Chapter 65 The world does not revolve around you
Chapter 65 The world does not revolve around you
Elise hangs up before I can finish the sentence, which is exactly the kind of thing she does when she has decided the conversation has reached its natural and slightly embarrassing conclusion and further discussion would only make it worse.
I put the phone down.
I sit on the edge of the bed for a moment longer.
He terrifies me.
I said that out loud.
To another human being.
With my actual voice.
I get up.
I decide that what I need, immediately, is ice water from the machine down the hall, because Elise's comment about dehydration has lodged itself somewhere uncomfortable and I am not going to be able to sleep until I address it, and also because leaving the room feels like the only available action that will make the last twenty minutes of conversation stop replaying itself in my head.
I grab my key card.
I step into the hallway.
\---
He is standing by the ice machine.
At eleven fifty at night, in a Paris hotel corridor, after a phone call in which I just confessed to my best friend that a specific man terrifies me in a way I cannot categorise, that man is standing six feet away from me holding an ice bucket with the unbothered posture of someone who has never once in his life been somewhere he was not supposed to be.
He looks up.
He sees me.
Something happens on his face that I have learned, over the course of several weeks and several accidental meetings, to recognise as the specific expression he makes when he has confirmed something he already suspected.
"Ms. Calloway." he says.
I look at him.
I look at the ice machine.
I look at my own hands, empty, because I left the room without actually bringing a cup or a bottle or any container capable of holding ice, which means I am standing in a hotel corridor at eleven twenty at night with no actual reason to be near an ice machine other than the fact that I said I needed water and apparently did not think the plan through beyond that.
"Daniel?" I call out.
He is still looking at my empty hands.
I am still looking at them too, which is the most embarrassing part of this entire situation, that I am standing in a hotel corridor at eleven twenty at night having a silent conversation with my own palms about why they did not think to bring a cup.
"I forgot the cup." I say.
"I gathered." he says.
"I was going to get ice."
"Without a cup?."
"The plan had some gaps." I shut my eyes painfully. "I was working through them."
He looks at me the way he looks at things he finds either mildly interesting or mildly exasperating and has not yet decided which, and I have spent enough time in proximity to this man to know that both expressions look identical on his face and the context right now is a hotel corridor at eleven twenty at night with both of us standing next to an ice machine and me without a cup.
He holds out the ice bucket.
"Use this." he says.
"I don't need your help"
"You clearly came out here for something." he says. "Use the bucket."
I take the ice bucket.
I press the button on the machine.
Ice comes out.
I stand there holding an ice bucket full of ice that I have no vessel to transfer it to and no plan for what happens next and the awareness that I am doing all of this six feet away from the man I just spent eight and a half minutes talking about on the phone to my best friend, which Elise would find cosmically hilarious and which I am choosing not to find anything at all.
I hold the bucket back out to him.
He takes it.
"Thank you." I say.
"You're welcome." he says.
And I should go back to my room.
That is the correct next move.
Key card. Handle. Door. Room. The white duvet and the ceiling and tomorrow's forty one hours of collaborative architecture.
That is what I should do.
"Why did you put them in my group?" I say.
He looks at me with surprise shining in his eyes.
Daniel Ashford does not do surprise, or if he does he has constructed something so thoroughly over it that it functions identically to the absence of surprise and the practical result is the same.
"The judging panel makes group decisions collectively." he says. "It is not a unilateral process."
"That is not an answer." I say.
"It is the accurate one."
"You keep doing that." I say. "You keep choosing accurate over helpful and then standing there looking at me like I should find it sufficient."
"You remember that conversation." he says.
"I remember most things." I say. "Why did you put Callum Weston and Nadia Voss in my group? If you want to come after me for the Rolls Royce, or for the hospital, or for whatever reason you have decided I have made your life difficult, then come out and say it. To my face. In plain words."
"Do not put me in a room with two people who have spent the better part of a year making my life uncomfortable and call it a deliberate decision about composition!."
The corridor is very quiet.
The ice machine behind me makes a small settling sound and then goes silent.
Daniel is looking at me with that expression, the one I cannot read, the one that has no name in the inventory I have been building of his face since the hospital waiting room, and his ice bucket is in his hand and the hallway light is doing something unflattering to both of us and I have just accused a judge of deliberate targeting in a corridor at eleven twenty at night and I am standing behind it with both feet.
"Ms. Calloway." he says.
"Mr. Ashford." I say curtly.
"Nadia Voss is no longer in your group." he says.
It's the voice he uses when he is stating a fact and finds the need to state it mildly inconvenient.
"She was removed this following an incident that you were present for and are therefore aware of. Your group currently consists of you, Callum Weston, and Roe, who by your own account, you have an existing relationship with and who by the panel's assessment brings a complementary skill set to yours."
"That is not ..."
"Stop." he says.