At 7:40, Dottie asked the question.

He was restocking the sugar bowl: the one with the chip, the one that sat on every table and that Mollie's eyes rested on every morning when she said something honest. Dottie was behind the counter, starting the grill, the sizzle of butter on iron, the diner coming to life.

"So," Dottie said. "Have you found someone?"

The question was casual. The question was not casual. Dottie didn't do casual. Dottie did strategic, and the strategy was in the timing: early morning, no customers, the two of them alone in a diner that smelled like coffee and butter and the particular honesty of a room that hadn't opened its doors yet.

He looked at the sugar bowl. At the chip in the rim. At the place where Mollie's eyes went.

"I'm working on it," he said.

Dottie turned from the grill. Looked at him.

"Working on it," she repeated.

"I'm working on deserving her."

He said it to the sugar bowl. To the chip. To the diner at 7:40 in the morning when the booths were empty and the grill was warming and the world was still quiet enough to say something true without the noise of the day drowning it out.

I'm working on deserving her.

It was the most honest thing he'd said about Mollie to anyone. Not I love her, that was too simple, too certain, too much like a declaration and not enough like the truth, which was messier. The truth was: he was a man who had been too much for one woman and not enough for his father and he was trying, quietly, in a studio with a dog and a canvas and a green scarf on a hook, to become the kind of person who could hold what Mollie was without breaking it. He was working on it. He wasn't there yet.

Dottie was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled.

"The deserving," Dottie said, "is the work. Not the destination. Frank's been working on it for thirty-seven years. Some mornings he's closer than others. But the working... that's the thing."

She turned back to the grill. The conversation was over. The butter sizzled. The radio played. Fayiz stood in the diner with a sugar bowl and the echo of his own sentence, and he thought: twelve days. Twelve days to become someone who deserves a woman who carries a dead brother's name like a coin and waters a plant she named Gregory and says things like I hate that I like you and means it.

Twelve days.

He went back to work.

☕︎

He didn't see her come in.

He was in the back, hanging his apron, washing the salt off his hands, when the bell rang. He heard it through the kitchen wall. The bell, and then the particular quality of silence that meant Mollie was in the room... not louder, not different, just more, the way a painting changed when you added a colour that made everything around it sharper.

He came out, drying his hands. She was in the booth. Tea in front of her. Both hands wrapped around the cup. Looking at the table.

He slid in across from her. Picked up his coffee: Dottie had placed it, the timing impeccable, as always. "Morning."

"Morning."

Something was wrong.

He knew it the way he knew when a painting was off: not in the obvious way, not a wrong colour or a misplaced line, but in the way the whole thing vibrated at a frequency that said something is not where it should be. She was sitting in the booth, holding her tea, the scarf folded, the coat hung, everything in its place, and nothing was right.

Her eyes were different. Not the funeral-home face, he knew that face, he'd mapped it, he could draw it from memory. This was something else. Colder. The temperature of a room where someone had turned the heating off and left.

"You're early," she said.

"I came to help Dottie open."

"You helped Dottie open."

"Salt shakers. Sugar bowls. I'm a man of many talents."

She didn't smile. She always smiled at the small jokes. The dry observations. The deadpan deliveries. She was the audience for his particular frequency of humour and she always responded: the snort, the eye-roll, the almost-smile that was better than a full one. Today: nothing. The joke landed and lay there.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Fine."

Fine. The word she used when she wasn't. The word that had a specific weight in their vocabulary, a weight he'd measured and calibrated over six months: fine from Mollie meant I am holding something and I am not going to show you what it is and if you push I will put the wall up and the wall is harder to take down than it used to be because the wall has been reinforced by everyone who has ever tried to get behind it.

He didn't push.

They ate. He talked about Theodore's latest escapade: the Pomeranian had switched allegiances and was now collaborating with Captain against Theodore, which Theodore had handled with the quiet dignity of a dog who understood that betrayal was inevitable and adaptation was survival. She listened. She responded in the right places. The words were right. The temperature was wrong.

He tried other things. He told her about a commission inquiry from a restaurant on George Street that wanted a mural of the harbour. She said "that's great" in a voice that was neither great nor terrible. He told her Saoirse had reported that the debt was paid and the boys hadn't come back. She nodded. Said "good." One word. Period. Door closed.

He looked at her across the table and tried to see what had changed. The same coat. The same scarf. The same ring. The same hands, the same cup, the same eleven stirs-he counted, he always counted, and the same face, and underneath the face, something locked, something that had been open on Thursday and was now shut and he didn't know what had happened between Thursday and today, between the walk up the hill and this morning, between the girl who'd said paint me and the woman sitting across from him drinking tea like she was filling out a form.

"How's Gregory?" he asked. Because Gregory was safe. Gregory was always safe. The way Theodore was safe for her.

"Growing."

"Still leaning toward the window?"

"Plants lean toward light. That's what they do."

The sentence was flat. Factual. Stripped of the thing she usually did with Gregory, the warmth, the personification, the gentle absurdity of a woman who talked to a plant the way you talked to a person. Today, Gregory was a plant. Today, the light was just light. Today, the metaphors were off-duty.

Something had happened. He couldn't see what. He ran through the last forty-eight hours: Thursday's breakfast, the walk up the hill, the boots, paint me, not yet. Had the not yet hurt her? He'd meant it as care. As honesty. Had she heard it as rejection? Had he gotten the words wrong? He was a painter, not a poet, and words were his second language in more ways than one, and the space between what he meant and what she heard was the space where everything went wrong.

