The Island Between Us

The ferry bucked over slate-colored water, throwing spray against the windows, and by the time the island’s crooked pier came into view, my body felt like the inside of a shaken thermos—tired, sloshed, but stubbornly upright. My backpack straps cut into my shoulders. I counted my steps down the gangway like tally marks until my boots hit the uneven boards and the wind slapped my face clean.

I’d planned this for months. A two-week retreat: draft three long-form posts, shoot supporting video, catalogue historic markers, and recalibrate my brain away from comments, metrics, and the churn. The island’s website called it a “rugged jewel.” On the ground, it was a scattering of stone cottages and sheep, a handful of gnarled trees, and a sky so big it made me feel pleasantly small.

The owner—“Mags, call me Mags”—had sent excruciatingly detailed instructions that I appreciated more than any welcome basket. From the pier, left past the painted buoy bent into a mailbox, right at the dry-stone wall with a missing top rock, up the lane until the road narrows between two lichened boulders shaped like sleeping dogs. The cottage would be the second one after that, whitewashed, slate roof, blue door. The key would be in a rusted tin under a pot of dead geraniums. She’d written “dead,” bless her precise heart, which meant there would be a cluster of pots to choose from.

The climb up the lane put a burn in my thighs. My suitcase wheels hated the ruts, and I half-carried, half-dragged it, breathing gusts of sea salt and peat. Sheep watched, then returned to tearing at the grass, unimpressed. When the cottage finally emerged—a squat rectangle, two small windows like squinting eyes, smoke scar hardly visible on the chimney—I stopped in the lane and just looked.

It was exactly as promised. Not charming in a curated way but honest. The paint peeled a little. The door was scuffed around the handle. The small fenced yard was a riot of wind-battered stalks, the geraniums long gone to brittle brown skeletons. I smiled at the absurd love I felt for that sight.

I found the tin under the third pot I checked. Rust flaked onto my fingers, the key cold and gritty, heart-shaped top worn smooth by hands. I kept it in my palm a second longer than necessary, like pressing a button and waiting for a new screen to load. Then I slid it into the lock. It turned with a reliable clunk.

The smell hit me first—dry wood, faint smoke, old soap. I stepped in and let the door swing almost shut behind me, wind nudging it like a child playing tag. The main room was one large space, a studio by necessity not design. To the right, a compact kitchen: a coil-burner stove, a tiny oven, enamel mugs hanging from hooks on a rail. A farmhouse sink big enough to bathe a dog. The counter was scarred but clean, a tea towel folded with uniform edges. To the left, a little table with two mismatched chairs pushed under it, legs nicked by a thousand ankles. Straight ahead, a sofa with a throw that had been washed to softness and a small woodstove in black iron, its glass streaked with ash. A basket of split logs sat beside it like a promise.

My throat tightened unexpectedly. I took three steps in and dropped my pack at my feet, letting the weight thud into the scuffed floorboards. I set the suitcase upright against the wall, smoothed the strap, and indulged in the habit of taking pictures in my head before I touched anything—this was for me, not the blog. This was the first moment, unaltered.

“Hello,” I said out loud, because it felt like entering a church. My voice died in the wood.

I moved through, checking the little bathroom: a stall shower with a curtain printed in tiny blue anchors, hot-water tank humming faintly, shelf stocked with a few emergency toiletries that made me grin in gratitude. The bed was tucked behind a half wall, so low I could brush the ceiling beam if I stood on the mattress, which I didn’t. Double bed, plain white duvet, two pillows stacked, a woven throw folded with military precision at the foot. The window there looked straight out at the moor and the sea beyond, a slice of hard glitter under a bruised sky.

A storm was brewing; you could taste it. The wind had a new edge, the kind that tightened sails and sent gulls wheeling inland. I liked the way the cottage braced against it, a shoulder hitched—no, squared—against what was coming.

