I watch the shape of her shoulder rise and fall, the strand of her hair shift on the pillow when the AC kicks on. I watch her hand curl and uncurl once, slowly, around nothing.
I don’t sleep.
The light starts to change around five. The skyline beyond the glass turning into the real world again.
She stirs just before seven.
Her hand drifts up to her face, brushes hair off it, and stays there a second while she remembers where she is. Her eyes open.
She sees me.
I don’t move.
“You didn’t sleep.”
“No.”
“You’ve been watching me.”
“Yes.”
She sits up. The duvet falls away from her shoulder. She’s quiet for a few seconds, watching me back. Whatever she wants to say is taking its time arriving.
“Yesterday,” she says. “Whatever happened… is it handled?”
“Yes.”
She sighs, and an invisible tension slips off her shoulders. Her eyes drift down to the sheets, and she picks at a thread that isn’t there.
“Are-are you gonna let me go back to my apartment?”
“No.”
“Raffaele.” She’s too tired to make her voice sharp, and the softness of it is worse than anger would have been. “I thought we already had this conversation. I can’t just live in your apartment. That isn’t a thing people do.”
“You’re already sleeping with your boss.” My voice is flat. “You’re well past what peopledo.”
She stares at me for a long second. I can see her trying to decide whether she’s allowed to laugh.
“That’s—”
“It’s also a promotion.”
“It’s a?—”
“Take the win, Bea.”
I reach over to the night table and take the cigar I keep there for nights I don’t have, and I roll it once between my fingers. I don’t answer.
She watches me roll it. She’s not letting me run out the clock the way I thought I might.
“Last night.” She says it slowly.“Did something happen with Nico?”
“Don’t worry about Nico.”
“I’m not worrying. I’m asking.”
“You don’t have to do that either.”
