It was raining in Seattle, the soft endless kind of rain that makes a Sunday feel like it has no edges.
Maya was on one end of the sofa with a novel. Ben was on the other end with his laptop, pretending to work. Her bare feet were in his lap. They often were. Two years together had made that ordinary.
What was not ordinary was how many times he had read the same email.
“You’ve been on that page for twenty minutes,” she said without looking up.
“It’s a complicated email.”
“Mm.” She turned a page. Her toes – painted a dark plum colour she had picked on Friday – curled and uncurled, slowly, against his wrist. He stopped breathing for a second. She noticed that too.
The question
She put the book down on her chest.
“Ben. Can I ask you something without you getting weird?”
“That’s a terrible way to start a question.”
“Do you like my feet?”
He felt his face go hot, which was answer enough. For years he had treated it like a secret: something slightly embarrassing, something to manage. He had never said it to anyone.
“I’m asking,” Maya said gently, “because you always offer to paint my nails. And you went very quiet in that shoe shop in July.”
He laughed, helplessly. “You noticed the shoe shop.”
“I notice everything. It’s my most annoying quality.” She wiggled her toes. “So?”
“Yes,” he said. “A lot. For a long time. I didn’t want it to be… a thing.”
Permission
She was quiet for a moment, and he braced himself.
“It’s already a thing,” she said finally. “It’s been a thing for two years. I like that it’s a thing. I just want you to stop hiding it from me.”
She pushed the laptop off his knees, very slowly, with her heel.
“Here’s the deal. Today is Barefoot Sunday. You get to do whatever you’ve been thinking about – as long as you tell me what it is first, and I get to say yes or no.”
He told her. It took a while, because he kept stopping to laugh at himself, and she kept saying go on. Some things she said yes to straight away. One thing made her raise her eyebrows and say maybe next Sunday. One thing made her laugh so hard she nearly fell off the sofa.
The rest of the afternoon
The rain kept falling. The novel stayed on the floor.
He took his time. He had wanted to for two years, and now he did not have to pretend he didn’t. She watched him the whole time with an expression he had never seen on her before – curious, amused, and very, very pleased with herself.
Much later, wrapped in a blanket with her feet in his hands again, she said, “You know what the best part is?”
“What?”
“You’re not doing that thing with your face anymore. The guilty thing.”
He realised she was right.
“Same time next Sunday?” she asked.
“Every Sunday,” he said, and pressed a kiss to the inside of her ankle.