I pulled my planner out of my pack and set it on the table, then fished for my phone. No bars. I tilted it toward the window. One bar for half a second. I laughed. Good. My world contracted to the stove, the bed, the desk I could make at the table, and the island beyond the door.

The little touches: a jar of matches by the stove, a tin of loose tea with a rubber band around it, a note on the mantel in blocky pencil—“Welcome, kettle’s temperamental, bang it once then it behaves. —M.” I banged the kettle experimentally and felt absurdly pleased to be following orders.

I rolled my shoulders, stretched, and began my ritual. I wiped down the counter, not because it was dirty but because I always did. I opened cabinet doors to see what there was: a saucepan, a frying pan, a stack of plates and bowls like the rings of a tree, measuring cups, a roll of foil clinging to itself. I moved the table a hair to catch better light from the window. I set my laptop down, then my camera, then arranged pens in a neat line. My fingers stopped trembling only when everything had a place.

Outside, the wind stepped up to a higher octave. I put kindling in the stove, then logs, struck a match, and coaxed a small, stubborn fire into life. I held my hands out to it and felt the heat prick my skin. The cottage sighed, the way a thing does when it has people inside it again.

I sat on the edge of the bed and let my weight sink into the mattress, testing the give. It was surprisingly supportive. I thought about the first piece I’d write—an origin story of sorts. Arrival, expectation, the romance of isolation and the truth of it. The prose formed in tidy blocks in my head.

I toed off my boots, lined them up side by side on the mat, and went back to the door to bring in my suitcase fully, closing the door firm against the gust that tried to keep it open. My reflection flashed in the window: damp hair plastered to my temple, cheeks wind-bitten, eyes bright. Tired, yes, but clear. The island pressed its silence around the cottage like a blanket. I breathed it in and let it unclench something in my chest. The key, still on the little table by the door, gleamed in a puddle of gray light, exactly where it should be.

I moved to hang my coat on the back of one of the chairs—and froze. Another jacket already occupied it. Not a forgotten rain shell or something left by the owner; this was a heavy, well-worn field jacket, olive canvas softened by years, cuffs frayed, a smear of dried clay on the elbow. The collar smelled faintly of smoke and a cedar note I couldn’t place, like someone else had stood right here and shrugged it off ten minutes ago.

My stomach dropped. That internal click of everything in its place misfired. I blinked once, twice, as if the coat would evaporate if I just refocused. It didn’t. I reached out and tugged the sleeve, betraying myself with the impulse to prove it was real. It swung, weighted by a wallet in the inside pocket. A chill ran over my scalp.

On the table I’d claimed in my head as my desk sat a camera bag, the zipper gaping like a mouth mid-sentence. The canvas was scuffed, the leather corners scarred. A body with a lens still attached lay in a padded cradle, tether dangling. A second lens—wide, squat—sat out of its case, a microfiber cloth draped half over it like a towel abandoned on a chair. Batteries lined up in a row, two memory cards in their plastic sleeves, one sleeve open with the card half slid out. A sketchbook, spiral-bound, a rubber band strangling it, with a thin pencil stabbed through the spirals. The pencil tip had been gnawed.

My first thought was, Mags screwed up. My second was less polite and had more teeth.

I scanned for more evidence. There it was: boots by the door, not mine. Big, mud-caked, drying in a sloughed fringe on the mat. A wool beanie tossed onto the arm of the sofa like a landed seal. An enamel mug on the hearthstone with the faint kiss of coffee scum drying at the edge. The woodstove’s ash pattern wasn’t mine. The logs in the basket had been disturbed in a way that wasn’t my neat reaching for two. There was a rhythm to it—somebody else’s hands, somebody else’s habits, in my space.

Heat climbed the back of my neck. My pulse thudded in the hollow at my throat. I pulled my phone out and stared at the blank bars, willing one to appear. It didn’t. The cottage’s silence, which had been comfort, shifted into an accusation. How had I missed this? I’d been here five minutes and already staged my ritual while another person’s life was sitting open on the table like a diary left face down.

