The following week he was back in Atlanta for the Georgetown site prep.
We'd been messaging again. Not the way it had been before Sunday's call something slightly more deliberate now, on both sides. I noticed myself choosing words more carefully than I used to.
He was doing the same. I could tell by the small gaps before his replies, the precision of what he said when he got there.
The ground had shifted. We were both watching where we put our feet.
Wednesday, a message: Free Thursday afternoon. That cafe near Piedmont you mentioned it once. Still good?
I'd mentioned the cafe in September. Before any of it. He'd stored it the way he stored everything about me without making a production of the storing.
I said: Still worth trying.
He said: Three o'clock?
Three, I said.
He was there
