Page 5 of Belong to Me
His eyes change. Not the colour. The temperature. The grey warms by a single degree, and the half-smile returns, and I havethe wild, ungrounded thought that I just passed a test I didn’t know I was taking.
“Humour me.”
I glance at Kaye. She nods, small and encouraging. So I talk. I tell him about Idaho, about the house with the porch that needs repainting, about my parents who think Monaco is near Milan and sent me a guidebook to the wrong country. I tell him I studied pre-law because I liked the logic of it, how rules build on rules until the structure holds weight. I don’t tell him that I brought my own adhesive tabs from a stationery shop in Boise or that I calculated the flight distance on the plane or that I’ve been in this conference room a while and I can still feel the handshake in my palm.
He listens. That’s the thing. Helistens. His eyes don’t wander. His phone stays in his jacket. He asks follow-up questions that have nothing to do with law or Keyes or the retainer agreement. He asks if I miss the mountains. He asks if I cook. He asks what I read before bed and I tell him mystery novels and he tells me, “Of course you do,” and I don’t know what that means but how he says it makes my ribs feel too small.
He is attentive and warm and charming and something about him in that chair, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, his fingers tapping a rhythm on the armrest that I suspect is unconscious, makes me feel like I’m being interviewed for something that isn’t in the job description.
It’s the tapping. It’s the rhythm of a man who is cataloguing.
I push back.
“Is there anything else you need regarding the case, Mr. Almazov?”
The tapping stops.
His eyes hold mine. A stretch of white table between us and the silence fills every inch of it, and Kaye is pulling out her phone to discuss scheduling, but his focus hasn’t moved, and mine hasn’t either, and there is a tiny, reckless part of me that is proud of those words and a larger, smarter part that wishes I hadn’t.
He smiles. Full, this time. Both sides.
“Not yet.”
THE BREAK ROOM AT KEYES, Inc. has a coffee machine that costs more than my car, and I’m standing in front of it pressing buttons I don’t understand when Blythe appears.
“Third button. Then the second one twice.”
I press. Coffee happens. It’s better than anything I’ve ever made in my life and I drink it too fast and burn my tongue.
Blythe leans against the counter. She’s holding her own coffee like she’s been holding it for a while, waiting, which I try not to think about.
“How was the meeting?”
“Fine.” I burn my tongue again. “Professional. Kaye was there the whole time.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I set my coffee down. “It was a meeting. We discussed the account. He reviewed the file.”
“Did he.”
I stop. Because the truth is he didn’t. He barely turned three pages. He spent nearly an hour asking me about Idaho and mystery novels and whether I cook, and I told him things I haven’t told anyone in Monaco, and his eyes never left mine, and when he saidnot yetI felt it in the backs of my knees.
“He reviewed the file,” I repeat.
Blythe’s mouth pulls to one side. “He likes you.”
The words hit the air between us and just sit there.
“He’s a client.”
Her expression closes, a door easing shut. She picks up her coffee. Takes a sip. Holds my eyes over the rim and gives me nothing, and that nothing is so full of what she’s choosing not to say that it fills the break room.
“Yes,” she agrees. “He is.”
She leaves. The coffee machine hisses behind me, cycling through its cleaning program, and I stand there with my burned tongue and my too-fast heart and the ghost of his voice sayingnot yetlike a man who has already decided how this ends.
ANTON