I tore my gaze from the jacket and stalked into the little bathroom again, irrationally hoping the toothbrush in the tin cup would mirror my own exact brand, making this a shared taste and not a violation. It didn’t. The toothbrush was navy with a bite mark on the handle. There was a safety razor on the shelf, a smear of drying shaving foam crusting the rim of the tin. The towel hanging from the hook was damp. I touched it and jerked my hand back like it had bitten me.

I marched back out, each step a beat in the drum of my skull. My planner sat exactly where I’d placed it. The camera bag hulked where it had been abandoned, daring me. I flipped the sketchbook open with one finger. Not sketches—contacts, scribbled and crossed out, location notes. “Pier dusk; herons?” “Cove at low tide HOT BLUE.” The handwriting was all caps and impatience.

“Hello?” I called, the word sharper this time, because if someone had been within earshot of the door creak and my boots on the boards and hadn’t announced themselves, we were already starting off wrong.

Nothing answered but wind.

I fought the urge to march straight outside and start flagging down sheep as witnesses. Instead, I went to the door and looked out, scanning up and down the lane. Empty. The hedge shivered. Gulls skated low over the field. No footsteps on the path, no shadow returning to claim the jacket and say, in some laughably casual tone, Oh, sorry, I didn’t expect you so early.

Anger snapped into place like a lens clicking onto a body, precise and total. I grabbed the olive sleeve again, this time less gently, and took the jacket off the chair, folding it—no, not folding; I am not that generous—and laying it in a heap on the sofa. I did the same with the beanie, flinging it to land next to the jacket. I slid the camera bag to the far edge of the table with the heel of my hand, not enough to damage, enough to reclaim territory. The batteries went into a neat row along the absolute edge, a border wall. The open memory card I snapped into its sleeve with a satisfying click and placed on top of the bag like a rebuke. The pencil I set beside it, tip pointing away from me.

A paper—confirmation email printed, my brain supplied grimly—peeked out from beneath the bag. I slid it free. The cottages’ name, dates. A different name. Julian Carter. I stared at the block of text until it blurred, then shook my head, resisting the pointless urge to read it line by line as if it would explain how two bookings could occupy the same reality.

I yanked my own printed confirmation from the pocket of my planner, slapped it down on the table beside his like we were laying down dueling gauntlets. Same dates. Same cottage. Same “Welcome, check-in from noon.” The only difference was our names and the long string of letters in our email addresses.

“Unbelievable,” I said, as if the room could share my outrage. It didn’t. The stove ticked. Somewhere far off, a lamb bleated. My teeth hurt, and I realized I was clenching them.

There was no landline. The owner’s number burned in my memory from our emails. I dialed anyway on my useless phone, pacing the compact length of the room while it failed to find a network. I held it to the window, lifted it as if altitude would coax a bar. For a heartbeat, the circle spun; then the call died. I swore, under my breath and then out loud.

I forced myself to stop moving. My instinct when the world tilted was to get smaller and more efficient. So: List. One, occupant currently absent but recent. Two, evidence indicates he is not malicious but messy. Three, owner must be contacted. Four, my space is still my space.

I moved my laptop to the far window and used my body as a shield while I opened it, as if I could carve a bubble of order by posture alone. I typed a draft email to Mags with the subject line “URGENT—double booking?” and the body a carefully constructed paragraph that began kindly and ended with the word “unacceptable.” I hovered over send, stared again at the blank Wi-Fi icon, and wanted to throw something.

Footsteps crunched on gravel outside. Not sheep. Not the wind. Heavy, confident, exactly the stride of someone who expected this door to open to his things and his space the way mine had five minutes ago.

I stood very still. My heart did a quick three-count. I straightened my spine, smoothed my hair back with one palm, and placed both confirmation emails side by side in the center of the table like exhibits in a trial. Then I turned the chair so it faced the door, sat, and waited with a tight, simmering calm I didn’t trust not to boil over. The latch began to turn.

