Chapter Six
Ten years, seven months, and eight days ago
Once upon a time, Helen met Tyler.
She had been working at the Seattle marketing firm for eight months, and one rainy March morning, she entered the lobby of
the high-rise building downtown just as someone disappeared into the elevator. It was already a few minutes past eight o’clock,
so as Helen closed her umbrella, she called out, “Please hold the elevator!”
A hand shot out to prevent the door from closing as she hurried across the lobby. She stepped into the elevator, and the young
man said, “What floor?”
She said, “Seven,” at the same moment she saw his blue eyes. He pushed the button for floor seven and she saw that the floor-four
button was already lit up. He gave her a small smile, one that would be best described as polite, but something glistened
in his eyes that made her feel like she might have just stepped inside the opening pages of a story she needed to read. His
sports jacket and dark-wash jeans effortlessly epitomized business casual, and she was glad she’d put on her favorite pencil skirt that morning. He had speckles of rain all over his face, and there was something so disarming about him that Helen couldn’t help but say, “You have rain on your face.”
He paused briefly, as if slightly surprised by her comment, and then said, “Yeah, I put that on this morning. Not a good look?”
“No, it’s good,” she said. “You could bottle it and sell it. Rain serum.”
“Rain serum?”
“Yeah, there’d be an amazing profit margin.”
He nodded slowly. “I like the way you think.” He didn’t wipe the rain from his face.
She tried not to laugh and watched him try not to laugh too, and it was that implicit, shared effort that made the air between
them feel charged.
The man’s hair was a light sandy color, and from the way it was starting to curl near his ears, Helen could tell a natural
wave was hiding in there. It was probably only days away from needing a trim, days away from turning wild, and she had the
sudden inexplicable urge to put her hands in it.
The elevator dinged and stopped. Floor four. Their exchange had been so fast, and in a moment, he’d be gone. Except when the
elevator doors opened, the man didn’t move.
“Is this your floor?” she asked.
He hesitated before saying, “Yeah.” He didn’t want to part ways either.
So she said, “It’s my floor too.” It no longer mattered to her that it was a few minutes past eight.
The man turned to her with a slow, cool smile, and then they stepped onto the fourth floor together. She had no idea what
company even took up this floor, but the wall behind the receptionist said Coleman Geyer. Below the simple black block letters, an impressive abstract iron sculpture took up half the wall that indicated: We are corporate and solid but also innovative and creative!
“Are you newly employed here?” the man asked, playing along.
“No, I’m here to see . . . Daphne.”
“Ah, Daphne. I can take you to her.”
It all felt so easy that Helen suddenly didn’t trust any of it, but she still liked it nonetheless.
The man wiped the rain from his face and said, “Follow me,” and every sleeping thing inside of her came alive.
He led her through a maze of office cubicles as he pretended to search for Daphne. He moved with the grace of an athlete,
tall and lean and easy. He said things like “Right, I guess this isn’t her desk anymore,” and “I forgot, she switched out
of this team,” and Helen felt amazed by this man who played so easily. So much so, she started to feel breathless and nervous,
because she hadn’t had this much fun since she’d graduated from college the previous June and she wanted to hold on to it,
whatever it was.
They finally ended up alone in the staff kitchen, where he said, “I’m sorry. Daphne doesn’t seem to be here today, but can
I interest you in some food from a refrigerator that hasn’t been cleaned in five years because it’s community property?”
He opened a refrigerator that was so crammed with brown paper bags and takeout food boxes that two of the bags plopped to
the floor. It was even worse than the refrigerator on the seventh floor, and Helen started laughing much harder than the moment
called for. Her oversized reaction made her feel transparent, and as her laughter died down, she felt the heat in her cheeks.
Quietly, she said, “Do you do this kind of thing often?”
“Do I often lead a woman whose name I don’t know around the entire floor of the company I work for while we pretend to look
for someone that we both know doesn’t exist?” He shook his head. “Definitely not.”
“Helen.”
“Tyler.”
They didn’t shake hands because they were beyond shaking hands. Helen had the uneasy feeling that Tyler was a practiced flirt, and maybe he did funny and charming things like this all the time.
“How old are you?” Helen asked.
“Twenty-five,” Tyler said. “You?”
“Twenty-three.”
They were both still young enough that asking each other’s age was acceptable, even expected.
“Do you ride the elevator often?” she asked in a pretend-earnest tone.
