Chapter 22
Theo told Mina he loved her beside a sink full of funeral-home coffee cups.
He had intended better surroundings.
His first plan was dinner at her apartment, because love did not require borrowed grandeur.
His second was the courtyard, if Mina wanted to step away from the building.
Neither accounted for an evening visitation running late after a floral delivery arrived damaged and an employee's child developed a fever.
At seven, Mina called and asked whether he still wanted to come.
"Yes," he said. "Do you want me there or are you afraid canceling will disappoint me?"
"I want you there. I may have fifteen minutes."
"Then I want the fifteen."
He brought food for her, labeled with ingredients, and nothing for the staff because arriving as romantic support did not give him authority to create a workplace gesture. Rita directed him to the small family kitchenette upstairs.
Mina entered six minutes later wearing her black service suit and fatigue like a second tailored layer. She closed the door, took the container from his hands, and kissed him with enough force to make the refrigerator hum feel indecently public.
"Hello," Theo said when she released him.
"Hello. I have twelve minutes now."
He touched the side of her face. "I love you."
No preamble. The sentence belonged in the room they actually had.
Mina went still. Her eyes filled before she could hide it.
"I am not saying it because you went first," he continued. "I waited one day because I wanted to hear whether it remained true outside the moment. It did."
She laughed through the beginning of tears. "That is very you."
"I hope so."
"I love you too."
Theo kissed her slowly. He felt the word in the way she opened to him, in the hand that gripped his lapel, in the fact that she pulled back when footsteps passed outside and did not apologize.
"You need to eat," he said.
"Romance."
"I contain multitudes."
She took three bites standing at the counter. Theo poured water. The sink held six cups, two spoons, and one plate with a crescent of dried sauce.
"This is not how I pictured it," he admitted.
"I like it."
"Why?"
"Because you did not make me leave my life to receive it."
The answer followed him into the next morning.
At his studio, an email from the grief-center advisory chair requested expressions of interest for two planning scopes: a small courtyard garden and a set of public audio resources. The request was preliminary, the budget market-rate, the evaluation committee not yet named.
The email included a concept sketch someone had produced from Mina's early floor plan.
Theo recognized three problems immediately: the path narrowed below accessible width at the turn, the seating created a dead-end corner, and the proposed flowering trees would struggle in the available soil volume.
He did not send corrections informally.
Instead he saved a copy in a conflict file and asked counsel whether even acknowledging technical defects could advantage his firm before a public scope existed. Counsel advised him to notify the chair only that preliminary materials should receive independent accessibility review.
Theo sent that sentence and nothing else.
His project manager asked why he did not simply tell them what was wrong. "Because a free correction demonstrates expertise they may later score," he said. "And because Mina cannot be the route by which we learn what competitors do not."
"Do you still want the work?"
"Yes."
"Then this is annoying."
"Ethics often has poor customer service."
She laughed, but the lost efficiency remained real. A firewall was not evidence that distrust existed. It was the cost of allowing trust not to carry everything.
Theo read it twice, then forwarded it to his accountant and outside counsel with a disclosure that he was dating Mina Tran. He copied the advisory chair, not Mina.
The chair called within an hour.
"We knew you and Mina were coalition acquaintances," she said. "We did not know about the relationship."
"It began after the center concept did. I have received no internal materials or procurement information from her."
"Would you donate a concept sketch for the planning session? That might avoid a formal proposal until governance is settled."
Theo looked across the studio at his team, each person bent over paid work.
"No," he said. "If the center wants my firm's ideas, it needs a written scope. If the conflict is too substantial, exclude us."
"Mina is concerned about the budget."
"Mina has not discussed this request with me and cannot be the reason I absorb its cost."
The chair was silent for a moment. "Understood. We'll establish a review process and get back to you."
Theo documented the call.
That afternoon, Mina arrived for a planned visit to the public greenhouse where Theo was consulting on winter programming.
She had come as a ticketed visitor during open hours, not to inspect the client work.
They stood among rows of citrus trees while outside wind drove dry leaves against the glass.
"The center contacted me," Theo said.
Mina's expression sharpened. "About the garden?"
"Yes. I disclosed us. I declined to donate a sketch. I told them you had shared no procurement information."
"Good."
Relief passed over her too quickly.
"Why good?" he asked.
"Because I worried you might feel pressure to help."
"Did you worry I could not identify that pressure myself?"
Mina stopped beside a kumquat tree. "No. I worried everyone would praise your generosity until declining became rude."
"That is closer."
"And I am relieved you protected the boundary."
Theo rested one hand on the metal rail. "Mina, I need you to hear something that is not only about contracts."
She gave him her full attention.
"People assume steadiness can absorb conflict. At work, it means donated revisions. In families, it means the child who doesn't complain gets the inconvenient holiday. In relationships, it means the person who arrived calmly is expected to understand every change."
"I hear you."
"Do you? Or are you relieved because my boundary saved you from having to draw one?"
Her face changed. The question had landed where he intended and hurt more than he wanted.
Theo did not repair it by withdrawing.
"Both," Mina said after a moment. "I had already decided I would recuse, but I had not decided whether the conflict meant you could not submit. I was glad you made your part clear before I had to name mine."
"Your relief is allowed. I need it not to become a pattern where I do the uncomfortable speaking because I am better at sounding calm."
"Agreed."
"And I need you to remember that I chose us. I did not remain available until love happened to me."
Mina stepped closer. "You chose the first meeting, the dates, the threshold, last night in the kitchenette, and this conversation."
"Yes."
"I will remember."
He believed her intention. Belief was not the same as proof. They both knew that now.
She touched his sleeve. "May I kiss you here?"
Theo looked around. Two visitors stood twenty feet away reading an exhibit panel. A staff member pushed a cart near the far door. A kiss would be ordinary, not clandestine or professionally compromising.
"Yes."
Mina rose onto her toes and kissed him once, warm and certain.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you too."
The greenhouse roof shuddered under the wind. Around them, living things remained alive because someone had paid for heat, soil, labor, and glass.
Love did not make those costs impure.
Naming them did not make love smaller.
After the greenhouse, Theo sent procurement counsel a final conflict memo and copied Mina only on the acknowledgment that her recusal was active. She did not reply privately. The procedural distance felt strange after they had said I love you less than twenty-four hours earlier.
That night, Mina called at their agreed time.
"I disliked not responding," she said.
"Why?"
"Because silence in professional email felt like withholding affection."
"Was it?"
"No. It was recusal."
"Then tell me affection here."
"I love you. I also will not discuss the proposal."
"I love you. I also want a fair chance to lose."
They laughed, but the distinction mattered. Roles could separate for an hour without splitting the people who held them.