9. Mike
MIKE
Ipick her up outside her building at noon. She's wearing a sundress and flats, hair down, no armor. Not the prosecutor. Janet.
"Where are we going?" she says.
"You'll see."
She narrows her eyes at me in the cab, like she's cross-examining me without saying a word. I don't crack.
The cab drops us at the Museum of Natural History, and she looks up at the building.
"The planetarium?"
"You said surprise you."
"Shocked. I haven't been here since I was ten on a class trip."
"I did good?"
She kissed me on the cheek.
"You did good."
Inside, the dome goes dark.
Not movie-theater dark. Deeper than that. The dark that makes people go quiet without being asked.
The stars come up slow.
One at a time at first, scattered pinpricks across the black. Then more. Thousands of them. The entire ceiling opening above us like somebody peeled the roof off the city and let the universe look in.
Her shoulder rests against mine.
Neither of us moves.
The narrator's voice fills the room, calm and distant, talking about galaxies and gravity and light that left its source before either of us was born. Before our problems had names. Before whatever damage we carried ever found us.
I should look up.
I'm not.
I'm watching her.
The blue light from the fake sky washes over her face, softening everything she works so hard to keep sharp. Her mouth parts a little. Her eyes don't blink. For once, she isn't bracing for the next thing. She's there, under all that impossible light, letting herself be amazed.
"You're not even looking at the stars," she whispers.
"I am."
She gives me a playful elbow in the ribs.
The dome shifts. A river of stars pours across the ceiling, bright and endless, and I feel her go still beside me. Not tense. Not scared.
Still.
Like something inside her has stopped running.
She turns her face toward me. In the dark, her eyes shine wet.
For a second, she looks younger. Like the world has handed her back some small piece of wonder it stole too early.
"Thank you," she says.
They land in me like a confession.
After, we walk out into actual sunlight, and she blinks like she's surfacing from somewhere.
"That was perfect,” she says. “Thank you.”
She takes my hand and we walk.
We get hot dogs from a cart outside the park, and she gets mustard on her chin, and I don't tell her right away.
"What," she says, catching me staring.
"Nothing."
"Mike."
"You've got—" I reach over, thumb at the corner of her mouth, and she goes still under my hand for a second too long. "There."
We walk into Central Park and find a stretch of grass under a tree, away from the path, and she drops like she hasn't sat on actual ground in years.
Maybe she hasn't. I picture her life — courtrooms, depositions, that apartment that looks like nobody really lives there.
I wonder when the last time was that somebody made her stop.
She lies back, arm over her eyes against the sun.
"This is the most relaxed I've been in months," she says.
"Months?"
"Okay, years."
I lie back next to her, our hands are almost touching in the grass.
"Tell me about your family, do you have brothers or sisters?" She asks.
"No sisters, I have a brother. My mother's in Queens."
"Are you close to your mother?"
"Yeah, had dinner with her last week. Are you close to your parents?"
“Not really. I have two sisters, I’m close to them. Both married. One in Connecticut, the other in New Jersey."
"You ever think you'll marry again?"
"Oh my God, you're going there?"
"I'm not saying to me. I'm saying is that something you want? A husband and kids.”
"Yeah, I do. I want it. Do you?"
"I do. I want the white picket fence. The two kids."
It's the truth I've never let myself say out loud.
"You have a plan for that?" I ask.
"I'm working on it."
I watch a cloud break apart over us, and for a second I forget why I'm here. Forgetting about the mission and Ryan. Just — here, in the grass, next to her, like a man who has nothing to account for.
My phone rings. I glance at it. It's a number that could only be Ryan. I send it to voicemail.
We walk.
She looks at a scarf in a boutique.
We walk all the way to her building downtown.
By the time I drop her at her building that evening, the sun's low and orange behind the skyline, and she leans into the cab window before she gets out.
"Thank you," she says. "For today."
"Thank me again when I take you somewhere with less mustard."
She laughs, shakes her head, and disappears through her door.
I walk home.
Nocturne is loud by the time I walk in, the loud that means money's flowing and nobody's watching the clock. I head straight for the office in the back, shedding the day like a coat I don't need anymore.
Nico's waiting by the bar when I come back out, arms crossed, watching me the way he watches a room he doesn't trust yet.
"You're smiling," he says.
"Am I not allowed to smile in my club?"
"You don't smile in your own club. You work it."
I grab a glass, pour two fingers of something I don't taste, and lean against the bar like I've got nothing on my mind.
"Long day," I say.
"Long day doing what."
"You've been somewhere else all week," he says finally. "In your head."
"I'm right here."
"No. You're not."
I look at him, and for a second I think about telling him. Nico's the closest thing I've got to a brother who isn't blood. He'd know what to say. He'd probably know what I'm not saying, too.
"I had a date."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah."
"You didn't meet her here?"
"Hell no."
He's got a way of letting silence do the talking, a habit from the Corps that never left him. I used to think it was a tactic. Now I think it's who he is.
"It went well huh?"
"So far so good."
The room behind us is full of noise — Preston Vale laughing too loud at his own joke, a bottle popping somewhere near the booths, the bass under everything. None of it touches the quiet between me and Nico.
"Something you're not telling me."
"No, it's all good."
My phone buzzes against the bar, screen lighting up with a name I don't want to see right now.
"It's Ryan, I'm taking this."
I step away from the bar, into my office, and Ryan's voice comes through low, no patience left in it.
"How's it going?"
"I'm getting there."
"Has she come over with her laptop and shit?"
"Not yet, I'm getting there. We can't rush this."
"Alright. Alright."
"I understand, believe me, I don't want you in there one day longer but we have to be smart. I can't exactly say why don't you come over to my place and bring your laptop."
"Yeah, yeah I got it. She's got to initiate."
"Exactly. Do you need any money or anything?"
"Nah, I'm good. I gotta go."
He hangs up.
I walk out of the back office.
Through the crowd, I see her.
What stops me is the way she carries herself. Like she belongs in every room she enters, even when she doesn't trust the room. The lights catch on her hair, on the line of her neck, on the bare skin at her shoulder, and for a second the whole place blurs around her.
People move between us.
I don't.
I stand there, watching her, feeling something move in my chest.
Something I have no business feeling.
I push it down.