Chapter 148 THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS - 31

Chapter 148 THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS - 31
COLE

The thing I hadn't fully thought through when I agreed to give her space was that the audit was also the reason I had somewhere to be twice a week. That sounds more calculated than it was. I wasn't using the audit. I'm just saying Tuesday and Thursday had a kind of routine to them for eleven weeks, and now they don't, and I'm standing in my kitchen on a Tuesday evening at six-fifteen with nowhere particular to be and a fridge that Jordan would find deeply offensive, and I'm doing that thing where you check your phone not because you're expecting anything but because checking it is better than not checking it.
No messages. Which is fine. She's not obligated to message me. She asked for space and the audit is done and there's no professional reason for either of us to be in the same building anymore, and I'm giving her exactly what she asked for, which I'm very proud of, which is going great.
I've been texting her. Not often. Not in a way that crowds anything. Once every few days, small things, nothing that requires a response. A link to an article about inventory reconciliation practices that I thought she'd find interesting for about four seconds before I realized that was possibly the least romantic text message in human history and sent it anyway because at that point I'd already typed the whole thing and it felt wasteful to delete.
She responds warmly. That's the thing. Every message comes back with something real in it, a proper reply, sometimes a joke, never one-word answers. But there's a texture to it I can't quite place, something that wasn't there before all of this, something careful underneath the warmth. Like she's being kind on purpose in a way she didn't have to be before. Like she's leaving space for something but hasn't decided what yet.
I've been telling myself she's still processing. That patience is what this is.
I've also eaten an embarrassing amount of crisps this week. Not as a meal. A supplement to meals. Mostly.
My cousin, Cierra texted earlier to say her flight to Lisbon landed safely, which was good to know, and I'd sent back a quick glad you made it before she disappeared into whatever she had planned for the week. She'd stayed over the weekend, left Monday morning, and the house had felt quieter than usual ever since. Not empty exactly. Just less filled with the specific chaos she brought with her, the kind that made it easy to forget about everything else.
Jordan showed up on Wednesday without texting first, which is standard Jordan behavior except usually he turns up with enough energy to fill a room and this time he just came in, looked at me standing at the counter eating crisps at seven in the evening, and said, "You look awful."
"Good to hear."
"Not like tired awful. Like sad awful. There's a difference."
"I'm fine."
"You're eating crisps for dinner."
"I ate earlier."
"What did you eat earlier."
"Food."
"Cole."
"Some pasta."
"Some pasta," he repeated, like he was writing it down. "Right. And before the pasta."
"Jordan, I genuinely don't need..."
"More crisps, yeah, that's what I thought." He took the bag from me, which I let him do because fighting Jordan over a bag of crisps at seven in the evening felt like a new low even for this week, and sat down at my counter. "When did you last leave the house for something that wasn't work."
I thought about it.
"I drove Cierra to the airport."
"That was three days ago."
"What do you want me to say, I've been... busy."
"You've been marinating," he said. "There's a difference. Busy people leave their houses. You're just sitting in here thinking about things."
"I'm giving her space."
"Her as in Vivienne? I know you are. How's that going?"
Badly, was the honest answer. It was going badly in a very quiet, undramatic way that didn't have anything to grab onto. No crisis. No obvious wrong move. Just this low-level awful feeling of having done the right thing and having it feel exactly like doing the wrong thing every single morning when I woke up.
"She's going to come around," Jordan said, after I didn't answer. "She's not the kind of person who throws away something real because it got complicated."
"You don't know that."
"I know her type. I've watched her argue procurement terminology for twenty minutes and still make time to ask Shola how her weekend was on the way out. She's not someone who gives up on things easily."
"She's also someone who spent eight months convinced I was a type rather than a person."
"And then she spent three months deciding she was wrong about that." He shrugged. "She'll get there again."
"Jordan."
"What?"
I put the crisps down and looked at the counter for a second. I'd been carrying this around in my chest for long enough that saying it out loud had started to feel less like a confession and more like just admitting something that was already plainly true.
"I think I'm in love with her."
Jordan said nothing for a moment.
"I mean I know how that sounds, it's been a few months, but it's not just the obvious stuff. It's the way she argues. The way she goes completely quiet when she's figured something out. The way she laughed at the meatloaf story, she laughed so hard she nearly fell off a stool…"
"Cole."
"What."
"Saying ‘you think’ is almost laughable."
I stopped.
"I've known for weeks bro," he said, completely calm, picking up the crisp bag and looking into it like the most interesting thing in the room was what was left at the bottom. "Why do you think I've been putting up with all of this."
"All of what?"
"The Sunday morning interrogations. The party where I counted conversations. The brunch with Marcus where I had to listen to a full debrief of the elevator incident from both of you separately without telling either of you I'd heard the other one's version." He looked up. "You think I do all of that for just anyone?"
I genuinely did not have a response to that.
"So what do I do," I said.
"Tell her. Probably. At some point. When she's ready to hear it." He handed the crisp bag back. "In the meantime, stop fucking marinating. Go outside. Text her something that isn't about bloody inventory or whatever twisted work stuff you guys talk about."
He left an hour later, back to something he'd cancelled to come over here and wouldn't admit to, and I stood in my kitchen for a while after the door closed doing absolutely nothing useful.
I picked up my phone.
There was a gas station three blocks from my building, the one I'd driven past a hundred times, and their coffee machine had a sign on it this week that said OUT OF ORDER in handwriting that looked deeply resigned about the whole situation. I'd photographed it on the way back from the office yesterday without really deciding to.
I sent it to Vivienne with no caption.
She opened it in under a minute, and sent back a laughing emoji. Just that. One emoji.
I stared at it for an amount of time I'm choosing not to quantify but Jordan would absolutely use against me if he knew.
I started typing a response.
The sign's been there for three days and nobody's done anything about it which honestly feels like a metaphor for something...
Deleted it.
Remember when you said the sign at the other one was older than you? This one looks like it's been through a divorce.
Deleted it.
I've been thinking about you.
Deleted that one faster than the others.
I miss you.
Stared at it, deleted it.
Put the phone face down on the counter.
Picked it back up.
The laughing emoji was still there. Just the one.