Chapter 9
Chapter nine
George
I’m staring at a correlation matrix on my screen when Noah drops into the chair across from my desk without so much as pretending to ask permission.
He has a look on his face that says he has already decided he knows something and is now here purely for confirmation.
"So," he says, dragging the word out like taffy, "Tessa Bloom."
I keep my eyes on the screen.
"That's not a question," I say.
"It doesn't have to be."
"She's a matchmaker that works here at ERS." I keep my voice flat, the way I keep my desk. Clear surface. No clutter. Nothing lying around for other people to assign meaning to.
Noah leans forward and folds his hands on my desk like he's about to conduct a performance review. He studies my face the way our IT department studies a system crash, looking for the exact moment something stopped behaving correctly.
"Right," he says slowly. "Just a co-worker."
He leans back, letting the silence do the work he doesn't need to. "And that's why she spent three years pretending not to stare at you in meetings."
I almost laugh at that. Almost. "That seems unlikely," I say.
"George." He says my name with the patience of a man who has all afternoon. "Half the office has noticed."
"Half the office is incorrect."
I close the spreadsheet I stopped reading ten minutes ago and turn to face him, allowing myself the faintest suggestion of a smile.
Not enough to give him anything useful. Just enough to signal that I am fully aware of the game he is trying to play.
"Tessa is sourcing a date for me for my sister's wedding," I say. "It's purely business."
Noah tilts his head exactly three degrees, the way he does when he doesn't believe something but is enjoying not believing it enormously.
"A business arrangement," he repeats.
"Correct."
He stands, smoothes his jacket, and gives me the particular assessing look he reserves for quarterly projections he finds suspicious. "Are you sure Tessa knows that?"
He leaves without waiting for an answer. The moment he's gone I realize I'm gripping my pen hard enough that my knuckles have gone white against the barrel, and I set it down with more care than is strictly necessary.
***
At home, Baxter greets me with his usual full-body enthusiasm, his nails skittering against the hardwood like he's been holding this reunion in his heart all day.
"Yes," I tell him. "I missed you also."
He spins twice, tail carving wide arcs through the air, and when I ask if he is ready for a walk he sits immediately with a dignity that would be impressive if the rest of him were not visibly vibrating.
I clip on his leash and take him outside into the cold evening, where the air smells like wet leaves, exhaust, and something metallic from the coming dark.
I am grateful for all of it. Anything concrete. Anything that needs no interpretation.
I think about Noah's theory as we walk, and I nearly laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. Tessa and I have simply been in more contact recently, for obvious logistical reasons. She is the intermediary for my fake girlfriend. That's the entire explanation. It fits on one line.
Baxter glances up at me when I actually do laugh, and gives a short, happy bark, apparently satisfied that I'm in good spirits.
***
My phone rings when we get back. I already know who it is before I answer.
"Hello, Mother."
"Hello, George. I'm planning a family dinner for Saturday. Seven o'clock." A brief pause, and then, quieter, almost to herself: "She's been everywhere else with us these past few weeks. You should bring your girlfriend."
"You like her, then?" I ask. I mean it as a neutral inquiry, but I notice I'm genuinely curious about the answer in a way that feels slightly inconvenient.
"George, I'm not in the business of poking my nose in your life. I'm just scheduling my own. Come on Saturday."
She hangs up.
Then I open a new message to Tessa and type: Family dinner Saturday at 7. My girlfriend's presence has been requested. We'll probably need hand holding for this event.
I send it before I can examine the wording too carefully.
Three minutes pass. I watch the screen in a way I would categorize, if pressed, as not-watching.
Then: Got it. Try not to send a preparatory dossier this time.
I stare at the message until the screen dims, and I'm aware of something in my chest that resembles the early stages of amusement but sits slightly lower than that.
I put my phone face-down and return to my evening.
***
Somewhere between my shower and my bed, I realize I've started composing questions in my head. Not for my mother. Not for my sister. For her—for this woman who is, on paper, my girlfriend, and who texts me dry little remarks at nine in the evening like it costs her nothing.
I wonder if she's nervous about Saturday.
Then I wonder why I wondered that, and whether wondering that means something, and I decide not to pursue that particular line of inquiry.
Baxter jumps up onto the cushion beside my bed, turns three times with great ceremony, and collapses into a dense, satisfied heap.
I close my eyes, willing sleep to arrive on schedule.
After about five minutes of nothing, I sigh, reach for my phone, and open a new document.
The cursor blinks at me in the dark. I type, at the top of an otherwise empty page: Questions for Saturday.
I get as far as question two before I understand that both of them are things I actually want to know rather than things I need to know. They are not logistical. Not strategic. Not useful in any operational sense.
I close the document without saving it.
I should be able to walk into Saturday with a clean framework. Clear expectations. The kind of structure I apply to everything else without effort.
Instead I lie in the dark next to my dog, awake and increasingly annoyed by the sense that somewhere between the correlation matrix, Noah’s stupid face, and that blinking cursor, I have missed something important.