“No, sometimes I take the stairs,” he said with equal earnestness. “You?”
“Everyone’s always trying to outdress each other on floor seven, so I’m usually in heels.” She made a face.
Tyler nodded sympathetically. The great unfairness of high heels. “Right. I don’t have that problem myself.”
“Usually I do like taking the stairs. Sometimes I even race up them.”
He smiled. “You mean you run up the stairs to get there faster, or you mean you try to beat the person you’re with to the
top?”
“Both.”
“Ah, competitive.”
Helen shrugged and smiled, and Tyler laughed. “Why do I feel like you’re challenging me to a race?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said, in a tone that meant she did know.
“I’m a runner too.” The corners of Tyler’s mouth curved slightly.
Helen wanted to ask him his mile pace, because immediately the idea crystallized: We could be running partners! But goodness, she was getting ahead of herself, mapping out plans with some guy she’d just met. So instead she said, “Well,
unfortunately, I probably should go to my desk and do some work.”
“Me too.”
Neither of them made any move to leave.
He asked, “What’s on the seventh floor?”
“Marketing. What’s on this floor?”
“A global communications agency that specializes in technology and information systems.”
“Wow.” She raised her eyebrows to emphasize just how wow it was.
“It’s nowhere near as important as it sounds.”
“It never is.”
He paused and then smiled, and she could see the hopeful expectation behind it. She inhaled.
He asked, “Will you go to dinner with me?”
“Yes.” She exhaled.
The next evening, Helen began the four-block walk from her apartment to an Italian restaurant. Tyler had suggested the place
without knowing it was in her neighborhood, and she was trying not to think of it as a cosmic sign. She’d never been inside
the restaurant, but she could tell from the pristine awning and the gleaming valet stand that it was nice. So nice, in fact, she’d tried not to grin too eagerly when he had suggested it. Yesterday, in Coleman Geyer’s fourth-floor kitchen,
they’d exchanged phone numbers, and she’d said casually, “I’ll meet you there at six thirty.”
Then Helen had gone up to the seventh floor and stared at the letters and numbers on her computer screen as she replayed in
her head every moment that she could recall with him. She did that for over an hour, until a coworker appeared and reminded
her about the meeting in the boardroom. So Helen went into the boardroom with a notebook and fixed her face into a pretense
of listening as she daydreamed herself back onto the fourth floor.
Now a block from the restaurant, Helen checked her phone. No calls or texts from Tyler. Since they’d met, they’d had no communication
confirming the date, and a tiny part of her wondered if he’d even show. The previous morning had been so thrilling that it
felt almost like a mirage.
The air was chilly tonight against her bare legs. She’d worn a little black dress and heels, which wasn’t completely fitting for the season, but she’d wanted to feel subtly sexy, and this dress made her feel exactly that way. Her tailored wool peacoat was over the top of it.
She straightened up as she approached the door to the restaurant. If Tyler wasn’t there or if he turned out to be a disappointment
upon further conversation, it would be fine.
But when she entered, he was standing there waiting for her, and his eyes were so warm that she felt herself soften immediately.
He was in dark indigo jeans with a gray dress shirt and a casual fitted brown blazer. The contrasting colors somehow worked
perfectly, as if he’d just thrown them together, but she hoped he’d debated his wardrobe choices as long as she had. The inviting
heat inside the lobby enveloped her, so she undid the button at the center of her coat that held it closed and noticed as
he quickly took in her dress.
They shared a hello hug, and he said “You look pretty” as they pulled apart, and her body hummed at the compliment. Plenty
of men had complimented Helen on her looks before, but plenty of men didn’t make her feel like this.
A hostess seated them at a reserved window table with a black tablecloth and a view of Lake Washington. The last date Helen
had been on, two months earlier, the guy had taken her to a teriyaki place with paper folded napkins in upright metal casings
on each laminate round table.
Here, the setting sun off the lake gave the water a slightly pink glow that made the space feel magical, but she told herself
it wasn’t magic. It was weather and atmosphere, that was all. As Helen and Tyler read the menus and discussed the options,
she tried to ignore how intensely attracted she was to him.
Because she was feeling so out of sorts, when she placed her pasta order she said, “Hold the olives,” but she didn’t realize
her mistake until the server was already taking Tyler’s order. Helen loved olives. She’d meant to say, “Hold the onions.”