6. Weston
Weston
I should've kissed you.
The words are still in the air between us, and I'm not moving.
That's how I know it's already too late to take them back. I don't want to take them back.
Monique is very still. Not the professional kind she wears at the desk, the practiced kind — this is different. Her racket is loose at her side. Her eyes are on mine, and I keep mine on hers, right up until I don't.
My gaze drops to her mouth.
Half a second. Maybe less. I pull it back up, but she's already seen it.
"Don't do it," she says.
Her voice is soft, and it doesn't land like a no. That lands like a woman still undecided — speaking the expected word while the rest of her waits to see if she means it.
I know the difference. I've been watching her work for eight months, and I know the difference between her voice when she's certain and her voice when she's buying time.
I take a step toward her slowly, just enough that she could close it herself, step back, or end it before it starts. I'm giving her room to do that.
Her hand comes up and lands on my chest.
Not pushing. Not pulling. Just there, palm flat between us, fingers spread slightly, like she put it there to measure the distance.
I stop.
My hand comes up and covers hers against my chest. Her fingers don't curl away.
I lower my head until my forehead is almost against hers. The space between us is warm and close and smells like the court, like effort, like the hour.
I can see it in her eyes now, the hesitance, real and present. It tells me she hasn't landed yet. She's still mid-air on this, but I need it to be hers. Her choice. Not something I pushed her into in a hotel tennis court at this hour when she wasn't ready.
So I wait.
She's just here with her palm on my chest, and her eyes on mine. We're standing closer than coworkers ever should.
One more beat, and then I pull back.
Not because I want to, but because staying one second longer tips it into something I can't undo.
I need it to be something she chooses when she's sure, not something that happens to her while she's still figuring it out.
I step back, drop my head, and reach for my water bottle. My sleeve is still pushed up from the rally. I lift the bottle and drink. When I lower it, her eyes are on the thin strip of skin above my wrist — just a half second before she looks away.
Neither of us speaks. I pretend I didn't notice.
I pick up my jacket from the bench.
"I'll see you inside." I head back toward the building.
The hotel swallows me as I walk through — lobby, elevator, corridor, none of it registering. I drop my jacket on a chair and stand at the window. The harbor is dark and flat. I pick up the pen from the desk, then set it down.
I pull out the Driftline sketch and look at it, seeing none of it.
Not yet. I put the sketch away.
Iris finds me in the corridor twenty minutes later, or I find her — she's coming from the vending machines at the far end with a bag of pretzels she's eating without apparent urgency, earbuds around her neck.
I slow down for her the way I always do.
"How was tennis?" she asks.
"Fine."
"With who?"
I look at her sideways. She's looking straight ahead, mouth moving around a pretzel, the picture of innocence, which means she already knows. "A guest," I say.
"I know it’s Monique."
"Yes."
"She's good at tennis?"
"She's good at most things."
Iris hums softly, filing the observation away instead of answering it.
We walk. She offers me a pretzel, and I take it.
"Beckett and I are going out tomorrow," she says, like she's trying to slip it past me in the traffic.
"Where?"
"Well, he dropped off some flowers today and told me we’re going to that new place on Broad. The one with the outdoor tables." She glances at me. "You're doing the thing."
"What thing?"
"The jaw. When you don't like something, but you're trying not to say it."
I make a conscious effort to unclench my back teeth. "I just want to know where you're going."
"You want to know so you can Google the place, check the exits, decide whether it's adequately public, and run a background check on the evening."
This is not entirely inaccurate. "I want to know because you're my sister."
"I'm nineteen, Weston."
"I know how old you are."
She eats another pretzel, glances at the ceiling, then back at me with that look she gets when she chooses honest over easy. "He's not — he's been good lately. He knows I'm having dinner with you this week, and he was completely fine with it."
Completely fine. I don't need much to figure a man out. You watch how they look at her, how patient they are, and whether they listen when she speaks. The rest usually follows.
"Good," I say.
Iris looks at me. "You don't sound like you mean that."
"I mean it."
She doesn't push it, which is its own kind of information.
She says good night at her door, and I wait until I hear the lock click before I go back down.
Monique is at the desk. She looks up when I cross the lobby and then back at the screen, how it usually goes, except nothing about tonight has been normal, and we both know it.
