Page 13 of His Reckoning

She exhales slowly and leans back in the stool. “I’m thinking.”

“You were typing. Deleting. Typing again. Then deleting that.”

“You were paying an impressive amount of attention for someone who claims he just got home.”

“It was difficult not to notice.”

She drums her fingers lightly against the counter. “That’s called writing.”

“That looked more like losing an argument with your keyboard.”

She gives me a pointed look. “You’re very confident for someone who has never written a book.”

“That’s true.”

“And yet you’re critiquing my process.”

“I’m observing the results.”

She stares at me for a second, like she’s deciding whether to argue again. Then she huffs a quiet laugh and slides the laptop further away.

“Congratulations,” she says. “You’ve successfully ruined my concentration.”

“That suggests it was fragile to begin with.”

“You’re very pleased with yourself right now, aren’t you?”

“A little.”

She hops off the stool. “Well,” she says, “this has been a deeply unproductive evening.”

“For you maybe.”

“You interrogated my writing habits.”

“You interrogated my life.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“You’re interesting.” The words slip out of her mouth before she seems to realize she said them. She pauses, then quickly adds, “From a sociological standpoint.”

“That sounds suspiciously like backtracking.”

“It’s clarification.”

She takes a few steps toward the hallway, then stops. “And for the record,” she says over her shoulder, “you’re still not hero material.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Harsh.”

“Accurate.”

With that, she disappears down the hallway toward the guest rooms. The apartment falls quiet again. I glance at the laptop she left sitting on the counter, then toward the hallway where she just vanished.

Earlier today, I assumed letting Melissa’s friend stay here wouldn’t make much difference. Now I’m fairly certain that assumption was wrong because Kayla asks questions she probably shouldn’t.

She argues like she enjoys it and somehow manages to turn a simple conversation into a debate.