He looks at her earnestly. “It really doesn’t feel like I just met you.”

The thump when he hits the floor is immensely satisfying.

“Tips on dating women,” Thora says, “from someone who knows. You’re supposed to come out with that bullshit in an attempt to get me into bed.”

His tousled head appears over the horizon, followed by the rest of him. She admires the view as he climbs on top of her, one arm propped on either side of her head. “What if I want to get you into bed again?”

She looks left and right, pretending to notice for the first time the pillows, the headboard, the bedside table stacked with Borges and sci-fi.

“Well,” she says, looking up into his amused brown eyes. “You seem to have succeeded.”

The next morning, Thora wakes in an existential panic. It’s not that she doesn’t know where she is. She knows exactly where: she is in Santi’s flat.

All her life, she has fled from anything that felt significant. Now, everything is so significant it hurts: from the black cat curled up between them, to the crochet rug where her clothes lie scattered, to the way Santi breathes unevenly in his sleep. It is as terrifying as looking up at the stars and seeing her name written there.

Her breath hitches. She has to get out. She slides out of bed and tries to dress silently, but Santi is a light sleeper. He opens his eyes and reaches across the bed, startling Félicette into flight. “Where are you going?”

“Out to get coffee,” she says. “What kind do you want?”

“Just black.”

“Okay. Back in a bit,” she says brightly. She pulls on her boots and walks out, down the stairs, through the green door onto the tree-lined streets of the Belgian Quarter. She keeps walking, across the park where feral parakeets swoop between the trees in the slanting sunshine, past the mosque into her own neighborhood of Ehrenfeld. She doesn’t stop until she passes the lighthouse, relic of an electric company’s whimsy, rising above the city roofs two hundred kilometers from the nearest sea. Safe inside her flat across the street, she closes the door and slumps against it, breathing hard as if she just escaped a fire. Her eyes move across her familiar mess: the television she only uses for rewatching Contact; the scarf her dad gave her, balled up in the window to block a draft; the scented candles Jules left behind that she can’t bear to burn or give away. She thinks of Santi lying awake in his flat half an hour away, waiting for her to come back.

“It’s okay,” she tells herself under her breath. “I don’t ever have to see him again.”