And I respected your reasons even when I didn't know what they were. She stopped. And I'm done with that. So I'm going to say this once, and you can do whatever you want with it. She let go of the doorframe.
I don't want to go to Westport, she said. I want to be here. And I think you know why. She walked out. Ryan sat very still for about 30 seconds.
Then he got up and followed her. She was at the elevator, her bag on her shoulder, looking at the floor indicator above the doors with the flat attention of someone who had said what they needed to say and was now managing the aftermath. Victoria. She didn't look at him. The night in Denver, he said, to the back of her head.
In the hotel, when you stopped at the door, she was quiet. You said it started as a joke, he said. The husband thing. And then you asked if it was. He stopped.
I didn't answer. The elevator arrived. She didn't get on it. The doors slid closed. She turned around.
Why didn't you answer? She said. Because the answer scared me. And now? He looked at her across the 15 ft of hallway between them.
I meant it, he said. From about the middle of the sentence. I meant it, and I turned it into a punchline because I didn't know what to do with the version that was real. She watched him. Her face was the stripped-down version.
No performance in it at all. I've been in love with you for over a year, she said. Not dramatically. Just the fact of it, delivered the way she delivered things that were too large for decoration. I didn't say it because I'd already filed it under things that weren't going to happen, and I was managing it fine.
Managing it. Managing it, she said. The way you manage things you can't do anything about. A pause. You want to tell me you were doing the same thing?
Since about 2 years ago, he said. Give or take. She looked at him. We're idiots, she said. We've been very professional idiots.
Something moved across her face that was almost a laugh, but she stayed where she was, and he stayed where he was. Because there was still something in the air that hadn't resolved. The weight of the decision still between them. The Westport offer sitting on whatever this was. I already told Priya I needed the weekend to think, Victoria said.
That's still true. Okay. And I'm still furious with you for deciding things without me. That's fair. It's a pattern, she said.
I need you to actually hear that it's a pattern. I hear it. Ryan, I hear it. You're right. I've been He stopped.
I've been making the protective call on your behalf without giving you the option. And that's not the same as caring about you. It's just a cleaner version of not letting you in. She looked at him for a long moment. Come have dinner with me, she said.
Now, now. She hit the elevator button. We have actual things to talk about and I'd like to do it somewhere that isn't a fluorescent-lit hallway. The doors opened. She got on.
She looked back at him. He got on. The elevator closed. In the lobby, passing the front desk, neither of them reached for the other's hand. They walked close enough that the distance was different from what it had been.
Different in a way that anyone watching would have read immediately, and they went out into the evening street where the October air was cold and clean and the city was doing its usual everything. Two floors up, in the studio that was now empty for the night. Priya stood at the coffee station with a cup she'd forgotten to drink, looking out through the glass at the dark hallway and the closed elevator and smiling in the way people smile when something they've been waiting to happen finally does. She'd known since about 18 months ago. Some things you just clock.
The restaurant was a Thai place three blocks from the studio that they'd both been to separately and never together, which felt right neutral ground. No history attached to it. They got a booth in the back, far enough from the other tables that they could talk without managing their volume, and they ordered without looking at the menu because they'd each been there enough times to know what they wanted. The server left. The tea arrived.
Victoria wrapped both hands around her cup and looked at him. Tell me why you do it, she said. The deciding for me thing. Not the apology version. The actual reason.
Ryan had been thinking about this since the hallway. Dana told me I was someone she could build a life with but not someone she was in love with, he said. I've been running that back for 3 years, and I think what I landed on at some point was that the safest version of me was the one who was useful, who made things work, who anticipated what people needed and handled it before they had to ask. He looked at his tea. If I'm the person who fixes things, I don't have to be the person who might also be the thing that needs fixing.