entryway; seated on the bench by the stairs; open
David held a glass of ice water in his hand and pretended to be at a party. He was attending to be a good friend to Hannah and to be a housewarmer. She deserved to be happy and have a space she was comfortable in. The house was certainly that - warm, friendly, filled with decent-seeming people holding conversations with each other.
For a moment, as he left the house, he had considered bringing a book with him. That would be antisocial, wouldn't it? He could still recognize what was appropriate and what wasn't. Just because he failed to connect to people in a crowd anymore, that didn't mean he couldn't remember what it was like, or what one did.
What he did was make sure he greeted the hosts and thanked them for the invitation, and then made himself scarce, sitting on the wooden bench inside the doorway, watching people and listening to conversations. He seemed relaxed - he might even have been waiting for someone to sit alongside him. Of course, someone was already there in the empty spot next to him. She couldn't be touched, but she was warm, and she put a hand on his shoulder and took him somewhere else.
It was five years ago, and she put her head on his shoulder. The bench was a sofa in a distant friend's living room, and there was a bottle of wine pinched between their thighs. Back then he had laughed, face flushed and hot, at jokes he couldn't remember. Her hair was soft against his neck.
In the present, he looked up. Someone wanted to take the seat on the bench where she had been sitting. He didn't need to look down to see that Molly was gone. It wasn't that she had never been there, she was just gone for a little while again, gone for now.