The door swung in on a gust and a man shouldered through, head ducked against the wind, hair wet and curling at the edges under no hat. He shook himself like a dog, kicked the door shut with a heel, and froze when his eyes landed on me.

For a beat we just looked at each other. He had a camera strapped diagonally across his chest, dark jacket unzipped, a scarf looped once and hanging loose, cheeks flushed with cold. He wasn’t what my anger had built in my head—no faceless trespasser—he was very much a person, and he looked as startled as I felt furious.

“Hi,” he said, breath fogging. “You’re… not Mags.”

“No,” I said, voice flat. “I’m Elara. And this is my rental.”

His gaze flicked to the neat tableau on the table—two printed emails, my planner, his rearranged gear lined up like admonished soldiers. A slow, wary awareness entered his posture. He took a careful step closer, lifted a hand in a posture of peace. “Okay. I can see I’ve walked into something. I’m Julian.” He nodded toward the papers. “And I also have this place booked.”

I stood. “Do you.”

“I do.” He slid the camera strap over his head and set the body gently on the console by the door, the gesture automatic, practiced. He was tall and lean, jeans damp at the hem from the lane, boots leaving dark crescents on the mat. He moved like everything had weight and value, even in this moment. “Can I?” He nodded to the papers.

“I printed mine,” I said, “and I found yours.” I kept my hands at my sides instead of crossing them like I wanted to.

He stepped to the table. Up close I could see the creases at the corners of his eyes, the day’s stubble on his jaw, the wet drop caught on the edge of a curl above his ear. He glanced down at the confirmation with his name on it, then at mine. His mouth tightened. He let out a low exhale, not quite a laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not.” The word came out too sharp. I swallowed and started again. “There’s obviously been a mistake.”

“Obviously.” He looked up at me, met my eyes squarely. His were gray-blue, clear. Not defensive—annoyed, but not at me. “I’m sorry you walked into my mess. I left for a quick wander while the light had that weird green seam before the rain. I wasn’t expecting—” He stopped, revised. “I should’ve locked the door.”

“You left your things everywhere,” I said, and heard how it sounded: petty, territorial. I didn’t care. “Your jacket was on the chair. Your mug by the fire. Your toothbrush—”

He winced, a quick flash of embarrassment. “Right. Not my best first impression.”

“It’s not about impressions. It’s about the fact that this is my booking.” I tapped my page with my finger. “I came here to work. Alone.”

He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, pulled out his phone in its cracked case and swiped at it. He held it up; the screen displayed the same email as the paper, his name, the dates. He set the phone beside the printouts. “Same. I’ve got the chain with the deposit and everything. I got here yesterday afternoon. Mags said the key would be under the flat stone. It was. I assumed, foolishly, that meant we were in the clear.”

“Mags told me the exact same thing about the key,” I said. “I found it right where she said it would be. I didn’t—” I gestured, helpless at the duplication of our realities. “There isn’t anyone else renting on this island. I checked.”

“Me too.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, pushing wet hair back. Without the water making him softer, he had harder lines: a nose that had been broken once and healed a degree to the left, a mouth that looked like it knew how to be amused. He didn’t look amused now. “Okay. So. We can murder each other and figure out where to hide a body in the peat, or we can try to call her.”

“I tried.” I lifted my phone, showed the stubborn blank circles. “No signal.”

He glanced toward the tiny window, rain threading down the glass. “The ridge blocks it when the weather’s like this.” He pulled in a breath. “There’s a landline… that doesn’t exist.” He looked back at me. “Right. We’ll have to wait until the squall breaks, take a walk up to the headland and try to catch a bar.”

“That could be hours,” I said.

“Or ten minutes.” He let one corner of his mouth edge up. “Weather’s moody.”

“Great,” I said. “Perfect.”

