Page 63 of Cava with My Colleague

By the time Jade finishes with the last attendee, I’ve packed everything up. I leave her laptop bag on the table for her and head toward the exit without saying goodbye.

I need a moment alone, to collect myself before heading back to my room.

The hotel bathroom on the event level is occupied, a small line forming outside. I don’t have the patience for it. I head for the stairs instead, climbing one flight to the second floor where I know there’s another restroom.

The second-floor bathroom is mercifully empty. I wash my hands, splash cold water on my face, and stare at myself in the mirror.

Paul is right. I look tired. Strained.

Two more presentations. Just one more week.

I dry my face. The problem is not that I don’t know what she wants.

I know. I’ve known for weeks. Jade is not subtle, and even if she were, I’ve spent enough time watching her to read the difference between professional warmth and something else entirely. She wants me. And I⁠—

I want her. That is the problem. Not whether the feeling is there—it is, unmistakably, in a way I haven’t felt in so long I’d half-convinced myself I was finished feeling anything like it. The problem is what I know about myself: that I don’t arrive at this lightly. That when I let someone close enough to matter, they matter entirely, and there’s no taking that back afterward.

Marisol used to say I loved like a slow river. It takes a long time to get moving, she said, but once it’s going, you can’t stop it and you can’t redirect it.

Jade is leaving in two weeks.

If I let this happen—let her in, let myself want this properly—and then she goes back to Austin, I won’t be able to call it a casual thing that ran its course. I know myself. It won’t feel like that. And I’m fifty-six years old with a granddaughter and a settled life, and I don’t know if I have the capacity to rebuild myself around another absence.

So I keep the distance. Not because she doesn’t want me. Not because I don’t want her.

Because I do. And that’s exactly what makes it impossible.

I head back into the hallway. The elevator bank is just ahead. I press the call button and wait, checking my phone.

A message from Fernando: photo of Carmencita covered in what looks like mashed banana. I smile despite everything.

This is my life. This is what matters.

The elevator dings. The doors slide open.

Jade is inside.

She’s leaning against the back wall, her laptop bag over her shoulder, her ponytail slightly disheveled. When she sees me, something flickers across her face—surprise? Resignation? I can’t tell.

We stare at each other for a long moment.

I could wait for the next elevator. There will be another one in a few minutes. That would be easier. Safer.

But I’m exhausted. Exhausted from the presentation, from maintaining this distance, from pretending I don’t think about her constantly.

It’s just an elevator ride. We’re adults.

I step inside.

24

Carlos

* * *

The doors slide shut and suddenly the elevator feels very small.

I move to the corner opposite Jade. The button for the twelfth floor is already lit. We stand in silence as the elevator begins its ascent.