Page 25 of Wells

She picks up her pen again and makes a note. I watch her hand move across the page, the line of her wrist, the way her fingers curl around the barrel.

I force my eyes back to the screen.

"The exposure metrics on slide six. Walk me through the scaling."

She flips the laptop around so I can see the chart, her finger tapping the vertical axis. The tip of her finger stirs a warmth in me, almost like a déjà vu, or a familiarity that goes longer than the three weeks she's been here.

"Exposure is scaled logarithmically. It compresses the extremes and makes the midrange visible."

"Which softens the threat perception," I think aloud accidentally. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know she's going to challenge me.

Her finger stops mid-tap.

"Which, again, makes the chart readable."

"It makes the chart inaccurate."

"Wells, it's not inaccurate information. Just like I said a moment ago, it's how you can convey a lot of information in an easily digestible way. Think of it as the Cliff's Notes of your massive spreadsheet you keep. Condense it down and make it understandable to the masses."

She pulls up the raw data file I sent her three days ago. The numbers stack in columns, unformatted, brutal in their precision.

"This is what you gave me. Forty-seven rows of exposure metrics with no context and no baseline. You want me to put this in front of a bunch of suits who have no clue what half of these words mean? They'll check out."

"I want you to show them what the data says."

"The data doesn't say anything until someone translates it." She turns it back to herself and types something in a notes file. "I'm translating it."

I lean back in my chair, and she doesn't retreat. Damn. I don't want to, but I like the way she owns her shit and gives it to me without blinking. She's fucking brilliant, just in a different way than my brain works.

She turns the screen back toward me and points to the chart again. I stare at it.

The heat under my collar shifts, and I'm not sure if I want to argue with her because I think she's wrong, or because I want to keep her talking. Her voice has a cadence I track without meaning to, sharp on the edges and warm in the middle. When she goes quiet, I catch myself waiting for the next thing out of her mouth. I do not like what that means.

We go through every slide like this. I push on her interpretation, she argues a similar point that I essentially give too much information and bog everyone down with minute details they don't need. And every single time, I end up conceding in my own way by moving on, rather than telling her she's right.

She shifts in her seat, and her knee brushes the edge of the table. I catch the movement in my peripheral vision and force my eyes back to the screen.

I notice movement on one of my back channels, so I pull it up on my main screen. After determining it's nothing to worry about, I look up to see she's watching me. Her pen is still in her hand, and her posture is unchanged.

"Polish this and make sure it's ready to go. Our Zoom meeting is in two days, and I want to review it one more time the morning of."

"I'll make it shine."

She makes a note, and the silence stretches.

I hate that she was right. More than that, I hate that we've gone through the entire deck and there's nothing else to say.

The night before our Zoom meeting, Cera and I meet to go over our presentation.

I pull up the revised deck and click through the updated slides with her to make sure everything is ready to go. The Jakarta flag sits where it should now, nested under the regional overview with a callout box that directs attention without screaming. The cluster map holds its structure. The exposure chart balances precision and readability in a way I didn't think was possible three hours ago.

She did it. She took my findings and made them understandable in a much more efficient and cleaner way. Once I finish clicking through each one, I look at her. She's packing her notebook into her bag, her pen clenched between her teeth. My mouth waters.

"This is good work."

Cera pauses and glances up. Her expression doesn't change, but something shifts in her posture, a looseness in her shoulders that wasn't there before.

"High praise from you."