In three weeks, Eden had learned that Eva worked better when no one asked whether she was nearly finished.
Michel had not learned that yet.
“Do you think we could gain ten centimeters here?” he asked for the third time.
Eva did not look up. She was crouched in the middle of La Traverse’s back room, a tape measure stretched between the foot of a shelf and the baseboard. The floor creaked beneath her knee. A dark strand of hair crossed her cheek, and she blew it away without releasing the casing.
“Yes.”
Michel smiled, delighted.
“Ah.”
“By removing the shelf.”
The smile disappeared.
“Ah.”
Eden bit the inside of his cheek. In his memory, Eva would have waited exactly two seconds before adding something about books never having shrunk to please architects. This one said nothing. She noted a measurement on the plan on the floor, then moved her pencil to the partition line.
It was that kind of difference that saved and exhausted him.
Michel went to negotiate with the delivery driver who had just rung at the entrance. Through the bookstore, his voice receded between the shelves: “No, the English boxes go on the left. Your other left.” Eva stood, leaning on the table. She wore jeans covered in white dust that Eden had never seen her wear elsewhere. He had already discovered three pairs of shoes he did not know, a new intolerance for raisins, and the fact that she no longer drank—or did not yet drink—coffee after four.
He had also discovered he had no right to experience every detail as an infidelity.
“You’ve been making that face for five minutes,” she said.
“What face?”
“The one where you’re trying not to make a face.”
“That’s very precise.”
“I charge for precision.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.