She looks up. The humming stops abruptly.
For a second our eyes lock across the threshold.
“Russo,” she says.
“Your door was open,” I say, which is not a sentence that needed to be said.
She glances at the open door and then back at me with an expression that says she is aware her door was open, yes, thank you for that.
“Did you need something?” she asks.
The honest answer is no. The honest answer is that I was walking past and heard her and stopped like an idiot and now I’m standing in a doorway with no reason to be here.
“Schedule,” I say. “For the sessions. You said you’d have it to Calloway by end of day yesterday.”
“I sent it yesterday. Calloway has it. You could ask him.”
“Right.”
“Was there anything else?”
She’s watching me with that same quality she had on the ice - attentive and measuring. It’s uncomfortable in a way I don’t have a ready category for.
“No.”
“Okay.” She holds my gaze for a second and then looks back down at her desk. Back to work. Conversation over, door still open, unbothered.
I walk away.
I get to the end of the corridor before I realize I’m annoyed, and then I’m annoyed about being annoyed, and by the time I make it onto the ice I’m still feeling unsettled.
Chen is already there.
“You’re late.”
“I’m one minute late.”
“For you, that’s late.” He studies my face. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
He nods and drops it, and I’m grateful enough that I don’t even bug him about his backward crossovers during the warm-up.
Much.
ELIDA
I wait until I hear his footsteps disappear down the corridor before I put my pen down.
My heart is doing something mildly irritating.
I pick my pen back up, and I stare at the notes in front of me and read the same line four times without taking it in.
I press the heel of my hand briefly to my forehead.
Fine, I think.He’s attractive. That’s all this is. It’s biology.
I go back to my notes.
