Grace opened the door before he knocked.
She was wearing a fitted grey oversized shirt that stopped at her mid thigh, her sleek brown bob sitting clean against her jaw, her amber eyes finding him immediately with that quality they had in certain light, warm and direct at the same time.
She had one hand on the door and the other on the frame and she looked at him the way she looked at him when she had been waiting but was not going to say she had been waiting.
"You actually came," she said.
"You asked," he said.
She stepped back and let him in.
He came through the door and she closed it behind him and they stood in the living room for a moment, the apartment warm and familiar around him, the lamp in the corner on low, Daisy already at his feet doing her greeting.
He crouched down and ran both hands through the fur behind her ears and she leaned into it with the full commitment of a dog who had decided this was the best thing that had happened today.
"Hey girl," he said.
