13
Lance
Elliot is exactly as advertised.
Short dark blond hair, grey-green eyes, a composed posture, and an easy smile. I step out of his car and the night air slides across the back of my neck, carrying salt and the low slap of water against hulls.
He holds the door for me at Breakwater, which I appreciate. Warm overhead lighting, windows thrown open to the bay. String lights glow over the back patio. The bridge lit up in the distance.
It’s a good date location. Elliot chose well.
I follow him to the table and sit. The server drops off our drinks. My hands feel too big for the glass.
“You ever notice how some places make you slow down the second you walk in?” he says, glancing around before looking back at me, his green eyes flick briefly over the room. “Not the music or the crowd. It’s just the way it’s put together.”
I take a slow sip of my drink and let the burn settle. “You’re in work mode,” I say, remembering he’s some sort of architect.
“Always,” he says, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Look at this. Narrow room, but it doesn’t feel tight. They kept the sightlines open, pushed everything low, let the windows do thework.” He tips his glass toward the dark water outside. “You get water, movement, air. Your brain reads it as space.”
“That sounds expensive,” I say.
“It is,” he replies easily. “Or it’s just knowing where not to overbuild.”
The server drops off our drinks. He thanks her without breaking his sentence, then turns back to me like there was no interruption at all.
“I’m working on a place down the coast right now,” he says. “Old structure. Everyone wanted to strip it back to nothing and rebuild, start fresh. But the bones are good. You don’t throw that out. You work with it, let it tell you what it needs.”
“What does a building need?” I ask.
“Respect,” he says, then lets out a low laugh. “Patience, and a lot of problem-solving. You’d be surprised how much of my job is fixing things someone else rushed.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Yeah?” He leans in a fraction. “You get that a lot at the hospital?”
“All the time.”
He nods once, like that makes sense. “Figures,” he says, picking up his glass.
I nod like I’m following every word. My thumb keeps rubbing the same spot on the glass. Elliot talks in full paragraphs, everything neat and thought through before it leaves his mouth. George would have said three words and then waited, letting the silence do most of the talking. The comparison arrives without permission. I shove it back down and smile.
The conversation keeps moving. I ask questions. I laugh at the right moments. My shoulders stay loose even when my stomach keeps tightening in small, stubborn knots. This is my first real date with a man and the guy across from me is doing everything right.Good-looking. Polite. Interesting. My brain keeps supplying the checklist like it’s trying to prove something.
But every time Elliot leans forward to make a point, I notice the way his watch catches the light. Clean hands. No faint scent of engine oil that clings to someone who’s been working with his body all day. My mind drifts again. I catch it, drag it back, and take another sip so the movement covers the slip.
I’m an awful person. Elliot doesn’t deserve the ghost sitting at the table with us.
“You okay?” Elliot asks.
“Yeah. Long week,” I manage to say, already smiling.
Huh. I’m usually the one who can’t shut up if I try, but tonight I seem to have left that entire personality at home.
The table beside us has been getting louder for the past forty minutes. Four men, mid-thirties, a level of drunk that’s moved from social to territorial. One of them keeps looking over at Elliot, who’s been gesturing expansively while telling a story about a zoning board meeting, his elbow occasionally crossing into the space between tables.
I keep an eye on the situation the way you do when the numbers on a monitor in the ED start trending in the wrong direction. Elliot doesn’t notice at all, completely unaware of how much of him is drifting towards their table.
Then the big one leans back in his chair and speaks up, loud enough that the tables around us go silent.