He looked again at the two identical emails, then at the bed down the small hall, the single room that held too much of both our lives. He set both hands on the table, his fingers long, knuckles reddened from cold. “Look, I get that this isn’t what you signed up for. It’s not what I signed up for either. But I’m not a lunatic who wandered in and decided to squat. I’ll show you my bank statement if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary.” The bite in my tone had dulled. He was too human, too plainly inconvenienced, and it took the fun out of being furious.

He saw something shift in my face and eased a fraction. “I can pack up,” he offered, jerking his chin toward his camera bag, the jacket I’d moved. “Give you the room as… yours. I can sleep in my car until the ferry goes. I’ve done worse.”

“You’ll freeze.” The words came without my permission, an unwanted streak of practicality. “And there is no ferry. Not until the weekend. The storm.”

He grimaced. “Right. The storm.”

Silence, thick as the wool blanket draped over the arm of the sofa. The fire ticked again, a small comfort that belonged to neither of us.

“I’m not unreasonable,” I said finally. “I just—this was supposed to be simple.”

“Same,” he said, and his voice softened. “I had a plan too, believe it or not.” He pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. “How about this: we try to get Mags on the phone as soon as the sky cooperates. Until then, I stay out of your way. I’ll take the sofa. I’ll keep my things contained.” He glanced pointedly at the lines I’d made with his gear. “You can tape a grid on the floor if you want. I’ll respect it.”

Despite myself, my mouth twitched. “I already considered it.”

“I can tell.” He smiled properly then, and it transformed his face, eased the sharpness. “I’m good with boundaries. Mostly.”

I didn’t trust the warmth that pricked at the base of my throat at that smile. I looked at the emails again, the stupid black-and-white proof of our impossible overlap. I nodded. “We call her as soon as we can.”

“Deal.” He held out his hand across the table like we were sealing a business agreement. His fingers were cold when I put mine in his, callused, his grip firm and straightforward. He didn’t squeeze too hard. He didn’t hold on too long. When he let go, the air felt cooler where his skin had been.

He backed away, gave me space, and reached for his jacket where I’d dropped it, lifting it and folding it once before laying it on the back of the sofa, careful, apologetic. Then he started gathering his equipment silently, moving batteries back into their case, coiling the tether, click-seating the lens cap. The neatness soothed something jagged in me. He glanced up once, caught me watching, and gave a small nod that said he understood—this was a truce we were both choosing.

Another gust rattled the window. We both looked toward it, toward the low curve of sky beyond. We waited for the rain to lighten.

The rain eased like someone loosening a fist. Julian watched the window for a beat, then pointed to the headland with his chin. “Now or never?”

I grabbed my jacket and the folded emails, shoving them into the inside pocket like talismans. We stepped out into air that smelled of salt and wet peat, boots sinking half an inch into the soft earth. The path rose immediately behind the cottage, a narrow strip cut into gorse and heather. Wind sheared across the ridge and shoved at my hood; he reached once to steady my elbow when I slipped, the touch brief and impersonal, and then put a step of space between us again.

At the top, the world opened—sea knifing gray to the horizon, white rakes of foam dragging off sea stacks like old teeth. He held up his phone first, eyes narrowed. One bar stuttered into life, then flickered to none. He moved three steps to the right, holding the phone like a dowsing rod, squinting. “Come on,” he murmured. The bar returned. A sliver of 3G. “Got it.”

“Call.” I didn’t realize how breathless I was until the word came out thin.

He hit Mags’s number and put it on speaker. It rang, a long stretch of empty space, and then a voice that sounded like cigarettes and a thousand storms answered in a rush. “Julian, love, you blown off the headland yet? I saw the radar and thought, well, there goes my photographer.”

“Hi, Mags,” Julian said, shooting me a look that was half apology. “Funny story. I’m not alone. I’ve got Elara here—Elara Ward. She also has the cottage booked right now, with a confirmation and everything.”

