PART 6:

He stayed on the couch for a long time. The answer was somewhere in the room with him, patient, waiting for him to stop being afraid of it. He wasn’t ready to name it yet, but for the first time in 3 years, the apartment was quiet in a way that felt like before instead of after. And that was different.

That was something. She came back on Wednesday, not with food this time. No casserole, no borrowed excuse. Just Olivia standing at his door at 8:44 p.m. in her work clothes, blazer still on, laptop bag over one shoulder, looking like someone who had been arguing with herself the entire drive home and had lost. “I know it’s late,” she said.

“It’s not late. I won’t stay long.” “You don’t have to qualify it,” Ethan said. “Come in.” She came in. She sat on the couch in the same spot as before, and he noticed she’d stopped looking around the apartment when she entered. She just moved to that spot the way people move towards something they’ve already decided is theirs.

He noticed that. He filed it away without deciding what to do with it. “Bad day?” he said from the kitchen. “Medium day with a bad ending.” “What happened at the end?” She set her laptop bag down on the floor. “My boss pulled me into a meeting at 4:30 to tell me that the Henderson account, which I have been managing for 2 years, which I rebuilt from a near audit situation, which is now one of our most stable portfolios, is being reassigned to a colleague because, he has more bandwidth right now.

Ethan came out of the kitchen with two glasses of water. Bandwidth. Bandwidth. As though 2 years of my work is just a matter of scheduling. She took the glass he offered without looking up. And I sat in that meeting, and I nodded, and I said, I understand completely. And I walked back to my desk, and I finished my remaining work, and I drove home, and I sat in my car in the parking garage for 11 minutes.

He sat down across from her. Same spot as last time? She looked up. What? The parking garage. Same spot where you sat after the date? Something moved across her face. Surprise. Then something quieter. Yeah, she said. Same spot. Okay. What does that mean? Okay? It means you have a spot, he said. That’s not a bad thing.

People need spots. She looked at him for a moment like she was deciding whether to say something. Then she said, You’re very strange, Ethan Carter. I’ve been told. It’s not an insult. I know. She drank her water. He drank his. The apartment was quiet around them in the particular way it got quiet when Sophie wasn’t there. Heavier, more still.

Like the rooms were aware of their own extra space. She asked about you, he said. Olivia looked up. Sophie? She sent me a voice memo. She wants to know if you’d consider being her friend. He paused. She specified that it would be useful. Olivia stared at him. Then she pressed her mouth together in that way she did right before she laughed.

He’d learned to recognize it already, which was a fact he didn’t examine too closely. She’s seven, and she uses the word useful. She’s been using it since she was five. I don’t know where she got it. What did you tell her? I told her I’d pass along the inquiry. Olivia set her glass down on the coffee table, precisely in the same ring mark it had left before.

“Tell her yes,” she said. “Tell her I accept the terms.” He smiled at that. Couldn’t help it. She saw it, and something in her eyes shifted. Not dramatically, just a small internal adjustment, like a dial being turned 1°. She looked away first. “I’m going to be here a lot,” she said to the middle of the room.

“I can feel it. I’m going to keep ending up at your door.” “That’s fine.” “Is it?” She looked back at him. “Because I know what I’m like. I know my patterns. I compartmentalize very well Monday through Friday, and then on Wednesday night something breaks through, and I come over here, and you just let me.

And I don’t want to take advantage of that.” “You’re not taking advantage.” “I might be, without meaning to.” She folded her hands in her lap. “You’re easy to be with, Ethan. That’s rare. I don’t know if you know that about yourself, but it’s true. And I think I might be leaning on that in a way that isn’t fair to you.” The room was very quiet.

He looked at her for a long moment. Really looked, the way he hadn’t let himself look before. The tiredness under her eyes that her competence usually covered up. The way she held herself straight, even when she was exhausted. The fact that she was sitting in his apartment warning him about herself, instead of just taking what was easy, which told him something significant about who she actually was underneath the blazer and the spreadsheets.

Here’s what I think, he said. I think you’re used to people treating your presence as a thing they have to earn, or a thing you owe them. And nobody’s ever just He stopped. Tried again. Nobody’s ever just left the door open. She didn’t answer right away. I’m leaving the door open, he said. That’s my choice. You don’t have to manage that for me.

She looked at him like he’d said something in a language she recognized, but hadn’t spoken in a long time. Okay. She said, very quietly. Okay? He said back. They sat in the quiet for a moment, and it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind of quiet that settles after something true gets said. Then she reached into her laptop bag and pulled out her computer.

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