Chapter 37
Roman’s first visit to Albuquerque lost six hours in Dallas and gained a hotel bar he did not use.
The connection canceled after a mechanical issue. By the time the airline routed him through Phoenix, the Friday dinner Audra had planned was impossible. He arrived Saturday at eleven, tired and without the suitcase that contained everything except his medications and one clean shirt.
Audra met him at the hotel, not the airport. They had agreed independent transport prevented every arrival from becoming her assignment. She wore jeans, running shoes, and irritation on his behalf.
“I can still fit the museum, the Bosque walk, dinner with Noah, and—”
Roman raised one hand. “No.”
“No to which?”
“The compressed performance of the visit.”
“We have twenty-eight hours.”
“Then I want twenty-eight hours, not forty-eight hours punished into them.”
She crossed her arms. “Noah changed his schedule.”
“We can keep dinner if he still wants it. I do not need the museum to prove I came.”
Roman’s authority was not active. The refusal was ordinary and complete.
Audra checked her disappointment. “What do you want?”
“Groceries. A walk if the weather holds. Your house. Dinner with your son only after you ask him again. Sleep at my hotel because that was the agreement.”
The domestic simplicity unsettled her more than luxury would have.
They bought food at a neighborhood market.
Roman spent seven minutes choosing tomatoes and denied overplanning.
Audra argued that landscape architects were botanists with branding.
In her kitchen, they cooked pasta badly because neither had selected a recipe.
Roman opened a cabinet without asking where the plates were, then stopped.
“May I?”
“You can use my kitchen.”
“That is not permanent access.”
“Correct.”
Noah arrived at six after Audra confirmed he still wanted dinner. She introduced Roman as someone she was dating. Nothing about the other men. Nothing sexual.
Noah shook his hand and asked what a landscape architect actually did. Roman answered without turning dinner into an interview. He mentioned Avery naturally and gave no impression adult children were credentials.
After Noah left, Audra closed the door and leaned against it.
“He likes you,” she said.
“He was polite.”
“He asks follow-up questions only when interested.”
“His approval is not required.”
“I know.”
Roman came closer. “Do you want ordinary contact or authority?”
Travel frustration had passed. Dinner was done. No crisis required rescue.
“Authority,” Audra said. “Scope: where I stand, kissing, removing clothing, and pace. Bedroom. Thirty minutes. No command about tomorrow.”
They negotiated fully, then she activated.
Roman led her down her own hallway without claiming the house.
In her bedroom, he directed her to undress him first and wait for permission to touch herself.
The encounter was explicit, slower because both were tired, and intimate because no Society room held them.
Audra changed one position when her hip protested.
Roman accepted without disappointment becoming pressure.
They used a barrier. He deactivated before aftercare.
At midnight, he returned to the hotel as agreed.
“You could stay,” Audra said at the door.
“I want the arrangement we chose before arousal. Ask next visit if you want a different plan.”
She kissed him. “Next visit, I may.”
The following morning they walked beside the Rio Grande, bought coffee, and argued about a newly designed park whose shade structures Roman approved and Audra called visually expensive.
His suitcase arrived twenty minutes before he left for the airport.
Nothing about the visit resembled the plan.
The bond felt more serious because it survived being ordinary.
Before Roman left, Audra showed him the empty room Noah had vacated. “Guest room eventually,” she said. “Not your room. Not anyone’s assigned room.”
Roman stood in the doorway without entering. “Do you want design advice?”
“No.”
“Good. I disliked the available scope.”
She laughed. “Would you stay here if invited next time?”
“Possibly. I want the hotel option retained. A room in your house should not become evidence I have advanced.”
“Advanced where?”
“Exactly.”
At the airport, Roman's delayed luggage produced a reimbursement form.
He sent no receipt to the shared travel fund because this had been his paired trip and they had not agreed to reimbursement.
Audra later raised the issue on the cost call.
They decided hotel and flexible fare belonged to the fund; personal clothing delay did not.
The discussion made the visit feel less romantic and more sustainable.
Roman called Luis from the lounge. “I met Noah.”
“Do you want congratulations?”
“No. I am telling you because family visibility is group-relevant. Audra disclosed only that we are dating.”
“How do you feel?”
Roman considered. “Pleased. Also concerned it creates a sequence where I appear established first.”