"Iris is going out with Beckett tomorrow," I say.
She keeps her eyes on the screen. "That’s nice, isn’t it?"
"Something's off with that situation."
"Oh, how so?"
I lean on the counter. "I want to know what's actually happening."
She types something, closes a file, and opens another. "So talk to her."
"I've been talking to her. She smooths it over every time." I look at her profile. "I just know he's not right for her. Call it a feeling, but I don't trust him."
She stops typing. Her hands rest on the keyboard.
"Come with me tomorrow," I say. "We follow them. See what we're actually dealing with."
She turns to me, looking unconvinced in a way that suggests she's still arguing with herself. "That's not — "
"Not what?"
"Appropriate."
"No," I agree. "It's not." I hold her gaze. "Come anyway."
The silence stretches. She looks at the screen, then back at me. "For Iris," she says. "Not for you."
"Understood."
The night Iris and Beckett choose is clear and cold.
Monique is outside the hotel at the agreed time. This is the first time I've seen her out of uniform — dark jacket, dark jeans, hair down.
She looks at me when I pull up, then at the car. "I wanted to drive my car today."
"My car has tinted windows."
"That's not — "
"It's tactically sound."
She doesn't agree that it's tactically sound, but she gets in, which is a win I'm choosing not to comment on.
We find Iris and Beckett two blocks from the restaurant. Monique spots them first — her hand lands on my arm, three fingers on my forearm, before I’ve even turned.
“There,” she says quietly. “Don’t speed up.”
I pull to the curb half a block back, kill the headlights. We watch them walk. Iris’s shoulder is under his arm, her head tilted toward him, something that from a distance looks like ease.
"What do you think they’re doing?" I say.
Monique watches for a moment. "She's doing most of the talking," she says.
"He's nodding. His hand is on her shoulder, but he's not holding her — he's steering her.
" She pauses. "See how he angles her toward the restaurant door? It looks like he’s cutting her sentences, you know, or not caring to listen. "
Now that she's named it, I see it clearly. They go inside.
I'm not good at waiting. This is not a secret.
I drum two fingers on the steering wheel, and Monique looks at the window.
After about four minutes, I ask, "What do you think he said to cut her off?"
"We don't know that."
"You said she didn't finish the sentence."
"I said it looked like she didn't. We're across the street." She looks at me and gestures up toward the restaurant.
"But if he did — "
"Weston." She turns her whole body toward me, pinning me with a look.
I stop drumming. Another two minutes pass. "Should we go in?"
"No." She shifts uncomfortably in the passenger seat.
"If we just — "
"No." She glares at me.
I close my mouth.
A few more minutes. Monique is watching the restaurant entrance.
Then Monique says quietly, "There, did you see that?"
Through the window, across the room, Beckett's hand rests on Iris's phone — not picking it up, just covering it briefly, then lifting away.
Iris doesn't react. She keeps talking, gestures once, and picks up her glass.
Neither of us says anything for a moment.
"How long does that take?" I say. "To stop reacting to things like that?"
Monique's eyes stay on the window. "A while," she says.
They come out an hour later. We pull around the corner and park, then stand in a doorway on a side street, pretending to study a menu taped in the window while Iris and Beckett stand at the curb for their car down the block.
The menu is for a dry cleaner — I notice this thirty seconds in. I study it anyway. I've committed to this position, and I'm not a man who abandons a post.
"Three dollars for a shirt," I say, low. "That seems aggressive."
"Depends on the shirt," Monique says, without looking at me.
Her shoulder is against my arm. I could move left and create normal space. I don't. Neither does she.
Iris and Beckett's car arrives. They climb into the car and pull onto the road toward the hotel.
The street goes quiet.
We stay in the doorway a moment too long, just the two of us and the cold. I turn to her. She's already looking at me.
"I shouldn't have said that," I start. "On the court. I shouldn't have — "
"Don't," she says.
"I pushed — "
"I said don't." Her voice stops me mid-sentence. She still has that open, unguarded look from the court. I look back. The street is empty around us. My restraint from earlier is gone.
I look at her mouth. This time, I don't look away.
She watches me do it. Her breath comes out slow and audible in the cold air between us.
"Kiss me," she says.
I lean in and do exactly that.