22. Tasha
TASHA
Ihad rearranged the same stack of folders four times before I admitted none of it needed rearranging.
The guest list sat squared at the corner of my desk, thirty pages of names in a serif font too polite for what half of them were actually capable of, Kessler's name tucked into the alphabet like he belonged there, as if ten-point type alone could make a dangerous man look ordinary.
I turned the page face down. It didn't help.
I tapped my nails against my knee in the rhythm I only used when I needed a number to come out different than it actually was.
It never worked. Tonight was no exception.
The candle on the nightstand was new, a fat glass jar Frankie had left behind weeks ago with a sticky note across the lid that read for emergencies only, and I had decided, lighting it on the third match, that tonight qualified.
I needed something for my hands that wasn't the guest list and wasn't the folded paper still sitting untouched in my wallet, the one I hadn't looked at in days, not since the last city on it had stopped feeling like a fantasy and started feeling like something I could actually ask for.
"You're allowed to be nervous about tomorrow," I told the candle, since the candle wasn't going to argue with me about it, being a candle. "I'm just saying it out loud so it stops taking up so much room in my chest."
The candle held its opinion, if it had one.
Two short knocks came at the door, then a pause, the specific rhythm that by now I knew belonged to exactly one person on this whole property.
I opened it to find Grisha already out of his jacket, tie gone somewhere between the security office and my porch, his collar open at the throat in the particular way that usually meant a long day rather than an easy one.
"You're doing the thing," I said.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you walk through my door already thinking about six problems that aren't me." I stepped back and let the cold in with him, shutting the door against a wind that had turned sharp in the last hour. "You get a face for it."
"This is just my face."
"You have several. This is the one where you're counting exits in a room you haven't even seen yet." I reached up and straightened his collar, mostly for an excuse to touch him. "It's a walkthrough tomorrow. Nobody dies at a walkthrough."
Something crossed behind his eyes, there and gone before I could read it clean. "No," he said. "Nobody dies at a walkthrough."
"Was that an agreement or a joke?"
"Does it matter which?"
"It might." I studied him a second longer, the tight set of his jaw, his thumb already finding the old scar there without him realizing it.
Whatever he was carrying tonight sat heavier on him than a floor plan should.
I decided, standing in my own doorway with the candlelight throwing gold across half his face, that I didn't actually want to pry it out of him.
Some nights you let a man keep his weather to himself and just stand close enough that he doesn't have to hold it alone.
"Sit down before you start counting my baseboards too. "
He sat, finally, on the edge of my bed like a man who wasn't sure he'd earned the whole thing, and I busied my hands with the kettle, because idle hands on a night like this one only ever found their way back to the guest list.
"Tea?" I asked.
"You don't have to."
"I know I don't have to. I'm offering because I'm a generous host, and also because watching you drink my tea and insist it's fine is one of my favorite parts of any given week."
"It's fine."
"It is not even a little fine, Grisha. You put honey in Lapsang Souchong last week. That's not a beverage choice, that's a crime with a victim."
The corner of his mouth moved, the rare real one I'd learned to watch for like weather breaking. "I don't know half of those words."
"That's the entire problem." I filled the kettle anyway, because some fights exist purely for the pleasure of having them and not because I expected to win this one.
"You grew up on tea that could survive being boiled twice in a pot somebody's grandmother forgot on the stove.
I respect the resilience of it. I do not respect the results. "
"My mother made tea that stripped paint off a windowsill."
"That explains everything about you as a person."
"I take that as a compliment."
"You take everything as a compliment. It's deeply unsettling.
" I set two mugs down, mine and the one he only ever half finished, and leaned against the counter to watch him work his cuffs loose with the same efficient care he brought to a floor plan.
"You're going to drink this one and tell me it's fine again, aren't you? "
"Probably."
"Even if it's terrible?"
"Especially if it's terrible." He looked up at that, something steadier in his face than there had been a minute ago, like the tea fight had done exactly what it was built to do. "You made it. That's most of what it needs to be."