Silence. Then a string of muttered words I imagined were not polite, and then, louder, “Oh, for the love of—no. No, no, no. The system didn’t… oh, it did.” Papers shuffled. Keys clacked, an old keyboard pounded by frustrated fingers. “Damn it. I switched platforms last month. The old calendar didn’t sync. It looked blank. I took both your bookings. I’m so sorry, my darlings.”

My stomach dropped out. “So there’s… what?” The wind blew my words sideways. “Another rental? Anything?”

“I’d offer you my spare room if you could swim the channel. There’s nothing else on the island, and I’d not put you in with Hamish and his hounds unless you like waking up with dog breath and a shotgun under your pillow.” She exhaled. “The lighthouse keeper’s cottage is a ruin. The bothy at Stannan’s is three walls and an argument with the fourth. It’s this or a sheep shed.”

Julian rubbed his eyebrow with his knuckle, mouth flattening. “What about the ferry? Can one of us head back to the mainland and sort something there?”

Another pause heavy with the sound of her clicking. “They pulled the schedule forward because of the pressure system rolling in. Last boat today already turned around at Inver, and after that it’s nothing until the front clears—three days if we’re lucky, five if the Atlantic feels dramatic.” Paper rustled again. “I could put you on a standby list, but it won’t change the weather.”

My grip on my phone hurt. “So we’re—”

“Stuck,” Mags said, not unkindly. “Stuck together, even worse. I’ve got half your deposit each. I’ll refund the full amount to both of you, of course, and I’ll throw in hazard pay in the form of my best whisky if you don’t murder each other. That’s all I can do from this side of the water.”

The bar on the phone hiccuped; my heart lurched with it. “We can’t—there’s only one bed,” I heard myself say, and hated that it sounded like a complaint instead of logistics.

“I know exactly how many beds there are in that place, pet,” Mags said dryly. “It’s a tight squeeze and a love story waiting to happen when I rent it to couples. Less charming with two strangers. But it’s the only roof with a working chimney between you and hypothermia.”

Julian’s laugh came out short and humorless. “Okay. We’ll make it work.”

“I’ll call when the forecast looks like it’s turning,” Mags said. “You call me if you need anything I can actually provide from here. I’m truly sorry, both of you. If I could magic up another cottage out of kelp and regret, I would.”

“Thanks,” Julian said, and ended the call just before the bar dropped to nothing. The wind tugged at our hoods again like impatient hands. He looked at me, eyes softer than I wanted. “Well.”

“Well,” I echoed, a reflex. My throat felt tight, the kind of constriction that heralded either tears or anger. I swallowed it down and made my voice practical. “We need ground rules.”

“Good ones,” he agreed. “Detailed. A treaty.”

“Schedules,” I said, clinging to the familiar. “For kitchen and bathroom. Zones for equipment. We can rearrange the furniture so the sofa has a screen around it if you’re on it.”

“I’ll take the sofa,” he said immediately. “No argument.”

“We’ll both freeze if we pretend pride is insulation,” I said before I could stop myself. The path’s narrowness forced us single-file on the way down. The cottage hunched into the slope like a small animal waiting out a hawk. Smoke from some earlier fire still scented the air by the door. “We should get more wood inside before it starts again.”

He glanced up at the cloud bank advancing from the northwest, low and heavy. “We’ve got twenty minutes, maybe.”

We fell into wordless motion, not cooperation so much as parallel action. He stacked logs inside the door; I cleared the hearth and laid kindling like a ritual. The small kitchen’s windows rattled when a new gust shouldered the cottage. Somewhere beneath the noise of the weather was the sound of time narrowing—three days, five days, a week of sharing space with a man whose toothbrush had startled me earlier and whose hand had steadied me on a cliff.

When the first ragged sheets of rain came back, harder than before, he shut the door and slid the bolt. The room dimmed to the measured light of a storm afternoon. He propped his phone on the windowsill, as if it might catch a stray bar like a leaf catches rain, and then looked at me.

“Let’s write it down,” he said, nodding at my planner. “Before we both forget what we agreed and end up arguing about whether the kettle lives on your side of an imaginary line.”

