croissant. But sometimes she would have to pull the entire length of her arm because the cheese was all melted and gooey and wouldn’t break off, and when that happened, she chuckled quietly.
After we both finished our sandwiches and were sipping our wine, I said, “The performance tonight. The cage. What was it really about?”
She smirked like she knew exactly what I was asking her and said, “The beauty of art is that it can be about whatever you want it to be about.”
She poured the rest of the wine into my glass.
“Come over here,” I said. “I want to show you something.”
I pulled out my phone and waited while she took a sip of her wine, wiped her hands on her napkin, and moved to the chair beside me.
“Remember when you asked me what my favorite word was?”
She nodded, setting her elbow on the table, her chin in her palm, a small smile still flickering on her face.
“I’ve been keeping a list,” I told her.
She pulled her chair closer and leaned against me so she could see over my shoulder. I could smell the clean, coconut scent of her shampoo, could feel her warm, Chianti-laced breath on my cheek.
I tapped the NOTES icon on my phone, opened the file titled “WORDS” and slid the phone over to her.
She slid the phone back and said, “Read them to me.”
“Saudade” was at the top because it was the last one I’d entered. After I told her what it meant, she said, “That’s breathtaking.”
I didn’t tell her it came from a passage that was part of the numinous impetus for why I was sitting in her house. That was a good story, but it was a story for another time. And that night I believed another time would someday come.
The next word was “Koi No Yokan.” I felt shy reading its definition aloud. “It’s Japanese. Loosely translated, it’s the sense one can have upon first meeting a person that you’re going to fall in love with each other.”
“Koi No Yokan,” she whispered, looking down at the table and, with her index finger, making an invisible drawing on my napkin. “I know that feeling.”
The third word was “adamantine.” “It just means “unbreakable.” No biggie. But I like the way it falls off the tongue like a melody.”
I scrolled to the next word. She saw it and said, “‘Cafuné.’ I know that one.”
I pulled the phone toward my chest so she couldn’t read the definition. “What does it mean, smarty pants?”
Another Portuguese term I’d come across in the same book, it was the word for tenderly running your hand through your lover’s hair. But October didn’t say what it meant. She reached up and acted it out, and goosebumps sprang up all over my arms.
“This last one’s my favorite.” I showed her the word because I didn’t know how to pronounce it: mamihlapinatapai.
She laughed. “That’s not a word, it’s an alphabet.”
“It’s real, I swear. Indigenous to South America.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s the shared look between two people who want the same thing but are reluctant to initiate it.”
She looked right at me and didn’t blink when she said, “I wonder if there’s a word for when one person is less reluctant than the other.”
I wasn’t sure if she was referring to me or to herself in that instance, but the space between us was getting smaller, thicker, and as lush as the forest grass that grew in big patches behind the house.
October took my hand and held it between both of hers, the way she had the day we met. Then she nodded and said, “I can feel it.”
Something relaxed inside of me then. I put my free hand on her face and moved in to kiss her, but she pulled back, got up, and stepped away. Pointing at my phone, she said, “If you really mean what you’re saying, we need to call Chris right now and tell him what’s going on. Otherwise you can’t be here.”
It would be morning in Amsterdam. I imagined calling Cal and waking him to tell him—what? That I was in love with his girlfriend? That she was in love with me? Was she? I tried to picture his face when he heard me say the words, the various possible reactions he might have, all of them catastrophic.
I’m not letting her go without a fight, he’d said.
I stood up and walked into the living room, and October followed.
I paced, rubbing my face. “Fuck.”
“Not an ideal situation. I get