Page 33 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

What happened last night will not happen again. That is not sentiment. It is a calculation — the complications are too significant and I am a man who understands the cost of a bad decision. I made one last night. I won't make another. I'm certain of this.

Her laptop is open when I walk in. Her water glass is beside it, her bag on the back of her chair. She isn't at her desk yet. I note it and walk into my office.

I sit down. I open the overnight correspondence. I read the first three items without retaining a word of any of them. I close the correspondence and put my elbows on the desk, press my fingers against my mouth, and sit there for a moment. The office is quiet around me — the floor not yet fully awake, the city doing its early morning thing outside the windows. There is no version of last night that fits cleanly inside the life I run. I know that. I've known it since I woke up.

I reach for the brief on my desk and get back to work. It's the only answer that makes any sense this morning. Fifteen minutes later there's a knock at my door.

"Come in."

She opens the door and walks to the front of my desk and stops. Pencil skirt, dark, fitted to the knee. Creamblouse. Her hair is down today, slightly softer than usual. Her cheeks have a warmth to them that the office light doesn't account for. Her lips—

"Good morning." Her voice is completely steady.

"You have a 9:00 meeting with the Vertex team. The Nakamura follow-up is confirmed for eleven. Patricia flagged two items in your correspondence that need responses before the end of the day — I've drafted both, they're in your queue. The client timeline revision needs a sign-off before it goes to Keith. And your lunch is still open."

She holds out the folder and I take it. Our fingers don't touch. I'm aware of how close they come. Her perfume reaches me as she steps back — the same scent from last night, softer now, layered with something that is just her. I look at the folder. I look at the first page. I keep my eyes there.

"The Nakamura brief," I say.

"I need it before 11."

"It's already on your desk." She nods toward the stack on my left that I somehow didn't register when I sat down.

I look at it. I look back at her. "Fine."

She nods once and turns to leave.

"Sutton."

She stops. She turns around fully this time — facing me directly, her expression composed in the way of someone who has decided exactly how today is going to go.

"The phase three revision," I say.

"Clean version with the corrected flags. By 12 noon."

“Of course,” she says, and then a beat. Something moves through her eyes that does not reach the rest of her face.

"You'll have it," she says.

She walks out and closes the door quietly behind her. I put my eyes on the Nakamura brief. I read every word of it. I read it twice.

The day is long and we do not discuss it. This is the correct outcome — the professional reset, wordless and mutual. By the time the Vertex meeting ends and the Nakamura call wraps and the phase three revision lands in my queue at 11:58 I have almost convinced myself that we are simply two people doing their jobs.

Almost.

She was right about the flags. The revision reflects the correct call — which means I've signed off on something that matches her original assessment. She is professional enough not to acknowledge this. I am professional enough to sign the document and move on.

At 3:15 she appears in my doorway with a logistics question. I answer it in four sentences. She nods and goes back to her desk. I watch her go. One second. Then I turn back to my screen.

By 6:30 in the evening the floor has cleared. I leave without stopping at her desk. The ride home is quiet. The apartment is exactly as I left it. I pour a drink and finish it this time, standing at the window, the city spread below me. I think with deliberate care about the Nakamura expansion and the upcoming board review andeverything else that belongs in the mind of the man I'm supposed to be. It mostly works.

***

Saturday morning I'm on the back nine before 9:00.

Charlie is two strokes ahead, which is standard. Paul is where Paul always is — slightly behind both of us and more interested in the conversation than the score. The morning is clear and cool and we move through the back nine at the unhurried pace of men who have been doing this long enough that the golf is mostly an excuse.

"You're off today," Charlie says. He lines up his shot with the focus of someone who takes the game seriously even when pretending not to.