I pulled the planner from my bag, smoothed a fresh page, and wrote at the top in small, neat letters: Coexistence Rules. The act of naming it steadied me. Julian sank to the edge of the sofa and laced his fingers, waiting, not impatient. I was too aware of the too-small bed down the hall, of the fact that there was no ferry horn to count on for days. I wrote the first item and lifted my head.

“Kitchen hours.” My voice didn’t shake. “Alternate mornings. Eight to ten me, ten to noon you. Evenings, same.”

“Deal,” he said. “Bathroom: knock policy. No surprises.”

“Agreed.” The storm rattled the panes again like a reminder. I wrote, circled, underlined, as if it could hold back the weather and the inevitability of proximity. When I ran out of obvious points, we sat for a long beat, listening to rain taper and then redouble, to the stove ticking as it warmed.

He lifted his hands as if to take something that wasn’t there. “I’m sorry, truly,” he said quietly. “If I’d known—”

“You didn’t,” I said, surprised at how tired I sounded. “Neither of us did.”

“Right,” he said. He held my gaze a beat too long, then stood, giving me space again. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

The cottage groaned around us like it was settling for a long night. The list lay between us, neat lines on a page that meant we were not pretending this wasn’t happening. Outside, the road back to the ferry ended at a harbor where no boat would come. Inside, there was one bed and two people who hadn’t planned for each other at all. The fire caught, flames licking up the kindling, and for a second the only sound was the clean crack of dry wood taking heat.

We ate in shifts, per the fresh ink of our treaty—me at the tiny table with my back to the window, him at the counter. The cottage made every sound larger: the clatter of cutlery, the wet shush of his jacket hung by the door, the soft tick of the fire easing into a steady burn. We didn’t speak unless logistics required it, and even then our words were clipped, polite. My body hummed with nerves that had nothing to do with hunger. I kept glancing down the short hall, past the curtain that acted as a door for the bedroom.

I couldn’t keep avoiding it.

“I want to see the bed.” It came out flatter than I intended. “So we know what we’re working with.”

Julian looked up from the kettle like I’d asked him to map a fault line. “Sure.” He wiped his hands on a tea towel and stepped aside, letting me pass first as if the narrow hall belonged to me.

I pushed the curtain aside. The room was barely big enough for the double bed, two mismatched nightstands, and a low dresser with a foxed mirror. The duvet was patterned with faded blue stripes, the pillows lumpy but clean. The mattress had that telltale dip on one side, like a small valley carved by other bodies. The window over the headboard was the width of my shoulders and watched a slice of sky. It was intimate without effort, and I hated that my pulse picked up because of that.

Julian stood in the doorway, hand braced on the trim. He didn’t step in. He didn’t crowd me. “I’ll take the sofa,” he said again, as if I might argue. “It’s fine.”

I pressed my fingers into the edge of the mattress. It gave with a tired sigh. “Fine isn’t the word anyone would use for that couch.”

“Stubborn, then.” He half-smiled. “It’s my penance for not printing my confirmation and nailing it to the door before you arrived.”

That made me snort. Tension cracked. I let it. “We can rig a screen,” I said, thinking out loud to keep panic at bay. “Move the bookshelf. You’ll have… if not privacy, then the suggestion of it.”

“Suggestion works,” he said. His voice gentled. “Elara, I meant what I said—if at any point this feels… if you feel unsafe, I’ll sleep in the truck.”

“In a gale? You won’t be able to open the door in the morning.” I sat on the edge of the bed because my knees wanted something to do, and it was either that or pace. The mattress springs ticked, familiar and old. He stayed where he was, a line I didn’t know I needed him to hold. “We’re adults,” I said, mostly to myself. “We’re competent. We can share a roof without making it complicated.”

He nodded like he’d been waiting for me to claim that. “We can.”

I looked up, met his eyes. “You’re sure about the sofa?”

