Chapter 23 - Day 5 Sad Architects #2
Somewhere behind me, someone laughed.
Waves broke against the shore.
Adrian picked up his coffee.
I watched him take a sip.
"So."
He looked at me.
"So?"
"We're done."
"Yes."
I waited.
He waited.
Neither of us reached for anything.
Not my bag.
Not his sunglasses.
Not the folder.
Adrian took another sip of his coffee.
I picked up my fork and went back to my tiramisu.
And somehow, that was that.
Twenty minutes later, we were still there.
Then forty.
Then an hour.
The folder stayed closed between us.
The conversation wandered.
I wasn't sure exactly how.
One minute we were talking about Solara.
The next, Adrian was telling me about a building he'd worked on years ago that apparently still offended him.
"It was that bad?"
"Worse."
"And you still think about it?"
"Occasionally."
"That sounds healthy."
He gave me a look.
I smiled and took another bite of tiramisu.
"You really do think about architecture all the time."
"Not all the time."
"What do you do when you're not working?"
He was quiet.
I turned toward him.
He appeared to be genuinely considering the question.
"Oh God."
"What?"
"You don't know."
"I know."
"Then answer."
He looked toward the ocean.
"I spend time with my kids."
There it was again.
Another small piece of his life, offered without me having to drag it out of someone else.
"And when they're not with you?"
His eyes came back to mine.
A pause.
"I work."
I stared at him.
"That is deeply depressing."
"I'm fine."
"You own two cars and no hobbies."
"I have hobbies."
I leaned forward.
"Name one."
He went quiet.
I smiled.
"Thought so."
The server came by to clear the empty plates.
My brownie disappeared.
My tiramisu disappeared.
Adrian's croissant had been gone for a while.
The coffees stayed.
I leaned back in my chair and looked across the table at him.
He looked different out here.
Not physically.
Well.
The goose shirt wasn't helping.
But there was something else.
No office.
No employees walking past.
No conference room.
No Mr. Vale sitting at the head of a table.
He was quieter.
Easier.
Still Adrian.
Just without quite so many walls around him.
"You're different outside the office," I said.
His eyes lifted to mine.
"Different how?"
I thought about it.
"Less terrifying."
"I'm not terrifying."
I stared at him.
"You yelled my name across the office once."
"You sent the wrong file."
"See? You still remember your justification."
"It was the wrong file."
"And yet somehow the building remained standing."
He looked at me.
"You seem to have survived."
"Barely."
He took a sip of his coffee.
"I thought you hated me at the office."
"I did."
The words came out easily.
Then-
I stopped.
Did.
Adrian went still.
Just slightly.
His eyes stayed on mine.
For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.
I became painfully interested in my coffee.
Adrian didn't look away.
I could feel his eyes on me over the rim of my cup.
Finally, he spoke.
"You don't anymore?"
I lowered the cup.
There were several safe answers to that question.
Naturally, I chose none of them.
"I don't know."
His expression changed slightly.
"You don't know if you hate me?"
"You're complicated."
"I'm not."
I almost laughed.
"You are the most complicated person I've ever met."
"I disagree."
"Of course you do."
A pause.
Then I looked at him.
"I don't hate you."
There.
His face gave me almost nothing.
But his fingers stopped against his coffee cup.
Just for a second.
Then-
"I know."
I stared at him.
"You know?"
"Yes."
The audacity.
"And how exactly do you know?"
His eyes stayed on mine.
"You wouldn't be here."
I stared at him.
That answer sat between us for a second.
Annoyingly simple.
Annoyingly true.
I looked toward the ocean.
"You're very confident for someone I hated five minutes ago."
"You said did."
I turned back to him.
Of course he'd caught that.
"You're really holding on to one verb."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He didn't answer immediately.
His eyes stayed on mine.
Then-
"Because I noticed it."
Something about the way he said it made my chest tighten.
Not teasing.
Not smug.
Just quiet.
I looked down at my coffee.
Of course he noticed.
Adrian noticed everything.
I took another sip of my coffee.
"That's slightly creepy."
"It's observation."
"That's what creepy people call it."
His mouth twitched.
I smiled into my cup.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
It wasn't uncomfortable.
That was the strange part.
Silence with Adrian used to feel like standing in an elevator with a bomb.
Now-
I could hear the waves.
The breeze moved through my hair.
Adrian sat across from me, drinking his black coffee in his ridiculous goose shirt.
And I didn't feel any need to fill the quiet.
By the time we finally got up, the café had gotten busier around us.
I didn't know exactly when we'd decided to leave.
There hadn't been a reason.
No announcement.
No we should go.
At some point, Adrian reached for the folder.
I picked up my bag.
And that was it.
We walked back to the Corvette together.
The drive back to my apartment was quieter than the drive there.
Not awkward.
Just quiet.
The kind that didn't need fixing.
When my building finally came into view, something inside me sank a little.
I looked out the window.
Ten days.
I really needed to stop counting.
The Corvette slowed in front of my building.
Then stopped.
Adrian put the car in park.
I reached for my bag.
"Angelica."
My hand stopped.
I looked at him.
He wasn't looking at me.
For a second, he said nothing.
Then-
"I can talk to Claire."
I frowned.
"About what?"
"Your projects."
Oh.
"The transition has already started."
"I know."
"Claire has most of them reassigned."
"That can be reversed."
I looked at him.
Adrian finally turned toward me.
"There won't be a problem. I'll talk to her. Anything you've transferred can be transferred back."
"Adrian-"
"And the other projects you were working on before this. Nothing has changed enough that you can't take them back."
He made it sound so simple.
Like my resignation was a drawing we could revise.
Move a few lines.
Undo a few changes.
Start again.
"I'm not worried about the projects."
His jaw tightened slightly.
"I know."
Silence filled the car.
I looked at him.
For the last few hours, he'd been the man in the ridiculous goose shirt.
The man who knew my coffee order.
Who'd told me his daughter liked brownies.
Who'd sat across from me beside the ocean long after we'd run out of reasons to be there.
And now he was trying to solve me again.
With work.
"I'm still leaving."
His face changed.
Barely.
But I saw it.
Everything that had been softer today disappeared behind something familiar.
Controlled.
Unreadable.
Mr. Vale.
He looked forward.
"Okay."
One word.
Flat.
I hated how much I immediately missed the man who'd been sitting across from me at the café.
I opened the door.
"Goodnight, Adrian."
"Goodnight, Ms. Stone."
My hand froze on the door handle.
There it was.
Ms. Stone.
After an entire weekend of Angelica.
I looked back at him.
His eyes were already forward.
Wall firmly back in place.
I got out of the car.
The door closed behind me, and I stood on the sidewalk as the Corvette pulled away.
For some reason, Ms. Stone followed me all the way upstairs.
Later that night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
Ten days.
I stared into the darkness for a long time.
It was almost cruel.
Every day, I was getting a little closer to that man.
And every day, I was getting a little closer to leaving him.