She didn’t move toward the door.
I didn’t tell her to.
Eventually, she crossed the office. I could’ve made a sound. I could’ve said her name. I didn’t do either of those things.
She opened the door. She glanced back at me from the threshold. Then she was gone.
I spent the rest of Monday afternoon being a CEO. I ran two calls with our licensing team and approved a hiring requisition. I sat through an hour of board prep that I retained approximately none of. By 6:15, I was in the back of a car heading across town to Beckett’s place, where I’d been told to show up for dinner at seven, no excuses.
Beckett had texted me Sunday night with the kind of casual phrasing that wasn’t casual at all.Dinner at mine, 7 PM Monday. Hadley’s cooking. Don’t be a stranger.I’d read it twice and known exactly what it was. He’d watched me cross that rooftop on Friday. He’d watched me sit down across from Joss without being invited. He’d come back with two drinks and registered the silence at the table, and he hadn’t said a word about any of it in the seventy-two hours since.
Then Sunday night, the text.Hadley’s cooking.
I’d accepted anyway. That was the part I should’ve examined harder at the time. A man who knew he was being managed by his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend was supposed to either decline the invitation or walk in with his eyes open. I’d done neither. I’d typed backI’ll be therewithout asking any further questions.
The car pulled up in front of Reboot Condominiums. I got out. The summer evening air was thick and slow, the kind of June heat that rested on the city like a hand. I took the elevator up.
Beckett’s door was open. I could hear voices from down the hall—Beckett’s laugh, Hadley’s voice answering him, and a third voice I’d been hearing in my head all weekend.
I stopped in the entryway.
I stood there for what was probably three seconds but felt like ten. Then Beckett came around the corner from the kitchen holding two beers, took one look at my face, and grinned.
“There he is.”
He held out one of the beers. I took it.
“You knew,” I said.
“I knew.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Correct.”
“There’s a word for what you just did.”
“There are several. Pick your favorite.” He clapped me on the shoulder and started walking back toward the kitchen, leaving me to follow. “Hadley’s idea. I just provided the condo.”
I followed him.
Joss was at the kitchen island, helping Hadley plate something that looked like it involved tomatoes and burrata. Hadley saw me first. Her smile told me she’d planned this.
Then Joss looked up.
She’d had time to put her expression in order before I got here. I could tell because I’d done the same thing in the entryway sixty seconds ago. We both looked at each other for one second too long, and we both knew it, and then Hadley held out a plate to Joss and said something cheerful about basil, and Joss took the plate and turned away from me and walked it to the dining table.
“Sutton,” Hadley said. “I’m so glad you could come.”
“Are you?”
“Very.”
She smiled at me with a row of perfectly straight teeth that did nothing to soften her cool, professional demeanor. I lifted my beer to her in salute and crossed to the table.
The details of dinner mostly slipped past me. Beckett carved a chicken and made a joke about the carving knife being the only piece of cutlery in his condo that had been there longer than Hadley. Hadley asked Joss about a feature she’d shipped at her last internship and let her talk about it for ten minutes. Joss talked about it well, with the same calm certainty she’d had on Friday morning in the conference room. Beckett asked me about the licensing deal we were closing in Q3, and I gave him an answer that was at least sixty percent accurate.
I sat across from Joss. Every time she reached for her wineglass, I had to remember to take a drink of my own to give my hand something to do.
