Priya knows. Victoria blinked. Priya knows. Priya has known for probably a year. Victoria's sat back.
She looked at the middle distance for a second. Is it generally known or no? Priya is just perceptive and also extremely good at not saying things until the right moment. He paused. She's going to be very smug about this.
She's earned it. Victoria said, and there was something released in her voice now. Something that had been hell. They sat with that for a moment. So, she said.
So, he said. We talk to Priya together on Monday. We talk to Priya together on Monday, he agreed. And you let me lead the conversation with Holt. Because it's my account, obviously.
And if he won't do the modified structure, then we figure it out, Ryan said. Together. Not me deciding what the right call is and presenting it to you as a question. She looked at him across the table. The restaurant was warm.
The tea had gone slightly cold. Neither of them reached for the check yet. "I need to say something. " Victoria said, "and I want you to actually hear it and not immediately try to fix it. Okay, I'm scared. " she said. "Of this.
Not Westport. This. " She kept her eyes on him. "I was scared with Marcus and I pushed until he left and I've been telling myself for 2 years that it was a values mismatch. And it was, but it was also me running a familiar play. " She paused. "I'm going to run that play with you.
Probably more than once. I'm going to over function and build the walls higher and I need you to call it when you see it instead of just managing around it. I'll call it. " he said. "And I need you to know that when I do it, it doesn't mean I don't want this. I know.
You don't, yet. " she said. "But you will. " He looked at her and she was right and he didn't say so because she'd read it. He reached across the table and turned his palm up on the tablecloth, which was not a dramatic gesture, it was just there, available, an offer without an agenda. She looked at it. Then she put her hand in his.
Her hand was warmer than he expected. He didn't know why he expected anything. He'd been in the same room as her 300 times and somehow this was the first version of it that counted. "For the record. " she said. "Yeah.
You said it from the middle of the sentence. " She looked at him. "The husband thing? I did. It took you 3 weeks and a snowstorm. I was working up to it.
3 years. " she said. "You were working up to it for 3 years. In my defense. " Ryan said. "You were very intimidating. I'm your boss.
That didn't help. " She squeezed his hand once, brief and deliberate, and then didn't let go. They stayed at the table until the restaurant was half empty and the server had refilled their water twice and the October evening outside had gone full dark. They talked about things that weren't work, things they'd stored up without meaning to. The Portland years, the particular texture of the Seattle adjustment, her sister in Portland who would have thoughts, his college roommate who would also have thoughts and would express them loudly and probably at length. They talked about what it looked like to work together when they were also this.
And it was a real conversation, not a hypothetical, with actual friction in it about what happened when they disagreed in a client setting and who had final say on what. And they didn't resolve all of it because that was going to take time and probably some arguments and that was fine. At some point around 9:30, Ryan paid the check before Victoria could and she looked at him. Old habit, he said. I'm noting it, I figured.
Outside on the sidewalk, the city was cool and loud and indifferent in the way cities are indifferent at night. Victoria pulled her jacket tighter and Ryan stood close enough that the distance was officially different now, the structural buffer dismantled. And it felt less like exposure than he'd anticipated. It felt like the temperature had been adjusted to something reasonable. I should tell you something, he said.
She waited. The night in Denver, he said. After you went into the bedroom, I sat in that chair for 2 hours. I know, she said. I could hear you.
He looked at her. You can hear someone not sleeping, she said. There's a sound to it. She looked at the street. I sat with my back against the headboard for about an hour and a half.
You could have come back out. So could you. He acknowledged this with a look that she returned. We were both being idiots, she said. We were both being very careful.
Same thing, she said. In this case, he walked her to her car, which was in a garage two blocks north. The garage was quiet and fluorescent lit and they stood next to her car for a minute in the particular suspended quality of an ending that isn't quite yet. Monday, she said. Monday, he said.
Priya? 9:30. I want to get there before her. She's always there before everyone. Then 8:30.