The ERS break room is quiet at this hour. Just me and the hum of the refrigerator, the faint scorched smell of espresso from the machine Marissa insists on using wrong, and a single mugsomeone has left upside-down on the drying rack at a precarious angle. I pour a fresh cup and stare into it for a moment.
George didn't choose me. Circumstance chose me on his behalf, and those are not the same thing. I know better than anyone that they are not the same thing. I could write the literature on it with footnotes and an appendix.
I carry the mug back to my desk and sit down. I look back at the case file and think about Seamus realizing too late that what he had was real, and I feel a complicated solidarity with him that I immediately decide not to name.
True love exists.
I am professionally certain of this. I have seen the evidence, facilitated the conditions, watched it take hold in people who weren't even looking for it.
I am also professionally certain that some people don't get that happy ending. Sometimes a fake dating contract is just what it was meant to be. Fake.
I lean back in my chair and let out a breath.
My phone lights up on the desk, and for one traitorous second my pulse does something stupid before I see it's a calendar reminder.
It's not George. I laugh at myself, quietly and without warmth, and pull the next file toward me.
I've always been very good at helping other people get chosen.
I tap my pen against the desk once, twice, and then I stop, because the rhythm sounds too much like something waiting.
Outside the window the city is indifferent, ongoing, and full of people finding their way toward each other. I watch it for just a moment before I look back down at my work.
I'm just not very good at being chosen myself.
