, so I wrote it down.