Page 47 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

"Adjacent rooms," I say.

"Standard travel configuration."

"Right." He takes a sip of his coffee from the cart.

"How's that working out for you?"

I hit the ball. It lands twelve feet from the pin, which is the best shot I've hit all morning. I pick up my tee.

"Fine," I say.

Paul nods. He doesn't push further, which is one of the things about Paul that I've valued for twenty years. He knows when to let something breathe.

We play through seven and eight without returning to it. On nine, Charlie three-putts and blames the green, which is not the green's fault. Paul makes par. I birdie and say nothing about it.

We're in the cart between nine andten when Paul says, looking straight ahead at the path: "You know what your problem is?"

"I don't have a problem," I say.

"Your problem," he continues, as if I hadn't spoken, "is that you're the smartest man in every room you walk into. And that's been true long enough that you've started thinking it means you're smarter than your own feelings."

I look at him.

He looks at the path ahead.

"That's not a problem," I say.

"That's just discipline."

"No," Paul says. "That's just loneliness with good posture."

He gets out of the cart at the tenth tee and walks to his ball and that's the end of it. No follow-up. No speech. Just that one sentence set down on the cart path between nine and ten like something he was done carrying.

I stand there holding my driver and I don't answer him. I think about it for the rest of the round. I think about it on the drive home. I think about it at 8:00 that evening with a glass of scotch and the city below me and the apartment doing its quiet sufficient thing around me.

***

The invitation arrives on a Monday — the Hargrove Foundation charity gala, New York City, black tie, three weeks out. It's the kind of event I attend every year. The kind of room where the money is old and the causes are legitimate and the social architecture of it requires acertain navigation that I've been doing long enough to do in my sleep.

I need a date. I know before I've finished reading the invitation who I'm going to ask. The rationalization comes after that — she knows the business, she handles these rooms better than most people who have been doing it for decades, she won't require managing while I'm managing everything else. All of it true. None of it is the actual reason.

I call her into my office that afternoon. She comes in and sits across from me the way she always does — straight, attentive, giving nothing away for free. She has the afternoon briefing folder in her lap. She is, as she always is in this room, entirely professional.

"New York," I say.

"Three weeks. The Hargrove Foundation gala. Black tie." I hold her gaze.

"I need you there."

Something moves across her face — brief, contained.

"As your assistant or as your date?"

"Both." I pause. "The same arrangement as Dallas."

She looks at me for a moment. I watch her weigh it — not the question of whether she'll say yes, because we both know the answer to that. Something else. Something she files away before it reaches the surface.

"All right," she says. "I'll coordinate the travel."