Just offered it. Simple, unhurried, and she took it. And they walked back through the restaurant toward the entrance, past the last few tables still occupied, past the host stand and the woman who handed them their ticket for the valet, past all the ordinary machinery of an ordinary Friday night that had been for both of them entirely something else. They were in the truck heading back toward home when Clare's phone buzzed. She looked at it.
Something shifted in her face. "What? " Andre said. She turned the phone so he could see the screen without taking his eyes too far from the road. A text from a number she'd saved as New York Helen. It read.
I know it's late and it's Friday, but I've got a board meeting Monday morning and they're going to want an answer on the lead role. I need to know by Sunday. Sorry for the pressure. You're the right person for this. I need you to know that.
Andre looked at the road. Sunday, Clare said. Yeah. I thought I had until Monday. You have less time than you thought.
He said, "That happened to you a lot? " She looked at him. "More than I'd like. He was quiet for a moment. " "Then what do you need from me right now? Not tomorrow. Not when you figured everything out right now. " She thought about it.
Genuinely thought not the reflexive deflection of someone who says I'm fine because it's easier. Tell me it's the right call. Si said not because I need permission. I told you I don't need permission but because she stopped because you want someone in your corner who means it. He said yes.
He glanced at her briefly looked back at the road. It's the right call. You're sure? I'm sure it's the right call for your career. Whether it's the right call for everything else is something we figure out as we go.
He paused. But I'm not going to be the reason you say no. That's not happening. She exhaled a long slow breath like setting down something she'd been carrying in her arms since before the dinner started. Okay, he said softly.
Okay. They rose in silence for three blocks. A comfortable silence, the kind that had always existed between them. The kind he'd spent 22 months trying not to read too much into "Andre," she said. "Yeah, what you said on the terrace. " A pause about being done, calling it something else.