Across the Courtyard – Part 2: Lights On

The power came back at midnight, with a sudden blaze of light and a clatter from the fridge. Nadia and Ravi both blinked and looked at each other across her kitchen table, guilty, as if they had been caught doing something they shouldn't.

They had not been doing anything. They had talked for five hours about cellos, bad landlords, the best place to buy bread in Leeds, and the first time each of them had been properly lonely in a new city.

"I should go," Ravi said, and didn't move.

"You should," Nadia agreed, and didn't either.

Eventually he stood, took his coat from the back of the chair and paused by the door.

"Would you like to hear me play?" he asked. "Properly. Not through the window."

"Yes," said Nadia. "I'd like that very much."

He came back the next evening, cello case slung on his back, and played in her living room while she sat on the floor with her back against the sofa and her eyes closed. The music was low and warm and a little sad, and she felt it under her ribs like a second heartbeat.

When he finished, he didn't say anything for a long moment. Neither did she.

"You're crying," Ravi said softly.

"I'm not."

"You are," he said, and set the cello down carefully against the wall. He crossed the room and crouched beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. "Nadia. Can I touch your face?"

"Yes," she said, and her voice wobbled. "Yes, please."

He brushed the tears away with his thumb, gently, and she leaned into the touch like someone who had been cold for a very long time.

"Green?" he asked. Just that, quiet and steady.

"Green," said Nadia, and laughed through the tears. "Entirely green."

He kissed her forehead first, then her cheek, then, when she turned her face up to him, her mouth. It was soft and unhurried, the kind of kiss that asked a question and waited for the answer. She answered it, one hand in his jumper, pulling him down with her onto the rug.

They didn't go far that night. They lay on the rug in front of the fire she'd lit to keep warm during the blackout, wrapped in a blanket, talking about nothing and everything, until the window across the courtyard was just a dark square in the grey dawn.

"I'm going to make breakfast," Nadia said. "And then you're going to play me something terrible."

"You love it."

"I love you," she said, before she could stop herself.

Ravi went very still. Then he smiled, slow and certain, and kissed her again.

"Good," he said. "I was going to say it first. I'd been waiting for the power to go out."

By the spring the mugs had moved from the windowsills to the kitchen table, and the courtyard was no longer a place they waved across. It was a place they walked through together, carrying shopping bags and cello cases and two cups of coffee, in no particular hurry to get anywhere.