“I checked.” He gets out. I get out. The elevator is where he said it would be, tucked behind a door that requires a key card he produces without ceremony, and we ride up in silence, thirty-two floors of it, and I watch the numbers and do not look at him because looking at him in an enclosed space has a documented effect on my decision-making. The doors open. Cold air hits my face before I see anything else. Then the skyline.
The nighttime spectacle of Chicago, viewed from thirty-three stories up, defies any category I have for it. Lake Michigan to the east, black and enormous, city lights fracturing across its surface. The Loop below us blazing gold and white. The wind off the lake is direct and clean and cuts straight through my blazer and I do not care at all because the view from up heremakes the city look the way it feels at three a.m. when you can’t sleep and you stand at your window and remember that you chose this place on purpose.
“Max.” My voice comes out in awe.
“Yeah.” He’s beside me at the railing. Not touching. The city hums thirty-three floors below us. “Good?”
“Very good,” I say, and mean it in more directions than one.
A server appears from somewhere behind us, takes a brief order, and disappears. There are two other people on the far end of the rooftop, close together, facing the lake, paying us no attention. The heaters mounted along the pergola push warmth into the cold air, and the entire space glows amber and private, and nothing like anywhere I have ever stood with a player I am professionally responsible for. Was professionally responsible for. The assignment ended six days ago. I hold onto that.
The food arrives. We eat at the high-top near the railing, and he was right; I was hungry. The Chicago wind catches my skirt and keeps stealing my napkin, and the third time it happens, he puts his hand flat on the table to stop it, and his hand stays there afterward, close to mine, and neither of us addresses it.
“Your supervisor,” he says. “The review. Is it a problem?”
“It’s routine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I set down my fork. The skyline blazes behind him. “It’s manageable,” I say. “The Boston data helps. The documented improvement helps.” I pause. “It helps that the formal assignment ended before anything…” I stop.
“Before anything happened,” he finishes. His voice is even. His blue eyes are direct.
“Yes.”
“Is that true? Technically.”
I hold his gaze. “The dock was after the assignment review period closed.” A beat. “Technically.”
He grins. The real one. “Technically.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were on the verge of uttering unbearable words.”
“I was going to say,” he says, “that I’m glad it’s manageable.” He turns his hand over on the table. Palm up. An offer, nothing more. I look at it. “Antonia.”
I put my hand in his.
His fingers close around mine, and the warmth of it travels straight up my arm and I face forward, toward the lake, and breathe the cold air in.
We sit like that for a long time. That other pair, on the distant edge, exits. The server refills our glasses and retreats. Chicago goes on below us, vast and indifferent, and up here it is just the amber heaters and his hand and a Tuesday night that belongs only to us. “Cold?” he asks.
“Yes.” He stands. Moves behind me. His jacket settles over my shoulders, heavy and warm, carrying the scent of his soap and the particular heat of him, and his hands rest briefly on my shoulders before he steps back. I pull the jacket tighter. “You’ll freeze.”
“I run hot.”
I turn on the stool to face him. He’s close. The cold has put color in his face, and the wind wrecked his dark hair. He is twenty-two years old, and he is staring at me like I’m the skyline. His eyes say he’s been wanting this view for a long time and plans to keep looking. It burrows into me and chisels at my heart. “Max.”
“Still here.”
“Take me somewhere warmer,” I say.
His breath changes. One shift, barely visible. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