He tried once more.

"Mollie."

She looked at him. The eyes were the same grey-green, the same colour he'd mixed four times on the canvas and still couldn't get right. But the thing behind them, the thing he'd been learning to see, the thing that lived underneath the surface, the person behind the professional, was further away than usual. Not gone. Retreated. Standing at the back of the room with her arms folded, watching the door.

"What?" she said.

A dozen questions. He had a dozen questions. What happened? What changed? Where did you go? Why is the tea not warm enough between us? What did I say? What didn't I say? Why are you sitting in the booth like you're sitting in a waiting room?

"Nothing," he said. "More pancakes?"

"No. I should go. I've got a viewing at ten."

She stood up. The coat. The scarf. Three loops. Folded twice. The choreography was the same. The performer was different.

"Thursday?" he said. The word came out with a question mark he hadn't intended. It had never been a question before. Thursday was a fact. Thursday was gravity. Thursday was the colour he reached for first. Today it came out uncertain, the word lifting at the end like something that might not land.

"Thursday," she said. Flat. Confirmation, not promise. A schedule, not a lifeline.

She left. The bell. The cold.

He sat in the booth.

• • •

Her teacup was still on the table.

Half-finished. She always finished her tea. In six months, he'd never seen her leave a cup unfinished; she drank it the way she did everything, completely, with the full attention of a woman who believed that if you were going to hold something, you should hold it until it was done. She left things tidy. She left things finished. She did not leave half cups.

He stared at it. The ring of tea at the waterline. The lip print on the rim: barely visible, a ghost of contact. The cup sitting in the space where she'd been, the ceramic still warm, the warmth fading.

He replayed the morning. Every sentence. Every response. The fine that wasn't fine. The good that was a closed door. The flat Gregory. The tea she'd left unfinished. The Thursday that was a schedule, not a lifeline.

What had he said. What had he done. What had changed between Thursday and today, between paint me and this, between the woman who came back for her seat and the woman who left before her cup was empty.

Dottie appeared. Picked up the cup. Paused.

"She didn't finish," Dottie said.

"I know," Fayiz said.

"Do you know why?"

"No."

Dottie looked at him. Then at the door. Then at the cup in her hand.

"She came in early," Dottie said. "Earlier than usual. You were in the back."

"I was washing my hands."

"You were in the back," Dottie said again. "And I was at the grill. And we were talking."

He looked at her. The morning. The grill. The conversation. The salt shakers and the sugar bowls and the mothers and the hardware store and-

Have you found someone?

I'm working on it.

He stared at Dottie.

"She heard us," he said.

Dottie didn't confirm. Didn't deny. She looked at the cup. Looked at him. Set the cup down on the counter and went back to the grill.

"The question is," she said, over her shoulder, "how much she heard."

The diner was quiet. The grill sizzled. The radio played something with strings that sounded like the inside of a bad dream.

Have you found someone?

I'm working on it.

If she'd heard the first part and the second part and stopped. If she'd walked in at the wrong moment and heard I'm working on it, and not I'm working on deserving her. If she'd heard a man tell a woman he was working on finding someone and thought: It's not me. He's looking for someone. Someone else. Someone who makes sense on paper.

Noor. She would have thought of Noor. She would have thought: he said because it's Thursday and I thought that meant me but he's working on it, he's working on finding someone, the someone is not me, the someone has never been me, I am the breakfast person, I am the contract, I am the woman in the booth with the half-finished tea and the twelve days and the painting on my wall that was never about me.

Except it was. Except all of it was about her. Except working on it meant working on deserving her-her, Mollie, the woman who pulled toast into strips and stirred her tea eleven times and said paint me like it was the bravest thing she'd ever done. Except the whole sentence, the whole truth, the whole fumbling honest mess of it was I'm working on deserving her and she'd heard half of it and the half she'd heard was the wrong half and the wrong half had undone everything.

He stood up. Grabbed his coat.

"Go," Dottie said. From the grill. Not turning around. "The salt shakers can wait."

He went to the door. Opened it. The bell rang. The street was there. Long's Hill was there. She was somewhere on it, walking to work, walking away, carrying the wrong sentence like a stone.

He stopped.

Because what would he say. What would he do. Run up a hill and say you heard wrong, you heard half, the whole sentence is I'm working on deserving you and watch her face change and stand on a pavement and have the conversation that changed everything twelve days before everything ended.

Twelve days.

He stood in the doorway. The cold came in. Theodore was at his feet, looking up at him, waiting for the decision.

He let the door close.

Not because he was a coward. Because he was a painter. Because painters understood that timing was everything: the moment you committed the brush, the moment the colour hit the canvas, the moment the painting declared itself. Too early and you ruined it. Too late and you lost it. You had to wait for the right moment. You had to trust that the right moment would come.

He went back to the booth. Sat down. Looked at the half-finished cup of tea on the counter where Dottie had placed it.

The lip print on the rim. The waterline. The warmth, fading.

Something was wrong. He knew what. He didn't know how to fix it without saying the thing that would change everything. And saying the thing that would change everything required knowing what everything would look like after. And he didn't. He didn't know what they were or what they were becoming or what the word was for a man who loved a woman who was gay and who was dying in twelve days and who had asked to be painted and who had walked back to a diner for a phone she didn't lose.

He didn't have the word.

He had the colour.

Twelve days.

☕︎