Milos found her hand, and his squeeze administered a little balm to her wounds. He led Sarah to his house, a stone affair with citrus trees outside, a garden in the front, and the day’s thunderous sea in a wide sweep beyond. On the main floor, dust stormed them like a welcome party, and when it cleared, Sarah saw a brick fireplace, a scuffed black piano, ramshackle furniture upholstered in a range of sun-beaten, primary-colored velvets, and books stacked floor-to-ceiling in the corner.

“My father loves to read,” said Milos with evident pride. “He thinks I can be as good as Tennyson and Joyce, if I apply myself. I wonder if…I mean, do you think I can, Sarah?”

Sarah heard the import of the question mark. It wasn’t soft and light, like requiring confirmation of something he already knew. No, Milos needed Sarah to inform him what he was capable of. He’d recited passages to her before, which she’d thought wonderful, albeit commentary drenched in bias. When you loved someone so newly and completely, it was quite impossible to conceive of a critique.

“I know you can,” she said, and when Milos smiled, she was struck by her power, to make him and to break him. And if she wielded that power over him, then couldn’t it work vice versa?

Sarah paused at a teetering pile of books, wishing Benjamin was there to delight in the bounty. She could just picture him, assuming the preparatory stance of an Olympian to conquer every last tome.

“The attic is over here.” Milos led her away, and somewhat reluctantly, Sarah followed him up rickety stairs to the tiny alcove on the very top, large enough only for a bed made up in yellow linens, framed by an oval window onto a garden. Sarah sat on the bed, atop a creaky spring. They hadn’t been together yet, like a married couple should. Well, they weren’t married. And what did it even mean, to be together? She was supposed to have a mother and friends to help her decipher how these things were meant to proceed.

Rachel. Sarah’s heart panged, thinking how she hadn’t even said goodbye to her best friend.

“You can put your things in the dresser.” Milos opened a drawer, and a moth scattered out.

“My things?” Sarah remembered her bag and peered inside it, suddenly eager for a memory of home. Slowly, she removed a pair of pajamas and then the fancy dress her father had made her for a cousin’s wedding. He hadn’t even protested when she’d selected the cobalt brocade fabric that cost more than her mother had said she could spend.

“That’s all you brought?” Milos extended his hand for the dress. “Here, I’ll hang it.”

But she couldn’t bear to part with it yet. “It all happened so fast. I…I didn’t—”