"Mason is a psychological warfare expert. He told Tyler Rodriguez that his opening was 'frankly embarrassing' and Tyler cried."
She laughed. Eric grinned at her. It was open, easy, a grin that didn't hide anything or hold anything back.
"I'll think about it," she said.
"That's a no."
"That's a maybe." She smiled at him. Eric was kind. Eric was present. Eric was a man who didn't make her feel like she was standing on the edge of a cliff trying to decide whether to jump.
She drove home through Sunnyside with the windows down. She thought about Dominic sitting in his plastic chair with his research printouts, asking about Oliver. About the way he'd saidI'm paying attentionwith a roughness in his voice that suggested the words had a cost.
She thought about Eric offering her coffee, making her laugh, asking her to a chess tournament like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She thought about the moment in the conference room when Dominic had reached for the same page she had, and their hands had almost touched, and she'd pulled back like she'd been burned. He’d let her. Let her pull away without comment, without a flicker of hurt crossing his face, though she'd seen his hand close into a fist under the table afterward.
He wasn't pushing. He wasn't strategizing. He was just... there. Every Thursday at four, in a chair too low for him, talking about grants, timelines and student outcomes. And underneath all of it, silently, relentlessly, learning her.
Learning the things he should've learned the first time.
She parked outside her building. Sat in the car for a minute with the engine off, her hands on the steering wheel, her forehead tipped forward until it touched her knuckles.
She didn't want to look forward to Thursdays. She didn't want the ache that had moved from her chest to somewhere lower, somewhere harder to ignore. She didn't want to compare the way Eric's grin made her feel — warm, safe, possible — with the way Dominic's almost-smile made her feel, which was nothing safe. Nothing warm. A hook in her ribs.Pulling.
Charlotte went upstairs. Her apartment was quiet, the radiator ticking in the evening heat. She changed into running clothes, laced up her shoes, and went back out. Four miles through the neighborhood, podcast in her ears. A history series about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, hundreds of men working underground in pressurized chambers, not understanding why they got sick when they surfaced too fast.
The bends. That's what they called it. When you came up too fast from depth, nitrogen bubbles formed in your blood and the pain was excruciating. The solution was to surface slowly. Gradually. To give your body time to adjust to the pressure change.
She ran past the bodega on the corner, past the laundromat, past the park where someone was playing guitar badly and beautifully at the same time.
Charlotte was surfacing. That was what the last eight months had been. Coming up from a depth she hadn't known she was at, slowly enough that the bends didn't kill her. And she was almost there. Almost at the surface, almost breathing normal air, almost free of the pressure.
Dominic was the depth she couldn't stop diving back to.
She ran faster. The podcast narrator described men emerging from caissons into open air, blinking against sunlight they'd forgotten existed. Some of them made it. Some didn't. The ones who made it learned to take it slow.
She could take it slow.
Thursday at four. Revised budget. Line items and student outcomes.
She could do that. She could keep doing that. And if her pulse kicked every time the conference room door opened and he walked in with his thermos and his pale blue eyes and his undemanding attention — well. That was just the bends. She was surfacing. She'd be fine.
She told herself she'd be fine.
CHAPTER 12
DOMINIC
The Thursday meetings had become the organizing principle of Dominic's week.
He didn't admit this to anyone, but the evidence was there if he'd been willing to look at it. He spent Monday and Wednesday evenings preparing: reading program evaluations, building revised budgets, researching arts curriculum models used in schools from Chicago to Copenhagen. He'd started bookmarking education policy journals the way he used to bookmark market analyses. His browser history was embarrassing. His assistant had noticed.
"You have the quarterly review with the board on Friday," Paula said, standing in his office doorway with her tablet, scrolling through his calendar. "And the Falloway meeting moved to Thursday morning. That gives you the afternoon for?—"
"The Gallison meeting. I know."
"You've blocked every Thursday afternoon."
"I'm aware."
