And I’m not sure I wantto close it again.
I take the far entrance because it buys me a few extra minutes. The morning wind off the water has bite, and I let it wake me up as I cross the service lot. Delivery vans idle with white breath curling out of their grilles. Someone from Facilities wheels a cart of filters toward the dock, head down, jacket zipped to the chin.
I tell myself to walk straight to my office. I tell myself I’m going to keep my head down and do the work I can control and avoid the one person I cannot think about without going soft. Or hard.
It’s a plan. It sounds reasonable. It’s also cowardice, and I know it.
“Coward,” I say under my breath as the sensor slides the glass doors open for me. The word has no heat; it’s a plain assessment, like saying the floor is marble or the brass still needs another polish.
The lobby is buzzing with activity, even at this early hour. A woman working on the new computer that just came in this week. Likely, familiarizing herself for the opening. A crew is delivering furniture.
I recognize the plans laid out on the table as Caterina’s diagram. The floor is freshly polished and will likely be again before the grand opening. Music floats up from somewherelow, not the casino floor, something soft that someone put on to work to.
I should talk to her. I should look her in the eye and check that she’s okay. Not because I doubt it—she is made of steadier stuff than most—but because I owe her that much after the way I shut down last night. It wouldn’t fix anything, but it would be something. Decent.
Or maybe leaving her alone is the decent thing. Maybe what she needs from me is distance. No looking at her like I can still taste her skin. No reminder in broad daylight of everything we did in the dark.
I take the long corridor that wraps behind the front desk and skirts the events offices. The carpet hushes my steps. Light pours in long from the eastern glass, thin and white in the early hours before the sun has fully risen.
Avoiding her is about control, I tell myself. About not making an already complicated situation worse. About respect.
The word leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn’t use to lie to myself this much.
What happened to me?
It’s not about respect. It’s about self-preservation. Again.
It’s about keeping her from seeing the truth. Keeping myself from admitting that I don’t know what will happen when I see her again. Will I have control of myself? Will Igive myself away?
My phone buzzes. A text from the courier confirming delivery to Trenton at 10:00 on the dot. I thumb back a brief reply and slide the phone away. Work is a familiar relief. It’s a game I know the rules to. A game I’m damn good at.
Maybe I just need to concentrate on that.
I turn the corner by the back stair that drops to the kitchens, and the lounge opens on my left. The bar that hasn’t been set quite yet takes up one entire wall, and a big window that frames the water takes up the other side. Painters’ tape is off the floor. The paper is gone from the glass.
I mean to keep walking.
I stop because I see a flash of blue where the barstools meet the curve of the rail. A scarf. A light one, fine knit, soft, is looped around a throat I know too well.
I run my tongue over my teeth, feeling the soft give of her flesh.
She’s there early, of course she is, propped on a stool with a legal pad turned longways and a pen parked across the top. Her hair is down, flowing in dark waves over her shoulders and down her back. The scarf drapes down the V of a dark blouse.
If I didn’t know what it covers, I would still want to touch the place where it lies. Now that I do know, my mouth goes dry, and a hot ribbon of shame slides under my skin.
I bit her. I put my mark there. The part of me that wanted to cover it with my hand and the part that wanted to eraseit both flare and then drop away. What’s left is simple: the knowledge of what I did, and the way she has to hide it to avoid inviting comment.
I should keep walking.
I don’t.
There’s a man beside her at the bar, mid-thirties, sport coat tight across the shoulders, catalog-handsome with a bright grin. He’s got a box on the bar with a logo I recognize from the vendor list. He leans a hip into the rail casually. His hair is a tidy wave. His laugh is a little too ready. He is speaking with his hands in a way that is meant to look charming and does not.
She is polite. There’s no other word for it. She is listening with her whole body in a way that makes vendors and guests feel like she’s giving them her full attention.
She smiles when she needs to. She nods. She asks a question, and the man brightens like he’s delighted with her. If I didn’t know her, I might mistake that for interest. I do know her, at least parts of her, and I can see the slight angle to her body that keeps him at the distance she chooses. She is generous, not available.
I tell myself it’s nothing. This is normal. This is her job. Vendors talk like this. Salesmen flirt. If they get a no without bruising their ego, they back off and hand you a catalog. If they hear a maybe, they take a mile. She is good at setting the line, and she doesn’t need me to interfere or come to her rescue.
