I said, “I really did think I’d done this horrible thing. I thought I practically burned the place down. I’m sorry I made you worry about me.”

“Even if you did burn something down, I’d still think you were cute. Come here.”

We moved in closer on the couch and hugged sideways. I loved touching him. Always always. I felt better, but still tired and beat up.

“Carla? Why do you want to hang out with these people anyway? I mean she’s sort of cool, Viridian, but they’re a different kind of crowd. I’m not sure we’ve got a lot in common.”

“I don’t know. I never knew anything about poetry, I couldn’t even read it. I still can’t, not like normal people. But I want to learn more about it.” I shrugged. “I guess it’s not really a career path, is it.” As soon as I said it, I saw how it might be. How you might study poetry, become a student of it, and that might lead to the next unknown thing. It would be a little like jumping on the back of that stranger’s motorcycle.

Aaron got up from the couch. “Viridian gave me something for you. A couple of things.”

He went into the kitchen and came back with a paper shopping bag. “Here.” He handed me a thick paperback, an anthology, it looked like: Modern and Contemporary Poetry. “There’s an audiobook, she made sure of it. You can follow along.”

I was still turning it over in my hands when he gave me a second book, a slim one this time. “This is hers. She says she’ll read the poems to you if you want.”

The book was called Lost and Found. It had a picture of a black dog, or its back legs and tail, walking off the right edge of the cover, while the front end of the same dog appeared on the left edge. There was a picture of Viridian on the back, a formal black-and-white portrait that made her look like someone from another century, like she used to hang out with Emily Dickinson.

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s great.” I didn’t want to let on how excited I was.

“Her phone number’s in there. You’re supposed to call her. Come help me figure out dinner.”

“Did Larry ever get there? The guy they were all expecting?”

“Somebody came after the fire was out. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention at that point.”

I followed him into the kitchen and we made pasta with bacon and mushrooms and a tomato salad, and we drank the beer I’d brought, and got in bed and made everything right between us.

It was only a couple of days later that I realized he hadn’t brought up moving again, not since that first time.

Study