They finished the food and didn't leave.
Marta went back to the counter and returned with two chocolate soft-serves in paper cups because she had seen them listed on the menu and decided unilaterally that they were staying. She set one in front of him without asking.
"You make a lot of decisions without consulting people," he observed.
"I consult people when I'm unsure," she said. "I wasn't unsure about the ice cream."
He picked up the spoon. "What are you usually unsure about?"
"Plenty of things." She stirred her ice cream. "Whether my thesis project is good or just interesting to me personally. Whether I should have moved to a different city for university. Whether my left turns are actually worse than my right turns or if you were just saying that."
"Your left turns were objectively worse," he said. "But only in the first three weeks."
"See, I needed that information."
"And the other things?"
She looked at him. "Those I'm still working on."
He had turned his spoon over and was holding it loosely, looking at it. She had noticed that he did this — handled objects carefully, like his hands needed something to do when the rest of him was thinking.
"You're very direct," he said. Not a complaint.
"Graphic design," she said. "You learn to say what you mean quickly or people redesign everything wrong."
"Is that what this is? Saying what you mean quickly?"
"Partly," she said. "Partly I just figured that if I sat across from you in a well-lit fast food restaurant and was straightforwardly honest, you would understand what was happening without me having to give a presentation."
He looked up at her. "I understand what's happening."
"Good."
"Marta—"
"Mark."
"I'm not going to pretend—" he stopped. Started again. "There were several lessons where I had to remind myself to watch the road."
She felt warmth move through her chest. She kept her face neutral with some effort. "Which ones?"
"The last one," he said. "When it was raining. You had the window down two centimeters and you were concentrating very hard and you had—" he stopped again.
"I had what?"
"You had your hair down," he said. "For the first time."
Marta looked at him for a moment. Then she said, calmly: "I put it down specifically because it was the last lesson."
He closed his eyes briefly. "I know," he said. "I know you did."
"Did it work?"
He opened his eyes. "Yes."
She smiled — slowly, completely, without hiding it. "Good," she said. "I worked on that for two days."
He shook his head, but he was smiling too — the real one, wide now, with a helplessness in it that she found enormously satisfying. "You are—"
"Remarkable?" she offered.
"I was going to say trouble."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," she said.
He looked at her across the sticky laminate table, in the aggressive bright light, with soft-serve melting in paper cups between them. He looked at her the way she had been waiting, she realized, for six weeks — openly, without the careful professional management of it.
"No," he said quietly. "They're not."