I nearly dropped the spoon. "That was disgustingly sincere for a man who claims he doesn't do that."
"I have my moments."
He accepted the mug when I handed it over and drank without flinching, which told me either the tea had turned out fine for once, or he'd simply decided tonight wasn't a night to make me suffer for it. Knowing him, it was the second one.
I sat down across from him on the narrow bench under the window, close enough that our knees touched, and let the quiet sit a while before I said the thing I'd been circling since he walked in.
"You haven't told me what the room looks like."
"Because I haven't seen it either. Only the plans."
"That's not what I meant." I turned my mug slowly between both hands, watching the steam curl and vanish.
"Tomorrow you're walking into a building full of strangers who don't know anything about any of this, and somewhere in it there's a version of a room you already know too well, whether it turns out to be the same one or not.
I just want to know if you're ready for that, or if you're going to fake it, because that's what you're good at. "
He didn't answer right away, which told me more than a fast answer would have. "I don't know yet," he said finally. "I've walked into worse rooms and come out fine. I've walked into easier ones and come out in pieces. There's no telling which kind tomorrow is until I'm standing in it."
"That's not reassuring."
"I told you once, reassuring would be a lie.
I'd rather give you the truth." He reached over and covered my hand where it had started tapping against my knee again without my noticing, stilling it under his own.
"You'll be there tomorrow. That's the part that's different from every other room I've ever walked into. "
"That's supposed to make me feel better, and instead I'm now worried about two people instead of one."
"Welcome to loving someone in my line of work," he said, and something flickered across his own face like he'd heard the word land a beat after it left him.
I decided not to make him carry that too. "If this is the part where you propose a security system for my cottage, I want it on record that I already have one. It's called the door."
"One exit. Amateur."
"I have a window."
"A window over a ten-foot drop isn't an exit, it's a last resort.
" But he was almost smiling now, and the tightness that had walked in with him had loosened enough that I could feel the difference from where I sat, the way you feel a storm finally pass even with your eyes shut.
"Show me the window. I'd like to judge it properly. "
"Absolutely not. I refuse to let you turn my bedroom into a security briefing."
"Too late. I do it involuntarily now." He set his mug down, still mostly full, which confirmed the tea really had been terrible and he'd simply chosen not to say so tonight, and reached for my hand instead, tugging me up off the bench and in against him before I'd finished protesting.
"I counted that window the first week I knew you. "
"That's deeply unromantic."
"I never promised charming."
"You're not as unromantic as you think," I said, "but you keep doing things that argue otherwise, so I've stopped believing you about it."
"Name one."
"You learned my grandfather's ferry schedule."
"That was reconnaissance."
"That's the least reconnaissance-shaped thing anyone's ever done for me.
" I slid my arms up around his neck, some of my own nerves finally letting go now that his hands had found my waist, steady and warm through the thin cotton of my shirt.
"You're allowed to just be sweet sometimes. Nobody's grading you on it."
"I don't know how to do it without a reason attached."
"Then attach one. You have full clearance to be sweet to me. Tactical purposes only."
He laughed, short and real, more felt than heard, his forehead dropping to rest against mine. "Tactical purposes."
"Very tactical. Extremely classified." I tipped my chin up, close enough now that his breath was the only warm thing left in the room besides the candle. "Kiss me for national security."
"That's not a real justification."
"Neither was the ferry schedule, and you did it anyway."
He kissed me before I finished the sentence, or maybe I stopped talking because he'd already started, and either way it landed the same, slow at first and then not, his hand coming up to cradle the back of my head like I might otherwise float away from him entirely.
I felt the guest list, the alphabetized names, the whole heavy shape of tomorrow, fade somewhere behind us, replaced by nothing but the specific gravity of him.
"For what it's worth," he said against my mouth, "the tea really was terrible."
I laughed into his shoulder, muffled and helpless. "I knew it. I knew it the second you didn't complain."
"I have some standards left. I was saving the complaint."
"For when?"