Emily slid into the chair beside Jake, her hand finding his knee under the table like it lived there. "I have an hour. Maybe an hour and a half if the deposition prep gods are merciful."
"The deposition prep gods are never merciful," Claire said.
"I know. That's why I said maybe."
Jake ordered an iced tea. Emily ordered a sparkling water. Claire noted both without comment.
"So," Claire said, settling back. "This is nice. The three of us. Like real people who eat lunch."
"We are real people who eat lunch," Emily said.
"You eat a protein bar at your desk at two-thirty and call it lunch. That's not lunch. That's a hostage situation." Claire opened her menu again. "What are you getting?"
Emily scanned the options. Claire advocating for the salmon, Emily considering the chicken.
"What about you?" Claire asked Jake. "You're at a seafood restaurant. The mahi looks incredible."
"I'll go with the burger."
Claire's eyebrows went up. "A burger. At a seafood restaurant."
"He doesn't eat fish," Emily said. She said it the way she'd say the sky was blue. Matter-of-fact. Already moving on to the next thought.
Then she stopped.
Jake saw it happen. The realization when she heard her own words, knowing she'd never been told. He'd never mentioned it. Not once, not in any meal they'd shared, not in any conversation about food or restaurants or preferences. She'd figured it out on her own, from watching, from noticing what he ordered and what he didn't, from paying the kind of attention that happened below the level of conscious thought.
She looked at him.
He looked back.
"You never told me that," she said.
"No."
"How do I know that?"
Jake didn't answer. Just held her eyes, and let her understand that she'd been learning him the way she learned case files. Thoroughly, instinctively, without realizing she was doing it.
Claire sat across from both of them with the expression of a woman witnessing a private moment and choosing not to look away.
"Well," Claire said. "That's disgusting. Order me another wine."
Emily laughed. The tension broke, settling into the new normal. Emily Callahan had a boyfriend. A real boyfriend. A normal that couldn’t have come fast enough.
Emily's phone rang.
She looked at the screen. Her face shifted. Not annoyance, not yet. The recalibration of a woman who'd been hoping for an hour and was about to get fifteen minutes.
"Ray," she said.
"Go," Jake said.
"I just got here."
"And you'll be back. Go."
Emily stood. Looked at Claire. "Don't interrogate him."
