For their first date Filip chose shoes that disliked water. He discovered this on his third step through a puddle, while rain was already falling too hard for a respectable expression to serve any purpose. Jasna lived nearby. She invited him to dry off before continuing the evening. In her hallway he left two dark prints on the wooden floor and began apologising as though he had deliberately brought bad weather.
She gave him the only spare slippers, pink and too short. They belonged to her sister, who had left them after a weekend. Filip sat, neatly straightened his wet trousers, and tried placing his feet far enough underneath him to hide them. Jasna handed him a towel. Going to make tea, she heard a slipper squeak across the floor. She returned to find him halfway to the kitchen, dignified from the waist upward.
Both burst out laughing. Filip said he had spent three days choosing a restaurant and now resembled someone who had escaped another person's bathroom. Jasna admitted hiding a heap of unironed laundry in her bedroom before leaving with him. She had expected no guest, but could not bear returning with the feeling that everything was untidy. A sock she had overlooked remained on the table.
Both had divorced several years earlier. Previously they had discussed it carefully, like information needing an orderly exchange. Now Filip described still buying oversized food packages because he could not estimate life for one person. Jasna said she sometimes left the radio on when going out so she could return to a flat where someone was already talking. Neither immediately tried to remove the other's habits. The tea was hot, the shoes wet, and nobody cared about the restaurant reservation any longer.
They ordered dinner. Filip opened the door for the delivery driver wearing the slippers, without trying to exchange them for wet shoes. Jasna saw the little moment when he decided he could bear another person's gaze. Afterwards they played cards and argued over rules both remembered incorrectly. The rain had stopped long before they noticed the silence at the window.
The next day he came for his shoes, left to dry completely. He brought bread and asked whether breakfast was still possible. Jasna indicated the hallway. The pink slippers waited beside his shoes. He put them on without comment, then carried two cups to the table himself. That meeting looked no more like the restaurant he had carefully chosen.