“Yes.” He glanced toward the main room. “It’s mercifully long enough if I sleep diagonal, and I’ve slept in worse places. Bus stations. A tent with a hole right overhead.”

I exhaled, some of my tightness releasing. “Okay.” My gaze flicked to the bed again—the dent, the neat corner of the sheet tucked hospital-tight. I couldn’t pretend it was an abstract problem anymore; it was right there, taking up almost every inch of space. “This stays mine.” My tone made it a rule. I needed the territory. “But I’m not cruel. If it gets dangerously cold, we’ll reevaluate based on temperature, not pride.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “Noted. Temperature threshold trumps ego.” He nodded at the window. “We should probably keep the door to this room closed most of the time. Traps heat.”

He had a point. I stood, moving past him in the doorway, close enough to catch the smell of him—clean soap, damp wool, a faint thread of whisky from earlier. The brush of his sleeve on mine was accidental, and I felt it anyway.

We dragged the bookshelf from the far wall, our hips and shoulders bumping it into place to make a crude divider beside the sofa. I found an extra sheet and clothespins in a drawer and strung them between two nails to give him something like a curtain. It looked ridiculous and necessary. We stood there in the silence after, catching our breath, looking at our handiwork.

“It’s… something,” he said.

“It’s better than nothing,” I said, dry. “I can get earplugs if you snore.”

He gave me a wounded look. “I don’t snore.”

“We’ll see,” I said, because teasing was easier than thinking about the strip of hall between his corner and my bed.

We sorted toothbrushes on opposite edges of the sink, lined up chargers like a demarcation of territory, and agreed on a rotation for the single working outlet by the fireplace. When darkness pressed fully against the windows, the cottage felt like a boat we’d both climbed into and couldn’t leave. The fire became the only bright thing in the room, orange light licking the underside of the mantel and painting his cheekbones in soft gold when he bent to add a log.

“Do you want the first shower?” he asked, checking his watch out of habit.

I hesitated. Going down the hall meant passing the sofa. Measured steps. “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

Steam made the small bathroom feel like a sanctuary. I took more time than I needed, just standing under the hot water and letting it drum my shoulders, listening to the muffled sound of the cottage—his footsteps, the clink of a mug. I didn’t imagine him on the other side of the door. I refused to. I dried off, pulled on soft leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, and braided my hair because it gave my hands something to do.

When I came out, he was on the far side of his makeshift curtain, arranging a sleeping bag over the sofa cushions. He looked up once, nothing lingering in his gaze, and switched places with me without comment. I turned down the bed, shoved my backpack under the nightstand, placed my planner on top like a talisman.

By the time he came back, barefoot and scruffy in a worn T-shirt and joggers, the room had shifted into that quiet that comes when there’s nothing left to do. He hooked a thumb toward his corner. “Lights out on my side in ten,” he said, a promise. “I’ll keep it down.”

“Okay.” I slid onto the mattress and turned so my back was to the door—the illusion of privacy. The curtain between the rooms made a faint whisper as the wind worried it. The fire murmured. Somewhere under everything was the awareness of him stretching out across the sofa, long body molded to a shape too narrow for him, his breath evening.

I turned off the bedside lamp. The cottage fell into a dark stitched with orange from the hearth. I listened to the wind. I listened to the tick of the cooling pipes. I listened to Julian shift once, then still.

He cleared his throat softly. “If you need anything,” he said into the dark, voice low, as if trying not to wake a creature, “knock on the wall.”

“I will.” My voice surprised me—small and intimate. I tucked the duvet higher and stared at the low ceiling. The double bed felt like an island and a dare. The space between us felt both impossible and barely there.

We lay like that, in the same house and separate, both aware of the studio layout’s joke: one room, one bed, two lives bent around it. The storm pressed its mouth to the windows and breathed. The cottage groaned and held. I closed my eyes, counting my own heartbeat until it steadied, and told myself this was temporary, manageable, contained.

It was almost true.