Page 85 of The Art of Ruin

“Have you seen this?” she asks, pointing at the screen.

I glance over. “No.”

“It’s actually good,” she says. “Not just ‘I’m bored so I’ll watch anything’ good. Properly good. It’s about this detective and his police dog, who solve crimes together on this beautiful island in the Caribbean.”

“That sounds very boring.”

“You’re very hard to convince.”

“Crime dramas are never accurate.”

She studies me for a second, then nods like she’s made a decision. “Fine. We’ll try one episode. If you hate it, we switch.”

“Fine, but if it’s trash, I’m not holding my punches just to spare your feelings.”

Casey smiles, the first one I’ve seen in a while, and I realize I missed it. That’s a problem for me. I don’t get attached, and certainly not to women who work for me and are taking care of my child.

She presses play, then settles back again, shifting slightly until she finds a position that works. I watch the adjustment without comment, noting the way she still moves carefully, just with less tension than before.

The opening scene starts, filling the quiet space with sound, and for a while, neither of us speaks.

Then, just as the camera is panning across the beautiful blue ocean of the Caribbean, she speaks.

“Do you always do that?” she asks.

“Do what?”

“Decide things like they’re negotiations,” she says, glancing at me briefly. “Everything sounds like a contract with you.”

“Almost every conversation we have in life is a negotiation of some sort.”

“That sounds exhausting, and kinda sad.”

“For you.”

“For everyone,” she corrects.

I don’t respond to that. Is she right? Is it exhausting?

A few minutes pass before she speaks again, her voice softer this time, less pointed. “What’s it like?” she asks.

I shift my attention from the screen to her. “What’s what like?”

“Being the middle one,” she says. “Between Nico and Matteo.”

The question lands differently.

Not difficult.

Just… unexpected. Nobody has ever asked me that before. We just are what we are.

I don’t answer straight away, giving her question some real thought, because I’m not entirely sure how to. It’s not something I’ve given any thought to.

“It’s… structured,” I say after a moment, the word sounding insufficient even as I use it.

She frowns slightly. “That’s not an answer.”

“It is,” I reply.