The first few dates after divorce can end like a fire drill: keys, thank you, door, done. Then one night she stayed in the hall with her coat still on, listening to him finish a story neither of them needed to finish.

The useful part was not the flirtatious line. It was the delay. She had spent years moving through evenings on a schedule built around everybody else's bedtime, practice, pickup, work call, grocery list. Standing there under her own hallway light, she realised nobody was waiting upstairs to ask why she was still out.

Her sister later asked whether he kissed her. She laughed and said no. “That is why it was good,” she replied. The unanswered question followed her inside longer than a perfect ending would have.