My knees skid against the grass, but it’s worse for Abek. I’ve landed half on top of him, the heel of my shoe digging into his shin.
“Are you all right?” I ask, rolling to my knees, terrified that I’ve injured him.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he apologizes, scrambling to his feet. “I said I wouldn’t let you fall; I promised.”
“You didn’t do it on purpose,” I assure him, relieved he’s not hurt. “Unless you did do it on purpose because I made you get up so early.”
He shakes his head, mortified. “I promise I didn’t.”
“Abek, I was joking. Of course you didn’t do it on purpose. I had fun.”
“Really?”
“I really had fun. You’re a good teacher.”
He gallantly offers his hand, helping me up, and then we both hear the sound of someone approaching from the stables.
“At least with the horses, they look sort of guilty when they throw you,” the voice calls. I turn my head and see Josef, hands in his pockets. “That bicycle doesn’t care at all.”
He’s wearing the shirt I repaired only a few hours ago, and thinking of this turns my stomach warm. I wonder if I was supposed to do something when I left—leave him a note or wake him again. I don’t know the protocol for leaving a man’s bed in the middle of the night.
“Those horses never look guilty,” I say, feeling for any remaining grass in my hair.
“You’re just not close enough friends with them yet.”
Abek is looking back and forth between us. I’m glad I introduced them yesterday; I wouldn’t know how to now. My friend Josef? My beau? He must have seen us leave together last night.
“The brakes squeak, right?” Josef turns to Abek. “That’s what I heard someone say yesterday.”
“They squeak. And this chain won’t stay on.”
Josef crouches down, and Abek kneels next to him, their heads close together as they examine the chain, hands growing greasy and dark.
“I don’t really know anything about bicycles,” Josef is telling Abek. “But, what if we tried just cleaning the chain? The grease is caked on.”
“I should have tried that before we even rode them,” Abek says.
“I’m sure it wouldn’t have mattered. These bicycles are a mess.”
They look so at ease with each other. I like how Josef talks to Abek, reassuring him that he wasn’t at fault for the malfunctioning bicycles. I like how Abek listens.
Family? My heart asks the question before my brain can stop it. Is this what my future could look like, or some form of it?
“There are some clean rags in a pile in the stables,” Josef tells Abek. “I can work on the chain, and then, if we wanted to try something for the brakes, the trade school building might have a kind of oil that would work. Do you want to go see? It’s the A-frame building behind the dining hall.”
Abek wipes his greasy hands in the grass before disappearing into the stables, returning a few moments later with a couple of soft flannels. “These?” he asks, tossing them over and then setting off in the direction of the building that Josef described, eyeing me quickly to make sure it’s okay.
As Abek disappears from sight, Josef settles back into the grass and tries to work the chain off its sprocket. “Try there,” I suggest, pointing.
“You know about bicycles now?” he teases. “Do you want to do this?”
“I know how to figure out machines when they break. I’ve reassembled sewing machines; I’ve fixed looms.”
He colors—I told him this last night. I told him that the scar on my arm is from a shuttle flying off a loom. I told him that when I was about to be naked in his bedroom.
Following my instructions, he works the chain off and then lays it in front of him in the clean grass.
“I, um, was going to come and find you later,” he says, picking up one of the soft cloths and beginning to clean the chain, link by link, of its caked-on grime. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Josef is as uncomfortable as I am, trying to figure out how to talk to me today. “You left something in my cottage last night.”
Mentally I scroll through what I could have left; all I had with me were my clothes and shoes, and I know I didn’t walk home naked. “What did I leave?”
“Reach into my pocket for me,” he says, nodding to his messy hands.
It’s the note I left in his shirt, I think, mortified. Somehow he’s found it already, and now he’s going to tease me about it. Josef catches my expression, but it obviously doesn’t register to him what it means. “It’s some thread,” he explains. “Left over from when you fixed the buttons.”
“Thread,” I repeat in relief, and now I do slide my hand into Josef’s breast pocket, skimming along his chest until my fingers wind around the tangle of silk pooled at the bottom. It’s still thrilling to touch him in such an intimate way, but I realize with embarrassment that I’ve let my hand linger longer than necessary. Quickly, I pull the thread out and stretch it in my lap, working loose the knots it’s tied itself into in Josef’s pocket.
It’s somewhat of a fool’s errand to even bother with it. There weren’t more than four or five centimeters of thread left over after I finished the mending. I can find a use for almost anything: A slightly longer piece of thread could have been used for sewing a solitary button, or as dental floss, or for tying into a doll’s hair bow. But this piece is so uselessly short, even I could think of no use for it. I’d thrown it into a waste can in Josef’s room. Meaning, I realize with pleasure, that he fished it out on purpose so he would have an excuse to talk to me.
“I’m sorry I left so early,” I say, smoothing out the untangled string in my lap. “I thought I should get back to Abek, and I didn’t want him or Esther to worry, and…”
And I had no idea how to act, I silently finish the sentence. Because I’ve never been in that situation and never thought I would be.
Josef stops my apology. “Of course, of course. I assumed you wanted to get back. I was going to leave you alone this morning because I thought you’d spend it with Abek.” He polishes another link on the now half-sparkling chain. “How is Abek? How is it being with him?”
“He’s—” I stop myself because I was about to say, He’s fine, which is such an incomplete response for this situation. Josef looks up at me and sets his work back down on the grass. He’s actually interested in my response; he isn’t just looking for something perfunctory. “He’s been out here for an hour, teaching me to ride this stupid bicycle. Even though I’m terrible at it and the bicycle is terrible. And it’s strange, because…”
I pause because I’m trying to formulate something out loud I haven’t even had a chance to formulate in my head. “Because since he came back, the whole thing has been like a dream almost. Having him at the wedding, having him sleep in our cottage. But in an odd way, just now, this morning, is when I’ve felt most like I had a brother. Not just a memory. If that makes any sense.”
Josef bites his lip, nodding. “I think it does. With my sister—there’s a difference between loving a person and loving a memory of them. Or loving who someone is and who you want them to be.”