“You were the first visit.”
“Temporary order is not rank.”
“You are quoting the agreement.”
“I need it.”
Luis said, “Then name what you want from me.”
“Do not make Noah’s meeting smaller to protect yourself. Ask Audra for visibility when you want it.”
“Accepted. Do not use your concern to pretend the pleasure did not matter.”
Roman looked through the glass at aircraft moving in rain. “Accepted.”
Roman’s return trip produced the first direct repair among the men after the retreat.
At the airport, he messaged the group that weather might cancel his flight.
Luis replied with an available route through Dallas.
Roman felt the instinct to reject help he had not requested, then noticed the route was useful.
Thank you. I had not seen it, he wrote.
Luis answered: No invoice.
Jin, still on a protected recovery day, responded three hours later: Did the route work?
Roman told him it had. No one asked Audra to monitor the arrival.
In Washington, Avery helped him retrieve the floral chair she had stored temporarily again during a building repair. Roman told her the relationship was plural and long-distance because concealing the shape would make ordinary scheduling dishonest. He did not name anyone without permission.
“Do you want me to understand?” she asked.
“Eventually. I do not need you to approve.”
“Is one person going to move here?”
“No plan for that.”
“Are you moving?”
“No.”
“Then what changes for me?”
“Some holidays may require negotiation. You remain my daughter, not an emotional gatekeeper.”
Avery nodded. “Tell me when a real schedule affects us. I do not need the private architecture.”
Roman respected the phrase enough not to correct it.
His first Albuquerque visit began with a delayed flight and Audra refusing to rescue the evening. Roman landed after ten. She offered to pick him up or meet him the next morning; either answer was welcome. He chose the hotel shuttle because she had a six o'clock project call.
“I came to see you,” he said when disappointment roughened her voice. “I did not come to make you prove it at baggage claim.”
The following morning, Audra arrived in running clothes and handed him coffee after asking how he took it. Roman had planned breakfast at a quiet restaurant with a shaded courtyard. A plumbing failure had closed it.
“I have two alternates,” he said.
Audra looked at him over the cup. “Do you want an alternate?”
He checked the answer. “I want breakfast.”
They ate breakfast burritos on a bench outside a crowded market. Wind lifted napkins. A child drove a toy truck into Roman's shoe. Audra laughed when salsa landed on his cuff.
“You enjoy disorder when it happens to other people,” he said.
“Deeply.”
He did not convert the failed reservation into a lesson. He washed the cuff in a public restroom and continued the day.
Their private night happened at his hotel because Audra had not offered her home.
Roman noticed the threshold and did not interpret it as rank.
She activated authority for undressing, posture, and pace, excluding conflict and any reference to the others.
He heard no when he proposed the window chair because the sightline felt too exposed.
He changed the plan to the bed without praise.
Afterward, Audra asked to sleep alone at home.
“I wanted the night,” Roman said.
“So did I.”
“I am disappointed.”
“I know.”
He ordered no late conversation to make the departure feel complete. She kissed him, dressed, and left through the hotel lobby under ordinary lights.
The next afternoon, Roman joined Audra and Noah for coffee after all three agreed. Noah asked about landscape architecture, not the relationship. Roman answered as a professional and did not offer to review the young man's apartment courtyard for free.
“My landlord put gravel everywhere,” Noah said. “Says it's sustainable.”
“Maintenance avoidance often wears sustainability's coat,” Roman answered.
Audra's laugh carried pride that did not ask either man to become family.
On Roman's final evening, Luis called him directly. The gallery exhibit they had discussed would close before Roman returned to Washington. Luis had seen it during a work trip and wanted the promised argument.
Roman took the call on the hotel terrace while Audra attended a project dinner.
They disagreed about whether public sound could create invitation without imposing on people who had no exit. Luis accused Roman of believing every experience needed a clearly marked boundary. Roman accused Luis of treating surprise as automatically democratic.
“This is an ordinary argument,” Luis said after twenty minutes.
“It was until you labeled it.”
“Do you like me?”
Roman considered the request beneath the bluntness. “Increasingly. Not because Audra requires it.”
Luis went quiet. “Same.”
They ended without making the affection ceremonial.
When Audra returned, Roman told her only that he and Luis had spoken. The substance belonged to them.