Yes. They were both doing the same math and arriving at the same answer, which was, "It was possible." Barely with no margin for error and no additional surprises. Okay, Marcus said he stood up. Then you need to start on the term sheet now.
Today he was halfway to the door when she said Marcus. He stopped yesterday. She said what you said before Hawthorne's call came in. He turned around. She was looking at him with the unguarded expression, the one that had no professional layer over it.
The one he had only seen twice both times in rooms that had changed something permanent between them. I meant what I said, she told him. Me, too. I want you to know it wasn't. I want you to know I've been aware of what this is for longer than yesterday.
She paused. I'm not good at this at saying things that don't have a strategic framework around them. You're doing fine, he said quietly. I'm a disaster, she said with a brief, rofal honesty that was somehow more attractive than anything composed she had ever said in his presence. I run a billion-dollar company and I cannot manage a conversation about my own feelings without preparing remarks in advance.
I fixed a zipper and asked if you wanted it up or down, he said. I'm not in a position to judge. She laughed. It was the real one, the short surprised one he had heard in the breakroom when Ava called her the boss. It lasted only a second, but it broke something open in the room and they were both aware of it.
After the event, she said, "Whatever happens, I want to have a different conversation, a real one, without a board meeting about to start or a crisis in the server room." After the event, he agreed. He left. He spent the rest of that day and the next three days doing two things simultaneously and he was methodical about both. The first was his job.
His actual job which he performed with the same thoroughess and care that he always brought to it because that was who he was and a crisis in his personal life was not a reason to let a building suffer. He finished the third floor pressure fix. He completed a full safety inspection of the parking structure that he'd been scheduling around for 2 weeks. He managed his crew, answered their questions, signed off on their work orders, and showed up for every task that bore his name. The second thing he did was think.
He thought about Ava's question at the breakfast table. Are you fine? He thought about the worn paperback on her nightstand. He thought about Angela, which he still did every day, but differently now, not with the consuming, directionless grief of the first year, not even with the quieter ache of the second and third years. He thought about her with a specific kind of honesty that he hadn't fully allowed himself before.
He thought about what she would say to him right now. He knew exactly what she would say. She would say, "Baby, why are you waiting?" He had been waiting because he was afraid. He understood that clearly now in a way that he hadn't let himself understand it before.