Okay," she said. They stood there for a moment. The orchestra played something quiet. The last of the candles on the nearby tables flickered in the draft from a door that had opened somewhere across the room. And Ethan Ror, who had come to this hotel with a canvas tool bag and a delivery to make, and absolutely no intention of spending his Thursday evening like this, stood in the emptying ballroom of the Harrington Grand, and tried to think of something reasonable to say next, and found for the first time in a very long time that the reasonable thing and the true thing were pulling in entirely different directions.
He said neither. She said nothing either, but neither of them moved away. Outside Chicago was dark and cold and going about its business with complete indifference. And inside the ballroom that was slowly returning to the ordinary silence of an event that had ended, two people stood beside a white oak table that one of them had built with his hands, and the other had noticed for its joinery, and the particular lie they had agreed to tell for one evening had developed somewhere in the last 4 hours the inconvenient and unmistakable quality of a truth that neither of them had planned for. The hotel lobby was quieter than the ballroom had been, which was not saying much because the ballroom by the time they left it had the specific hush of a room that had held something and released it.
The last few hotel staff were moving through it with the efficient silence of people trained to restore order without commenting on what the disorder had been. Ethan had retrieved his canvas tool bag from the service corridor. He carried it over one shoulder the way he always did, the leather handles worn to the exact shape of his grip. And it was the most ordinary thing in the room, and also the thing that made him most visibly himself, not a guest, not a member of this world, just a man who had come to do a job, and was now standing in a hotel lobby at 11:15 at night, trying to figure out how to say good night to a woman he'd known for 4 hours and kissed for approximately 3 seconds, and was not going to stop thinking about for a very long time. Serena had collected her evening bag and her coat, a charcoal wool thing that had clearly been made for her.
And she stood near the lobby entrance with the posture of someone who was accustomed to transitions to the moment when an event ended and the ordinary world resumed, and you carried the evening's weight back into your regular life without letting it show on your face. They had not talked about the kiss. They had spoken about logistics, where he'd parked his truck, whether she needed her car brought around, the small practical language of departure, and neither of them had addressed the three seconds that were sitting between every sentence, like a word that kept getting skipped. I should get Maisie, Ethan said. Of course, Serena said.
Mrs. Falduto will have her until I get there. She doesn't mind, but it's past 11. You should go, Serena said. Neither of them moved immediately. The hotel doorman was holding the door open for a couple leaving ahead of them.
And the cold came in from outside. The genuine Chicago December cold that had nothing polite about it. And for a moment the warmth of the lobby held against it and then it didn't. Tonight was Ethan started. Yes, Serena said.
It was. He looked at her. I'm not sure what to do with it. He said to be straightforward about it. She looked back at him with an expression that said more clearly than words would have that she was not sure either and that she was not accustomed to not being sure and that not knowing was doing something uncomfortable and not entirely unwelcome to the space behind her sternum.
My board meeting is at 8 tomorrow morning. She said after that she paused. I don't know what after that looks like yet. You'll win. Ethan said I don't know that you have the documentation.
You have the room after tonight. Callum Bryce looked at Victor the way people look at something that's lost its warranty. He paused. You'll win. She was quiet for a moment.
You're confident about things you have no professional business being confident about. She said, I read rooms, he said. We covered this. Something moved in her face. Not the near smile from earlier in the evening.
Something that had less amusement in it and more of the quality of a person standing at an edge looking at a distance they weren't sure how to measure. Ethan, she said. Yeah, I don't. She stopped, started again. I'm not good at this part, the part after.
I'm very good at the event, the negotiation, the room. I am genuinely not good at what comes after when the room is empty. Neither am I, he said. In case that's relevant. It might be, she said.
The doorman was looking at them with the professional non-expression of a man paid not to register what was in front of him. The lobby was nearly empty now. Outside, a car had pulled to the curb. Serena's driver. Ethan assumed a dark sedan idling with the patience of someone accustomed to waiting.
Give me your phone, Ethan said. She blinked. What? Your phone? Give it to me for 10 seconds.
She looked at him for a moment, then reached into her evening bag and handed it to him. He typed in his number and handed it back. That's my number, he said. Not the workshop, my personal one. He picked up his tool bag.
When the board meeting is done, if you want to tell me how it went, you can call. If you don't, you don't have to. She looked at the phone, then at him. That's it. That's it.