"I'm not arguing with you."
"You're literally arguing with me."
"I'm stress-testing your position. It's different."
She glared at him. He held up his hands.
"Open participation," he said. "Noted. Agreed."
"Thank you." She wrote it down. Underlined it. Twice.
The rain eased. The school emptied around them: janitors running floor polishers in the hallway, the distant clang of a locker, the hum of a building settling into its after-hours quiet. Charlotte stretched, rolling her neck, and the movement pulled her blouse taut across her shoulders in a way he again forced himself not to notice.
"I'm starving," she said. "I skipped lunch."
"Why?"
"Because Michael Rodriguez put a crayon in his ear during reading time and I spent my lunch period in the nurse's office."
"A crayon."
"The green one. He said he wanted to hear colors."
Dominic laughed. The sound surprised both of them — a full, unguarded laugh that came from somewhere he didn't usually access. Charlotte stared at him.
"What?" he said.
"Nothing. I just—" She shook her head. "I don't think I've ever heard you laugh like that."
The observation sat between them. He didn't know what to do with it, so he did the only thing he could think of.
"There's a diner on the corner," he said. "The one with the neon sign. I passed it on my way in."
"Nick's."
"Do you want to grab dinner? We can finish the timeline over food." He saw her hesitation and added, "Strictly professional. I'll bring the spreadsheet."
He could see her building the refusal. The tightening in her jaw, her hand moving to gather her things. He waited. He'd gotten good at waiting.
"Fine," she said. "But you're buying. Consider it a donation to the cause."
Nick's Diner was a narrow storefront with red vinyl booths, a counter with chrome stools, and a chalkboard menu that hadn't been updated since the nineties. The waitress called everyone "hon" and the coffee came in mugs thick enough to stop a bullet. Dominic sat across from Charlotte in a booth by the window and tried to remember the last time he'd eaten somewhere without a reservation.
She ordered a grilled cheese and tomato soup. He ordered a burger. The waitress brought their coffee. Charlotte wrapped both hands around the mug and something in her face unknotted, a tension he hadn't realized she'd been carrying, loosening in the warmth, the overhead fluorescent glare and the oldies playing from a speaker behind the register.
"Oliver's mom got good results last week," she said, unprompted. "The latest round of treatment is working. He came in Monday and drew a dragon with a party hat. I put it on the bulletin board."
"That's good. That's — I'm glad."
"He's a different kid when he's not worried. He talks more. Jokes around. He did this impression of me during show-and-tell — 'Okay, friends, let's focus' — and the whole class lost it." She smiled into her coffee. "I pretended to be offended, obviously."
"Obviously."
"He nailed the hand gestures."
Dominic watched her talk. Her face changed when she talked about her students — open, unguarded, incandescent. This was who she was. She wasn’t the woman in the wedding dress,performing elegance for an audience of Westons. She wasn’t the professional in the conference room, armored against him with folders and boundaries. This was Charlie, in a diner booth, eating grilled cheese and telling him about a nine-year-old's impression of her, and he couldn't breathe.
Their food came. They ate. They talked about the showcase timeline, but the conversation kept drifting, to her students, to the Gallison program, to a podcast she'd been listening to about the Brooklyn Bridge.
