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“What does that mean?”

“What it says.”

“That isn’t usually a satisfactory answer in a document.”

“Good thing you’re here.”

He put the pen down between us.

Outside, a truck crossed the yard slowly enough that I heard each tire find the shallow rut by the porch. The engine faded toward the barns. I watched the corner of the paper lift in the draft from the open window.

“Are you talking about sex?”

“No.”

He answered without hesitation.

Something in me sank, which was both informative and inconvenient.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. His eyes stayed on my face, but he didn’t rescue me from the question I had asked. “I’m talking about having an hour you don’t have to make useful,” he said. “Doing something because you like doing it.”

“I like working.”

“I know.”

“Building an event is satisfying.”

“I’ve watched you catch a math error. Nearly called somebody to announce it.”

“That error would have cost us four hundred dollars.”

I pushed my hair behind my ear. His gaze followed the movement, briefly, then returned to mine.

He wasn’t leaning across the table. He wasn’t trying to make the teasing do the work of an answer.

“I don’t want all our rules to be about keeping you fed and charged up so you can go work some more,” he said. “You’re allowed to enjoy yourself.”

“I do enjoy myself.”

“All right.”

The ease of his answer irritated me.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I believe you. I’m not grading how much fun you have.”

I looked at the sentence again.

She gets to play.

It was embarrassingly simple. No time, no measurable result, no definition of successful completion. I couldn’t have handed it to a crew chief. I couldn’t have put it in a vendor agreement. It wouldn’t survive the first question in a production meeting.

And I couldn’t stop reading it.

“What would that look like?” I asked.

“What would you want it to look like?”