Page 12 of Wreckage and Rain

“We can keep working over food. My treat. You picked the place last time.”

I didn’t pick the place last time.

I almost correct her, but she’s already standing and reaching for her coat, and it doesn’t matter enough to turn into a conversation.

I get my jacket.

In the car, I text Summer.

Calloway’s being a pain. Still at the office grinding through it. Eat without me.

The office part isn’t true, and I know it when I send it.

But dinner was Cheyenne’s idea, and she has carried half this deal on her back for the last month. Telling her no would make it sound like she had crossed some line when all she suggested was food while we finished working.

It’s still Calloway. Still the deal.

Summer doesn’t need every detail of where we sit while we talk about it.

I drop my phone into the cup holder and drive.

The Butcher Block puts us at a table near the window because Cheyenne smiles at the hostess and asks if anything good is open.

She orders a bottle of red.

I don’t remember agreeing to that, but the waiter pours two glasses and leaves the bottle between us. There’s a candle on the table because there are candles on every table. None of it means anything.

For the first ten minutes, we talk about Calloway.

Then we don’t.

We talk about her sister’s wedding, a podcast I haven’t heard, and the house she grew up in. She rests her chin in her hand and asks what I was like as a kid.

I tell her about rugby. About breaking my collarbone at fourteen and my father standing over me on the field, telling me Bennets don’t cry.

“Did you?” she asks.

“Not where he could see.”

She waits.

I look down at my wine.

“I locked myself in the bathroom afterward.”

“I’m sorry.”

It’s the way she says it. No joke. No quick turn back to work. She just sits there and listens like there isn’t another person in the room.

“I’ve never told anyone that,” I say.

I don’t know why I say it. The wine, maybe. The month we’ve spent locked in conference rooms together. The relief of talking to someone who doesn’t already know how the story ends.

Cheyenne reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.

Her fingers stay there for a second too long.

I go still.