PART 2:

He said that, verbatim, at dinner, to me. He described the hand thing. He described the hand thing, and then he ordered us both another round of drinks, and then he described the hand thing again, but with different adjectives. Ethan said nothing. He picked up his tea. “And I sat there,” Olivia said. “For an hour and a half.

I sat there, and I smiled, and I asked appropriate follow-up questions, and I made appropriate sympathetic sounds, and I ate my sea bass, and I thought, ‘Okay. Okay. This is fine. This is just one evening. This is just one more bad evening.’ But it wasn’t.” She looked at him. “When he walked me to my car, he said, ‘I need you to understand.

‘ He said this. He said, ‘You’re a good listener, Olivia. I feel like I can really open up to you.'” She set down her mug. “And then he said he’d had a really nice time and hoped we could do it again.” The room was quiet. “He wanted to do it again,” she said flatly. “Yeah,” Ethan said. “I got that. He had a nice time because I was a good listener.

” She looked at her hands, still wrapped around the warm ceramic. “I drove home. I sat in the parking garage for 15 minutes, and then I walked upstairs and I knocked on your door because I didn’t” She stopped, started again. “I didn’t want to go into my apartment and sit there by myself and think about how I’ve been doing this for 3 years, and I’m apparently very good at being someone’s sounding board and very bad at being someone’s” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Person,” Ethan said quietly. She looked up at him. “You were going to say person,” he said. Her jaw tightened. Not angry, something else. “Yeah.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Can I say something without it sounding like something it’s not?” “Sure.” “That guy didn’t deserve the green dress.” She blinked.

“I’m serious,” Ethan said. “He was in there talking about Jenna’s hands and you were sitting across from him in a dress you clearly saved for something that mattered. That’s not a you problem. That’s just a wrong room problem. You were in the wrong room with the wrong person.” Olivia looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached up and pushed her hair out of her face, and for the first time since she’d walked in, some of the tension went out of her shoulders.

“Wrong room problem,” she said. “That’s all it was.” She picked up her tea again. “You’re surprisingly good at this.” “I fix things for a living. Sometimes that’s pipes. Sometimes it’s whatever this is.” She almost smiled again. “Is that your pitch?” “I don’t have a pitch. I’m in sweatpants.” That got her.

A real one this time. A quiet laugh that she seemed almost surprised by, like it had slipped out without permission. It changed her whole face. Made her look less like someone trying to hold a wall up and more like the person standing behind it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They talked until 1:30 in the morning.

Not about anything designed to impress. That was what struck him later. Turning it over in his mind after she’d gone. They didn’t perform for each other. She asked him how long he’d been doing HVAC work. “11 years. Started straight out of high school. Never planned on it becoming a career, but here he was.” And he asked her how she ended up in accounting, and she said, “I like when things balance.

” And the way she said it made him think she meant more than spreadsheets. He told her about Sophie. Cautiously, the way he always did. Not because he was ashamed, but because Sophie was the most important thing in his life, and he’d learned to be careful about who he let close to that. He told her Sophie was seven, that she had her mother’s stubbornness, and his tendency to fix things, that she had recently decided her life’s goal was to be a marine biologist who also played professional basketball.

“That’s very specific.” Olivia said. “She researches. She makes lists. She’s seven, and she already has a five-year plan.” Olivia raised an eyebrow. “A woman of systems. I respect that.” “She’d like you.” He said. And then he wasn’t sure why he’d said it, so he picked up his mug and looked at the middle distance.

Olivia was quiet for a second. “Where is she tonight?” “Her mom’s. Week on, week off.” “Do you get used to that? The alternating?” “No.” He said honestly. “You just get better at not showing it.” She nodded slowly, like she understood something about that particular skill. He didn’t ask about her family. Not that night.

He sensed a door there that was locked from the inside, and he’d learned that you didn’t rattle those locks. You waited to be let in. At 1:27, she looked at the clock on the microwave through the kitchen doorway and made a sound of genuine surprise. “I should go.” She said. “I didn’t realize. I’ve been here for almost two hours.

” “It’s fine.” “No, you have to.” She started to stand. “Do you work tomorrow?” “7:00 a.m., but it’s fine.” “Ethan.” She said his name the way he’d said hers earlier. Direct. Like she was making sure he heard it. “Thank you.” Genuinely. “I don’t normally” She paused, looking for the right words. “I’m not usually someone who knocks on people’s doors. I know.

” “I’m not sure what made me.” “It doesn’t matter.” he said. “I’m glad you did.” She looked at him for a moment. Then she picked up her heels from the floor beside the couch and walked to the door and he followed and she turned around in the doorway. “Good night, Ethan.” “Good night, Olivia.” She crossed the hallway in bare feet.

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