#nmtt

She doesn’t bother to call now, though, swiping over to their messages. She likes the raisins Kent texts back. The little multi pack boxes. Can you also pick up fabric softener.

Nick reads it immediately and sends her a thumbs up in return.

Kent sets her phone aside. The house is still, settling in for the evening, dusk falling soft and velvet blue outside the kitchen window. She should find her car keys—it’s about time to head over and pick Kit up from her play date at her friend’s house. Nick will probably get back when she’s still driving them home, but he can let himself in.

She looks around at the stack of dirty dishes; the cereal bowl Kit abandoned on the side when they were running late for the school run this morning, that Kent hasn’t moved yet. It annoyed her at 7am but now, bizarrely, Kent feels an illogical ache in her chest—a sense of missing her daughter. She’s going to see her again in an hour. But the house feels too empty without her running commentary—the sound of her giggles and her sneakers being kicked off in the hall. It feels empty without Nick, too. The job he’s been working recently is a town over and he’s been gone later in the evening, a longer commute home. His raincoat is draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. The mug he always drinks out of is upside down on the draining board, untouched. 

She misses him too. Nick’s slotted himself in so seamlessly, with such little fanfare, that it was a jolt to suddenly not have him around so much. To get up in the morning and feel his side of the bed already bare, Nick packed off and already gone with a full thermos—her mug already set aside on the counter for when she wakes.

Kent’s slept alone for most of her life. It shouldn’t be such an adjustment, and it’s not even as if they aren’t going to bed together. It’s just the mornings that are different, and the slow slide of evening drawing in without him there on the couch beside her.

She picks her keys off the side and climbs into her car, turning on the heaters to try and kick back some of the January chill. Her phone connects automatically. She could listen to the radio or the audiobook Jacob keeps saying is going to change her life.

Instead, she backs carefully out of the drive, waits until she’s on the straight, and then presses a few more buttons.

“Hey.”

Nick sounds surprised to hear from her. Kent smiles a little to herself.

“Hey. I’m just picking Kit up from her friend’s. How was work?”

“Cold,” Nick laughs. “But pretty good. The cups of coffee from the woman whose house we’re fixing up were pretty nice this morning. She’s got a machine, I think. Fancy.”

Nick’s driving too. She can hear the traffic whipping past, the faint tick of his turn signal, his voice distorted a little down the line. She likes thinking about both of them in different places, doing the same thing, connected like this.

“Better than the coffee I made?” she teases.

Sure enough, Nick laughs again. “Oh. I didn’t say that. You had the advantage though. I was half in love with you already. Made it taste sweeter.”

“Is that right?” she replies, but she knows it is, because Nick’s told her that already, more than once. How he felt those first few weeks when Kent kept shying away like a feral kitten from every friendly conversation he attempted to get going. How it never deterred him or changed his attitude.

“Maybe you were sneaking extra sugars in there, huh?” he continues.

“Maybe.” She pauses at a junction, turning left to head towards the neighborhood Kit’s friend lives in. “Did you get the stuff at the store?”

“Think so,” he replies.

They talk a little longer—until Kent’s almost at the door and needs to wrap it up.

“I’ll see you back home?”

“See you both soon,” Nick confirms.

He doesn’t say ‘I love you’ before he hangs up, and neither does Kent, but it’s there in the silence that settles over the car afterwards anyway. Kent used to think she’d never hear it, and then she thought she’d need to hear it all the time, just to make sure it was still true.

It’s been something else entirely to learn to listen for those words said in other ways, and to work on returning them just the same. To pick up the phone instead of texting. To recognize the coffee cup on the counter for what it is.