Page 88 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

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Paul is already on his second drink when I arrive at the bar. It's a Thursday evening — a place we've been coming to for years, dark wood and good bourbon and the specific quiet of a room that doesn't need to perform anything. Charlie is traveling. It's just us. Paul has the particular settled energy of a man who has nowhere else to be and is content about it.

I sit across from him. The server brings me what I always have without being asked. Paul looks at me across the table with the attention he's been deploying sideways for months and is now deploying directly.

"You look different," he says.

"You've said that before," I say.

"Last time I said it, you told me work was demanding." He picks up his drink.

"What are you going to tellme this time?"

I look at him. "That you were right."

Paul raises an eyebrow. "About?"

"The posture comment." I take a drink.

"All of it."

He's quiet for a moment. He turns his glass in his hand.

"She know how you feel?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And she feels the same way."

Paul looks at me for a long moment. Not with surprise — with the specific expression of a man who has been waiting for this particular sentence and is taking a moment to appreciate its arrival. He nods slowly.

"How long has it been since you let someone in?" he asks.

"Actually in."

"Long enough that I forgot what it felt like," I say.

"Does it feel the way you remembered?"

I think about that honestly. Our time together in our private moments. The way she laughs when she's genuinely surprised — short, unguarded, completely real. The way she pushes back when I'm wrong and doesn't soften it to protect my ego. The way she looks at me in general.

"Better," I say.

Paul looks at me for another moment. Then he lifts his glass. No speech. No advice. No further questions. He raises the glass and I raise mine and we drink as the bar moves around us. That’s the end of it.

We spend another hour talking about his firm's expansion into the Pacific Northwest and a golf trip we've been rescheduling for three months and whether the club's new chef is an improvement or a disaster. Normal things. Easy things.

When we leave he grips my shoulder once at the door — firm, brief — and walks to his car. I stand on the pavement for a moment. I know what comes next for us. I've known for a while now. Tonight just made it clearer.

She's already at the penthouse when I arrive — she has a key now, which happened the way most things between us happen, without announcement. I came home one evening, weeks ago, to find her on the couch with her laptop and a glass of wine and it was the most natural thing in the room, so I had a copy made the following morning.

She's in the kitchen when I walk in. She's changed into something comfortable — one of my button down shirts, that seem to be oversized on her. Her hair down, as she holds a glass of white wine, just as before, typing on her open laptop. She looks up when I come in.

"How was Paul?" she asks.

"Good." I set my jacket over the chair.