Thanks for the flowers. If you really want to make it up to me, fill out the attached assessment and get it back to me by end of day. —E
She hit send before she could second-guess herself.
Next: Grant.
She opened their text thread. The last exchange stared back at her:
Emmy
Thank you for the flowers. You didn't have to.
Grant
Yeah, I did.
Three days ago. Friday. She'd been so wrapped up in the fallout—frustrated, defensive, humiliated—that she hadn't responded. Hadn't known what to say. Part of her had wanted to apologize, to admit he'd been right about Tyce all along. But a larger part of her had just wanted to see him. To sit across from him and feel like herself again instead of the viral disaster everyone kept watching on loop.
And now she had to text him about sexual compatibility assessments. About whether he preferred?—
Emmy groaned and closed the thread. Opened it again. Stared at the screen.
Hey, I need to go over some questionnaire stuff with you before your next date. Free this week?
Too casual. Like she was asking him to grab coffee, not interrogate him about his bedroom preferences.
Cecelia flagged some incomplete sections on your intake form. Can we schedule a call?
Too corporate. He'd know something was wrong.
She deleted both texts and typed quickly, before she could overthink it:
Emmy
Free this week?
She hitsend, then immediately wanted to throw her phone into the harbor.
The response came twenty minutes later, while she was deep in Madeline Talbott's file:
Grant Knight
Thursday works. Your place or mine?
Emmy stared at the screen. Your place or mine. Like it was nothing. Like sitting across from him in a private setting was just another Tuesday.
She pictured him at her apartment. The cherry stems on the coaster. The way he'd sprawled on her couch eating pizza, taking up space, making the room feel smaller just by existing in it.
Emmy
Yours
7pm?
Immediately regretted it. His place was worse. He'd moved since West had been his roommate—she'd never even seen the new place. His place was uncharted territory, the private Grant that existed behind closed doors.
Grant Knight
I'll cook
