The Art of Almost

Chapter Three

The Art of Almost

They met at a coffee shop two blocks from neither of their offices, at Wren's insistence on them finding, “a neutral ground,” she had said, like they were negotiating a hostage situation instead of a business collaboration.

Adrian was the first to arrive. He always arrived first. It was a habit his father had drilled into him before he was ten: “a Verrall is never kept waiting, and he never makes others wait in return.”

Wren walked in eleven minutes late. Her hair was pulled back like she hadn't had time to think about its styling. She was wearing the kind of oversized coat that on anyone else would look careless and on her looked deliberate, and dropped into the seat across from him without preamble.

“You are late." He said, the minute she sat.

“Is that what you want to talk about or do you want to get straight to business and get out of here?" She replied, coldly.

Adrian sighed, placing his hands on the table before them.

“Suit yourself." He said.

"The truth being told, I have been up all night doing the math I don't want to be doing," she said. "So let us skip the part where we pretend we don't both need this deal."

"Fine by me." Adrian said as he slid his phone across the table, Camille's email open. "She wants a joint appearance on Thursday. A test, before Friday's decision."

Wren read it, her expression flattening into something unreadable. "A test? A test of what, exactly? Whether we can share a room without you insulting my entire company again? Or us making it to the front pages?"

"You threw the first real hit," Adrian said, mild. "I merely responded."

"You called my line loud."

"You called House of Verrall a museum, publicly. And if my memory serves me well, it has been on multiple occasions."

"Because it is one." She leaned back, arms crossed. "No offense, though."

"Immense offense, actually, but go on."

Something almost like the corner of a smile threatened at her mouth before she visibly stamped it out.

"Thursday isn't going to work for me," she said instead. "Even if we behave as she wants and I use that word generously, Camille is not stupid. She saw exactly what we are together. Us being ‘polite’ for one night isn't going to erase two years of throwing shades at each other and making it to the headlines. It simply isn't enough and even if she buys it, how do we make the world see our faces as being genuine?"

"No," Adrian agreed slowly. "It isn't going to."

Something in his tone made her look up.

"What? Why do you have that tone?"

"She needs to believe we are not a liability," he said, thinking it through even as he said it, each word arriving a half-second before he meant to say it out loud. "Professional harmony won't do that. Professional harmony reads as forced. Temporary. She will wait for it to crack."

"So what are you suggesting? That we just fake liking each other really, really convincingly?"

He looked at her for a long moment. Long enough that Wren's arms uncrossed slightly, like she felt the shift before he said it.

"Not liking each other," Adrian said. "Being together."

Wren went very still.

"I'm sorry, but what did you just say? she asked. "I don't think I heard that correctly."

"You clearly heard what I said because I don't remember me stuttering or speaking in a hushed tone."

"You want us to…" She lowered her voice, glancing at the barista, at the two students in the corner, at anyone who might be listening, as if the words themselves were dangerous. "Fake date? You and me?"

"If Camille believes we are involved like we are presenting," Adrian said, laying it out with the same clinical precision he'd use to walk a board through a quarterly report, "then the rivalry stops looking like a risk and starts looking like history.”

“Two people who clearly can't stay away from each other, however it started. No one questions the harmony of two people in love. They question the harmony of two rivals ordered to behave."

"That's insane."

"It's effective."

"It's insane and maybe effective, those aren't mutually exclusive…"

"Wren!" Her name in his mouth stopped her mid-sentence, which she would be furious about later.

"You have until Friday to save your investors' confidence. I have until Friday to save four generations of my family's work. I'm not enjoying this idea any more than you are. But I don't see a better one, and neither, I think, do you, or you would have offered it the minute I spoke, instead of just telling me mine was insane."

The coffee shop noise filled the silence between them. A milk steamer hissing, someone's laugh two tables over, entirely too normal a soundtrack for the way Wren's pulse had picked up.

"I need to think about all of it," she finally said. “It is too much of a deal for me to just jump right in.”

"But remember that we do not have the luxury of time. You have until tomorrow morning," Adrian said, standing, buttoning his jacket with the same unbothered precision he did everything.

"Camille's team will need lead time to prepare a statement for the public to consume, if we are going to be doing this at all."

He was almost at the door when she spoke again, quiet enough that he nearly missed it.

"If I may ask, why would you even suggest this to me?" she asked. "It is no news that you hate me."

Adrian paused, hand on the door, and looked back at her for a moment too long to be nothing.

"I don't hate you, Ms. Collins," he said. "I simply find you extremely inconvenient. There is a difference, I suppose."

He left before she could figure out which one of them that answer had actually been for.