Chương 7
The typing indicator appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Finally, he wrote, Because she thinks I have a talent for involving people in problems they didn't ask for.
That was not an answer designed to make a woman feel safer.
I leaned against the kitchen counter.
What kind of problems?
His reply took longer.
Personal ones.
I almost laughed.
That sounds reassuring.
It isn't meant to.
There was something so unpolished about the response that I believed him.
I glanced down at Preston's note on the floor.
One man was asking me to call because he had changed his mind.
Another was warning me, quite efficiently, that his sister believed proximity to him was a bad idea.
Neither option looked particularly healthy.
I wrote, Then maybe your sister is right.
This time there was no typing indicator.
I put the phone down.
It stayed silent for ten minutes.
Then twenty.
I washed my face, changed into old sweatpants, and moved Preston's note from the floor to the junk drawer because I could not bring myself either to throw it away or leave it visible.
The espresso machine remained on the counter like an accusation nobody had finished making.
At eleven thirty, I carried a glass of water to bed.
My phone buzzed before I reached the bedroom.
Adrian had replied.
Probably.
That was all.
I slept badly.
At two in the morning, I woke convinced I had heard Preston's key in the lock.
At four, I dreamed I was presenting slide twenty-three to a room full of strangers while wearing no shoes.
At six fifteen, my alarm went off and I considered throwing the phone across the room.
Instead, I got up and went to work.
Mercer & Vale occupied the fifth floor of an old brick building in Lower Manhattan with one unreliable elevator and a lobby that smelled permanently of floor wax.
Our office manager, Luis, was already there when I arrived.
He looked at me over the top of his glasses.
"You look excellent."
"Thank you."
"You look like someone who slept."
"I appreciate the lie."
"I was raised with manners."
He handed me a paper cup.
"Coffee."
"You're my favorite employee."
"You say that whenever I bring caffeine."
"Consistency matters."
Mara arrived twenty minutes later carrying bagels and the determination of a military planner.
She dropped a folder on my desk.
"Thursday."
"I know."
"Diane wants the sensitivity model expanded."
"I saw."
"Also, Sterling's operations team sent questions at six fourteen this morning."
"Of course they did."
"They may not sleep."
"Maybe they own sleep and outsource it."
Mara looked at me.
"That was almost funny."
"I've had coffee."
We worked until noon.
The office slowly filled around us.
Luis argued with a copier.
One of our junior analysts accidentally sent a spreadsheet with hidden comments still visible.
Someone reheated fish in the microwave and was nearly exiled.
Ordinary irritation helped.
For several hours, nobody broke anyone's heart and no billionaire texted me cryptic warnings.
Then my phone rang.
Preston.
I watched it vibrate beside my keyboard.
Mara said nothing.
That was somehow worse.
I answered.
"Hello?"
There was a pause.
"Eve."
His voice sounded smaller than it had in the recording.
I pushed my chair back from the desk.
"What do you want, Preston?"
"I want to talk."
"We are talking."
"You know what I mean."
I looked through the glass wall of my office.
Mara had lowered her eyes to her laptop, performing privacy badly.
"You ended a three-year relationship by voice message."
"I know."
"While I was at the airport."
"I know."
"You couldn't even call."
"I was afraid if I called, I wouldn't do it."
The sentence stopped me.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was honest.
I turned toward the window.
Traffic moved below in wet gray lines.
"So the voice message wasn't because you didn't care."
"No."
"It was because you didn't trust yourself to go through with it if I could answer."
Another pause.
"Yes."
That hurt in a new place.
At least cruelty would have been easier to hate.
"Why are you calling now?"
"I told you."
"You said you made a mistake."
"I did."
"Which part?"
He breathed out.
"Ending it."
I closed my eyes.
The old version of myself had rehearsed that answer all weekend.
She had imagined relief.
She had imagined vindication.
She had imagined Preston showing up with flowers and enough regret to reverse forty seconds.
Instead, I felt tired.
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"No, you know you feel bad."
"Eve."
"You went to the apartment and got scared because it felt real."
"That's not all."
"Then what is it?"
He hesitated.
The silence stretched.
There it was.
The thing underneath all of his apologies.
He still did not know.
"You don't get to ask me to come back because being alone surprised you."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
His voice sharpened slightly.
"I know I handled this terribly."
"Handled."
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Take one word and make it the whole conversation."
I nearly laughed from disbelief.
"You sent me forty seconds, Preston."
He went quiet.
The anger drained out of me almost immediately.
That was the problem with us.
We could wound each other and then become tired of seeing the wound.
"I need time," I said.
"I understand."
"And don't come over."
"I won't."
"And don't call again today."
A beat passed.
"Okay."
I ended the call.
My hand remained around the phone.
Mara appeared at the doorway.
"I heard none of that."
"You heard most of that."
"The acoustics here are morally questionable."
I gave her a look.
She came inside and sat in the chair across from me.
"How bad?"
"I don't know."
"Do you want him back?"
"I don't know."
"Fair."
"I hate that answer."
"Most honest answers are inconvenient."
I stared at her.
"Did you learn that from a mug?"
"My mother."
"Worse."
She smiled.
May you like
Then her expression softened.
"You don't have to decide today."
