Chapter 7 — Borrowed Time

The first official date — Maya's words, not his; he'd looked slightly panicked when she used them and she'd thought it was endearing — was a Saturday in July.He took her to a farmers market she didn't know existed, tucked behind a converted warehouse on the east side. They moved through it slowly, the way you move through something when there's nowhere else to be. He bought her a jar of honey from a woman who explained the exact meadow the bees had visited, with such specific tenderness that Maya almost cried.He photographed none of it. He held the camera the whole time but kept it low, at his side."You're not shooting today.""I'm looking," he said. It was the same answer he'd given on the rooftop.They had lunch at a Thai restaurant where the tables were outside and too close together, and the couple next to them were clearly having a fight that involved hand gestures and increasingly emphatic bread-tearing. Maya kept catching Daniel's eye and they both kept not laughing.When the couple finally left, they gave up and laughed openly, properly — the kind that takes over."That was about a vacation rental, I think," Daniel said, wiping his eyes."Or a dog.""Could have been a dog."They were quiet after the laughter, the comfortable kind of quiet that Maya had started to recognise as specifically theirs."Tell me something I don't know about you," she said.He thought. "I failed my driving test twice. The second time because I waved at a dog on the pavement and drove through a stop sign.""A dog.""A very good dog. Golden retriever. It was essentially waving back."She smiled. "Your turn. Ask me something.""Okay." He picked up his water glass. "What do you love most about teaching?"The question caught her off-guard with its seriousness. She appreciated that about him — the way he moved between funny and earnest without signposting the shift."The moment when a kid who thought they couldn't do something does it," she said. "They look at their own drawing like they've surprised themselves. Like they didn't know they had it in them. You can't fake that look. It's—" She stopped, searching for the word. "Pure, I think. It's the purest thing I know."He was watching her with that particular attention. She'd stopped feeling self-conscious about it."You're very good at it," he said."How would you know?""Because you talk about those kids the way people talk about things they're built for."She looked at him across the too-small table. The afternoon light was behind him and she thought: I want to remember this. Exactly this.Later, walking home through the long summer evening, he reached for her hand and held it the whole way. At her building she turned and he kissed her — finally, properly — and it was not like falling because falling implies loss of control and this was not that. This was a choice. Clearly made, on both sides.He walked home and did not let himself think about the stone in his chest or what the headache building behind his left eye might mean.He thought only about the jar of honey and a Thai restaurant and a woman who talked about her students like they were the most important people in the world.He had not been this happy in so long he'd almost forgotten what it felt like.He told himself he would tell her. Soon. He would find the words.Tomorrow. He would tell her tomorrow.