They stayed until Lottie jingled her keys in a closing-time song and told them, kindly, to go home before the park decided they were scenery. On the walk to the subway, Theo took Rowan's hand and did not squeeze as if possession could prevent August. He held on the way you hold a working truth: firmly, without pretending it couldn't change shape.
August arrived with the smell of hot pavement and the particular ache of airports in the early morning. Bridie rode with them to LaGuardia because she refused to say goodbye on a sidewalk. She hugged Rowan so hard Rowan's ribs complained, then hugged Theo with slightly less force and substantially more warning.
"You will not go silent," Bridie told him. "If you go silent, I will mail you a croissant filled with passive aggression."
"I believe you," Theo said.
At security, Rowan held Theo's face in both hands for a second that felt borrowed from Ned's camera. "Ugly honest," she said. "I'm excited and I already miss the squeaky chair."
"Ugly honest," Theo said. "I'm going to be brave in installments. Please accept monthly payments."
"I'll accept them," Rowan said, and kissed him in the practical way of people who refuse to make a spectacle out of a real thing. Then she went through the line, cream coat unnecessary in the August heat and carried over her arm anyway, a winter habit traveling into a new season.
Theo did not wait until her plane was airborne like a character in a softer story. He waited until she texted from the gate, then from the jet bridge, then a final message: Mid-try continues.
He replied: Mid-try continues. Hold that pose when you need to. I'm still learning the edges.
The first month was clumsy in ways ice had prepared them for and ways it had not. Time zones made goodnight messages land at odd hours. Rowan found a favorite grocery store and a physical therapist who did not treat former competitors like fallen royalty. Theo finished the night-shift nurses piece and started another about people who moved for work and had to rebuild their definition of home without treating home like a betrayal of where they had been.
They argued once, badly, about a weekend visit Theo delayed because of a last-minute edit. Rowan heard April in the delay. Theo heard unfairness in the comparison. They hung up too fast. Two hours later Theo called back with an ugly honest paragraph that began, "I did the silence thing for one hundred and twenty minutes and it felt like putting on a coat that doesn't fit anymore." Rowan answered with, "I weaponized April because I was lonely and proud. I'm sorry for the weapon. I'm not sorry for needing you to keep your word."
They did not become perfect. They became practiced.
In October, Theo flew to Minneapolis with the childhood skates in his checked bag, a joke and a vow in the same scuffed leather. Rowan met him at the airport in a red knit hat that made her hair look like a continuation of winter's thesis. Her new rink smelled like cold and ambition. She showed him the ice as if introducing him to a friend she hoped he would respect.
"Do not evaluate my students like a journalist," she warned.