Page 75 of Neap & Spring

You, I think. And immediately feel like an idiot.

“I’m just checking on you.”

“Do you need your office?”

“No. No — you’re fine. You’ve just been staring at that screen for” — I look at the small clock on the wall — “six hours?”

“Has it been that long?” She blinks her bleary eyes and looks at her own laptop clock, seeming genuinely surprised. “Oh. Wow. Yeah, I guess it has been.”

I’ve noticed that she does this a lot. Loses herself completely in work. I remember it from school. She’d get so focused on a project that time would just disappear. I’d find her in the library at three in the morning, still taking notes, not realizing the building was supposed to close at midnight and the librarian just had a soft spot for her.

I push off the doorframe and step into the small office. It feels even more cramped than usual with all her stuff everywhere. I have to move a stack of papers just to lean against the filing cabinet.

“Is it done?” I ask, nodding toward the laptop.

She takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “Yeah. It’s done.”

“And?”

“And I’ve read it seventeen times. Changed the wording on page three several times. Adjusted the revenue projections twice. Questioned every single number and citation and —” She stops and runs both hands over her face, dragging her features down. “It’s as good as it’s going to get.”

I can hear the fear underneath the professionalism. She’s terrified this won’t be enough, that we’ll have worked ourselves to exhaustion and it still won’t save the restaurant.

That she’ll have failed me.

Which is insane, because she’s already done more than I had any right to ask. More than I could have done alone.

“So send it.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

She stares at the screen with her hand hovering over the trackpad, but she doesn’t click anything. She just lingers there, frozen.

I know that feeling. The moment right before you commit to something irreversible. Right before you jump and hope someone catches you.

“What if they hate it?” she mutters.

“They won’t.”

“What if the numbers are wrong? What if I missed something? What if —”

“Vivi.” I move closer and crouch down next to her chair so we’re at eye level. “It’s good. I’ve read it. Multiple times. It’s comprehensive. It’s realistic. It’s exactly what they asked for. You are good at this.”

She seems to consider her words before her eyes meet mine, and I see that she’s terrified. “But what if it’s not enough?”

She cares. More than she probably should for a consultant who’s getting paid to be here.

And that makes me want to pull her out of that chair and tell her that even if this fails, even if we lose everything, if the investors pull out and I have to sell every single piece of restaurant equipment, having her here has been worth it. Finally seeing her and knowing she is safe after all this time was more than worth it.

But that would be way too much for whatever this fragile thing between us is right now.

We’re just finding our footing again. We are starting to rebuild some kind of trust after silence and hurt. I can’t risk that by admitting that having her here feels like the best thing that’s happened to me in years. Watching her work in my office, surrounded by her color-coded notes and half-empty coffee mugs, feels more right than anything has in a long time. That her hand on my thigh was the first time I’d been steadied by another person in longer than I can remember.

No. I need to keep it simple. Keep it safe.

“Then it’s not enough,” I say instead, “but we’ll have tried. We’ll have done everything we could. And whatever happens next, we’ll figure it out.”