The door opened.
Mariana stood in the doorway wrapped in the pale covering from her bed, her pink hair loose and slightly tangled, her eyes red-rimmed in the way that two days of crying produces, swollen at the edges and achingly honest.
She looked at him sitting on the floor against the wall with his robe pulled around him,
"You have been out here this whole time?" she said.
"Yes," he said simply.
"You are cold."
"A little."
She stared at him for another moment, her jaw working slightly with the effort of managing several things at once.
"That is very stupid," she finally said.
"Probably," he agreed.
She stepped back from the doorway and held it open wider, not looking at him directly, her eyes somewhere around his shoulder.
"Come inside then," she said quietly. "Let's hear the execuses you made."
"They are no excuses, Maria. Only truth."
He got up from the floor, slowly, his cold joints voicing their opinion about two nights on stone, and walked through the doorway.
