Yeah. I noticed. Makes it mean more.
I set the phone face-down on the table, my heart doing a strange, fluttering rhythm in my chest.
The Harbor Board presentation is still open in another tab on my screen. Forty-five slides. I check the clock in the corner of the monitor. I have thirty-six hours before I need to be sitting at that conference table.
I should open it.
I look at my phone. I look at the blinking cursor in my email to Wren.
I close the Board presentation tab.
I'll review it in the morning. It is a terrifying violation of my usual routine, and the Board meeting is only thirty-six hours away. But for the first time in my entire career, the plan doesn't feel like the most important thing in the room.
Leaving my laptop open to the real estate listings, I pick up my phone and read Tom's text again.
Chapter eleven
Sam
The takeout app is open before I've even kicked off my shoes.
I told myself I'd cook. There's chicken in the fridge, half a lemon, the pasta I bought on Sunday with full intentions of cooking. I look at the fridge. Then at my phone. I tap the pad thai.
It's fine. It's one night.
I set my laptop on the kitchen table and open the zoning folder. The Board presentation tab is right there at the top of my browser — forty-five slides, connectivity section still unfinished. I see it, and I open the zoning folder anyway. This is still work. I promised Tom I'd look into the permit situation for Wren's listings. That's a real deadline, too.
I open the first document and force myself to start reading.
The first paragraph is a dense block of text about commercial zoning classifications in Brooklyn. I highlight a sentence about mixed-use overlays and type a quick margin note:check CB6 variance history.I scroll down, read the exact same paragraph again, and realize I've read it three times without absorbing a single word.
Tom's face keeps arriving instead.
It isn't the version of him I've been fighting with all week. It isn't the arrogant guy who shows up with black coffee, pushes back on my carefully curated shot list, and makes everything take longer than it needs to. It is the other version. The one from this afternoon.
The man standing in the doorway of Wren's shop, letting his sister wrap her arms around him as his whole face went somewhere else. Quiet, totally unguarded, the breezy professionalism just gone.
I close the zoning document with a heavy sigh.
My inbox pings.
The subject line reads:Wren possibilities + site session tomorrow?
I smile. He's working late, too. I open the email to find the three listings I sent Wren, followed by his unformatted, stream-of-consciousness notes.
Good bones but the budget's tight. Lease terms on this one look flexible — worth a call? Not sure about ceiling height on #2, does that matter for her equipment?
My hand automatically moves toward the keyboard. I am three words into restructuring his messy notes into a proper comparison matrix before I force myself to stop. He didn't ask me to organize it; he asked me to think with him. Those are two different things. I've been treating them like the same thing for six days.
I delete the draft and start over.
I write back with zoning flags on all three, permit notes for each address, and a specific warning about the ceiling height and ventilation requirements on the second listing so Wren doesn't fall in love with a space she can't use. I read it over before hitting send. It's perfectly correct, but it's also slightly warmer than my usual professional emails.
His reply lands in four minutes.
Quick question — does the DOB filing sequence matter for tattoo studio licensing specifically, or is it the same standard commercial process?
I sit back. He actually read the permit summary I sent instead of just skimming it.
