“Good day?” I say, as we head toward a taqueria nearby. Reid doesn’t seem to notice the clumps of people who occasionally get in our way; he moves us deftly through them, our hands linked together. I try to suppress the kind of stirring optimism I seem to call up whenever I see Reid act this comfortable, unbothered way somewhere in the city. I look for signs in everything—signs he’s starting to do more than tolerate it, signs that he thinks of it as a possible home.

“Busy,” he says mildly. “Still a lot to do.”

“That sucks,” I say, but he only shrugs.

“It may not be much longer until I can—well, until I finish up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” he says, looking down at me as we get into a long line. He clears his throat. “I think—well, they’re bringing in some new people. That ought to take some of the load off.”

“Money people or math people?”

He swoonshes. “Too soon to tell, I guess.” He opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it. “How’d it go with Lark?” he finally asks, when he speaks again.

He’s done this a lot lately, these not-subtle shifts away from saying too much about this project he’s on, the one he’s trying so hard to finish up. It’d bother me, maybe, under any other circumstance, but I think Reid is trying, as best he can, to protect me. To not get my hopes up about this, about his future plans. About whether he’ll be able to stay.

So I indulge him, hoping for the best. I tell him about the planner and about the new plan for her to come see my rehearsal pitch tomorrow. He looks full of regret when I tell him Lachelle invited him along, but I promise I’ll do the whole thing for him another time. We order food and find a spot outside to enjoy it, Reid still managing to eat with a napkin draped tidily over his lap, as though the breeze that keeps blowing mine away doesn’t even bother trying it with him. He shows me a picture on his phone that came through earlier, his brother Owen and his young daughter Rae at a Brownie event, and I make him, not for the first time, remind me about the names of all his nieces and nephews.

When we’re finished, he pitches our trash and comes back to sit beside me, draping an arm along the back of the bench, his hand tucking under the messy length of my haphazard ponytail to rest on the nape of my neck. He makes a low hum of disapproval when he squeezes there, and maybe it’s wrong, out here in the open air, but I hear it as if it’s a bedroom sound.

“Meg,” he says, his voice stern. Bedroom stern. “You need to stretch more.”