"Is already here in her head. Has been since she opened the email."
Jane's exhale is slow and full.
"I was going to do this slowly," she says. "Road trip. Assess. Decide. Inform."
"And then you walked into me in the arena."
"You were in my way. Again."
"Occupational habit."
She laughs—the real one, startled out of her, the one that makes her eyes go bright and everything else stop. The sound I’ve been missing for the last few weeks.
I reach across the table.
Turn my hand palm up.
She looks at it. Looks at me.
Places her hand in mine.
I give her the moment.
Then she looks at me. "How about that mountain view now?"
I leave cash on the table before the check arrives. Enough for the meal, the tip, and whatever Grace ordered after I stopped paying attention. Jane watches me do it and laughs again.
The private elevator requires a key card.
I'm aware of her breathing. The specific cadence of it—slightly faster than normal, controlled, the rhythm of a woman who knows exactly where this is going and is choosing not to rush.
We don't speak.
I don’t touch her, because if I touch her in this elevator I won’t be able to stop before we reach the top floor.
I look straight ahead.
So does she.
The elevator hums.
Forty-five seconds to the penthouse. I count every one.
The penthouse door opens into a room I've occupied for two days and suddenly don't recognize.
The light is different now. Mid-morning February sun slanting through floor-to-ceiling glass, the mountains beyond it catching gold along their eastern faces, the whole panorama laid out like it was waiting for exactly this audience.
Housekeeping came while I was at the arena. The bed is made, the surfaces are clean, and I am specifically, profoundly grateful for the existence of hotel housekeeping services.
Jane steps past me into the room.
I close the door.
The click of the latch is the loudest sound in the space.
She walks toward the windows. Stops in the light. Her coat is still on. Her hair catches the sun at the edges, turning the brown to something warmer—amber, honey, the color of late afternoon in Anguilla when everything went gold before it went dark.
She turns.
