Page 39 of Ricardo

She looks into her cup. “I just didn’t want to go home yet.”

I keep my voice even. “Why?”

“Because home is quiet.”

“This office is quiet.”

“Yes,” she says. “But here, I have work to do. At home, I just have myself.”

I look down at my espresso because looking at her feels too direct after that.

It is such a simple answer, but there is much beneath the words.

“And yourself is difficult company tonight?” I ask.

Her laugh is soft and without much humor. “Tonight, yes.”

I nod, because I understand that better than she probably expects me to. Even just a couple of days without Dante around, and I understand the feeling all too well. “Then the work was an excuse.”

“The work was real,” she says. “But the urgency was an excuse.”

She shifts the towel against the back of her head, then winces a little. “I had dinner with my parents last night.”

I keep the cup in my hand and my attention on her voice. “I take it dinner did not go well.”

She sighs out a laugh. I feel as if it’s self-deprecating. “Oh no, dinner went very well. Dinner always goes very well. They wouldn't have it any other way.”

She is close enough now that I see the faint freckles across her nose and the exhaustion beneath the makeup. She smells like soap, expensive perfume, and coffee.

“The food was perfect,” she says. “The flowers were perfect. The seating arrangement was perfect. My father was in a good mood, which meant everyone else was expected to be in one, too. I wore my finest pearls and my perfectly appropriate dress with my perfectly matching shoes.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“Oh, no. That's a normal dinner at my parents' house.” She takes another sip, then looks down into the cup. “Even the guests were perfect. Hugh and Bunny Vanderbilt with their prying into my broken engagement, and the implication that I couldn’t possibly have gotten the job here if it weren’t for my connection with Dante, because apparently a degree from Yale is just an expensive piece of paper.”

I blow out a quiet breath. “That must have been a long dinner.”

“Oh, it didn't end there.” She turns the cup slowly in her hand. “After the guests left, that's when the real party started.”

“I take it the good judge had opinions.”

Her laugh is quiet and tired. “The good judge always has opinions.”

“About you?” I ask.

That makes her look over at me.

“About everything,” she says. “About my job, about my life choices. About the company I keep and the company I don't keep anymore.”

She sets the cup carefully on the floor beside her knee. “They think I’m making choices specifically to embarrass them.”

“Are you?”

Her eyes come to mine. “No.”

I nod once. “Then that is their problem.”

“It feels like mine when I’m sitting across from them.”