Page 30 of Wreckage and Rain

She takes off the glasses. Looks at me. Her eyes without the lenses are lighter. More exposed.

"I worry about you."

"About me?"

"You're going to burn out, Colt. The deal, your father, the hours. You haven't slept in weeks. Someone in this building should say it."

"I'm fine."

She doesn't argue with that. She pulls her feet up under her on the couch and gets smaller and lets the silence sit. The space between us is small. Her knee almost touches mine. I can smellwhatever she wears, something warm and clean, something I have gotten used to smelling in my office at night.

She leans toward me.

I lean toward her.

I don't think about it. My body is just moving. Her face is close enough that I can see the small flecks of gold in her brown eyes and the faint shine on her bottom lip and her breath smells like the wine we shared at dinner two hours ago and her hand is on the couch cushion between us and my hand is moving toward hers and I am leaning in and she is leaning in and we are about to.

I rear back.

Hard. Fast. Like I just saw a snake in the grass. My back hits the arm of the couch and my hand pulls away from where it was reaching and Cheyenne's eyes flicker, just once, with something I can't read, and then she is upright and professional and reaching for her glasses.

What the fuck.

What the fuck did I almost just do.

I stand up. The room tilts. I cross to the window. My back to her. Both hands in my hair. My heart is doing something a married man's heart shouldn't be doing.

"Sorry." Her voice is soft. Easy. "That was. I don't know what that was. Long week."

"Yeah." My voice is wrong. I clear my throat. "Yeah. Long week."

I don't turn around for a full minute. When I do, she's at her laptop, glasses on, the picture of a colleague pulling an all-nighter. The version of her that exists during the day. The version that doesn't lean across couches.

"Page fourteen," she says. Without looking up. "It's still going to embarrass both of us if we don't fix it."

"Right. Yeah."

I sit at my desk. Across the room from her. I don't sit on the couch again.

We work for another forty minutes. We don't look directly at each other. The room has a wire in it now. We are stepping around it.

At ten thirty I tell her I'm calling it. She says good night without looking up.

***

In the elevator I press the button for the parking garage and watch the floor numbers tick down. Nothing happened. I leaned forward. She leaned forward. I pulled back. Nobody touched anybody. I read a moment wrong. I corrected it. That's all there is to it.

By the time I get to my car nothing happened. By the time I'm on the bridge home it's almost behind me.

I drive home. Summer is in bed, reading. She turns off her light when I walk in. Doesn't say goodnight.

I shower. Get into bed. She's facing away from me.

I close my eyes.

Nothing happened. I keep coming back to that. I leaned in, she leaned in, I pulled back. Nobody touched anybody. I misread a moment. People misread moments. It has been a long week.

Chapter 7: The Birthday