She didn’t ask. She looked at the room, looked at him, and whatever calculation she ran behind those gray eyes, she kept the results to herself.
“Bathroom’s through there,” he said, gesturing to the left. “Towels, robe, whatever you need. Take your time.”
“Thank you.” Quiet. No edge to it.
She walked past him. The bathroom door closed, and a few seconds later, the lock turned. Then the sound of water running—the shower, turned up high.
Isaac stood in the middle of the room and dripped on the carpet.
He pulled off his jacket and draped it over the desk chair. His shirt was plastered to his chest. His shoes were ruined. He didn’t take anything else off.
The hotel room settled into the particular quiet of expensive spaces—no traffic noise, no neighbor sounds, just the hum of climate control and the muffled rush of water from behind the bathroom door.
He walked to the window. The harbor was dark, punctuated by the lights of boats and the distant glow of the airport across the water.
He liked this woman. That was the simple, irreducible fact of it. He didn’t know her last name. He didn’t know where she lived or what she actually did or why she ran every time the ground beneath them started to feel solid.
He knew her first name and the sound of her laugh and that she read strangers across ballrooms like other people read menus. None of it was enough. All of it had him standing here in a ruined suit, not changing his clothes, because he didn’t want her to walk out of that bathroom and feel anything other than safe.
She’d told him she was leaving Boston. She was behind a locked door. And when she came out, she’d probably say thank you, mean it, and go.
That was fine. He could hold what he wanted without gripping it.
The shower ran. Isaac stood at the window and waited.
