Page 35 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

What doesn't move is the thing sitting between us that neither of us is addressing.

It's in every ordinary moment — the half-second of eye contact when I hand her a document, the way she doesn't linger at my doorway when a conversation ends, the fact that I've restructured the morning briefing so it happens across the full width of my desk. It is present and it is unspoken and we are both, by unspoken agreement, leaving it exactly there. I am managing it. That's what I tell myself.

Thursday afternoon Keith stops by my office. A few members of the client relations team are gathering at Harlow's down the street — end of crisis drinks, informal, an hour or so. He mentions it the way he mentions everything, without particular weight. Good for morale, he says. Then he adds that Sutton organized it and leaves. I think about it for only a moment, and then I put on my jacket and go.

Harlow's is warm and low-lit, the kind of bar that exists for exactly this purpose. By the time I arrive the team has claimed a section near the back — six people, drinks already in hand, the looseness of a group that has been through something together and is relieved to be on the other side of it.

She's near the bar when I walk in, standing with two women from the team, laughing at something — a real laugh, unguarded, her head tilted back slightly. She's let her hair down from its workday arrangement and it falls around her shoulders the way it did in Dallas. I cross the room and greet the team and I don't look back at her.

The hour passes easily. I move through the conversations. I stay longer than I planned. The team is in good spirits — the resolution has done what shared pressure always does when it finally lifts, creating a warmth between people who don't normally operate this closely.

At some point I'm standing near the far end of the bar and she appears beside me, signaling for another drink. She doesn't acknowledge my presence immediately. She waits for the bartender, orders, and then turns to look at me with the even expression she's been wearing all week.

"Good turnout," she says.

"It was good for the team," I agree.

The bartender sets her drink down. She picks it up. We stand there for a moment in the noise of the room with a great deal unsaid between us.

"You should know," she says, her eyes forward, "that I have no expectation of anything. From you. About what happened." She takes a sip.

"I'm not going to make your office uncomfortable. That's not who I am."

"I know that," I say.

"I just wanted to say it directly."

"I appreciate it." I look at her profile.

"There arecomplications you may not be aware of."

She turns to look at me. "Such as?"

"You're with my brother."

Something moves across her face — not surprise exactly. Something more complicated than that.

"I'm not," she says.

I look at her.

"Caleb and I ended things,” she says as she holds my gaze.

"A couple of weeks ago."

The bar moves around us. Someone laughs at the other end of the room. A glass clinks. The city does what the city does outside the windows. I pause and sit with what she just said. The stone that has been in my chest since I woke up the morning after — the one I've been carrying and calling guilt and using like a leash — shifts. It doesn't disappear entirely. But it shifts into something different than what it was.

"You didn't say anything," I say.

"It wasn't relevant." Her voice is steady.

"Professionally."

We look at each other for a moment.

"All right," I say.

She nods. She turns back to the room and picks up a conversation with the woman beside her. I stand at the bar a moment longer. I set my drink down.