He looked at her with that careful steadiness that she was coming to understand was just how he looked at things he was trying to figure out. The lighting's fine, he said. I know, she said. A beat. Okay, he said and made a note in his log.
I wanted to ask you something, she said before she could stop herself. About your daughter, you mentioned she's interested in science. How do you encourage that? I'm starting a STEM initiative through the company foundation and I could use a practical perspective. That was real.
Actually, the foundation initiative was real. Marcus leaned against the lobby wall, tool bag at his feet. With Lily. I just let her break things and put them back together. Don't tell her something's too complicated before she tries it.
He paused. She's building a model of the water cycle right now for school. She flooded the kitchen sink twice before she got the drainage right. I just handed her paper towels. Viv smiled.
You have a very high tolerance for mess. You kind of have to with kids. The mess is the learning. There was a pause that lasted longer than she intended to let it last. "You mentioned she likes milkshakes," Viv said slowly.
Marcus looked at her with an expression she couldn't fully read. "I might have mentioned that there's a diner on the east side, Riverside. She'd probably Viv stopped, started over. I'm being strange about this a little," he said, not unkindly. She looked at him directly.
I'm going to be less strange about it at the end of the week, I think, if that's all right. I'll be here, Marcus said and picked up his tool bag and walked away. It was a Thursday evening shift change. Most of the building clearing out. Viv had been thinking about it for 4 days.
She'd rehearsed versions of it in the elevator, in the shower, in the car. All the versions were controlled and measured and landed with exactly the right combination of confidence and lightness. She walked into the lobby and crossed to where Marcus was replacing a thermostat panel on the east wall and every version of the speech evaporated. She stopped in front of him. He stood up.
The lobby went quiet, not because anyone coordinated it, just because people can sense when something real is happening. I don't have a husband, she said. Her voice wasn't steady. I've been divorced for four years, and for four years, I've been telling myself that being alone was a choice I made from strength instead of fear. But that's not entirely honest.
She held his eyes. Can I take you and Lily to dinner, Riverside Diner, or wherever she'd want? Somewhere easy. I just I want to know you outside of maintenance requests I fabricated. The lobby was genuinely silent now.