Off Limits

Chapter 6: The Pasta Place

The restaurant Damian chose for Tuesday was tucked into a quiet stretch of the West Village, small enough that the owner greeted him by name, dim and warm in a way that felt, Elena thought, sitting down across from him, considerably more intimate than a "no agenda, just food" dinner probably should.

"You weren't exaggerating about the pasta," she said, twenty minutes in, already on her second glass of wine and considerably more relaxed than she'd expected to be after the week she'd had. "This might be the best thing I've eaten since I moved here."

"I take my pasta recommendations seriously." Damian's eyes carried the same warm, unguarded amusement she'd noticed Thursday, and something in the low restaurant light made the silver at his temples catch soft and distracting. "How was the rest of your week? You said Friday nearly broke you."

"It's a lot," Elena admitted, surprising herself with how easily the honesty came, how little she felt the need to perform composure the way she did with almost everyone else in this new city. "I keep telling myself I earned this job, that I'm not actually an impostor who's about to be found out. Some days I believe it more than others."

"You're not an impostor." Damian said it simply, without performance, the particular directness that had already, in two dinners, become one of the things she found most disarming about him. "I've read your resume, Elena. Sophie sent it to me before our first dinner, insisted I actually look at it instead of just taking her word for how impressive you are. You didn't luck into that seat. You earned every part of it."

Something in Elena's chest went warm and unsteady at the words, considerably more warm and unsteady than professional encouragement from a friend's uncle should reasonably produce, and she found herself, not for the first time this evening, deliberately not examining exactly why his opinion of her competence mattered as much as it apparently did.

"Sophie sent you my resume," she said instead, latching onto the safer detail. "That's slightly alarming. What else has she told you about me?"

"That you keep a spreadsheet for making friends," Damian said, and laughed at her immediate, mortified groan. "Don't be embarrassed. I respect it. I have several spreadsheets myself, though mine are mostly for construction timelines rather than social integration."

"That's different. Yours are professionally necessary."

"Is a friend spreadsheet not professionally necessary for surviving a new city alone?" His eyes held hers, something warm and teasing and entirely too perceptive in them. "I think it's a perfectly reasonable strategy for someone who likes having a plan. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to feel in control of a situation that's mostly out of your hands."

"You're very understanding about my controlling tendencies for someone I've known five days."

"I have a few of my own," Damian said. "I recognize the type."

Their hands, reaching for the bread basket at the same moment, brushed briefly, and neither of them pulled away quite as fast as the accidental contact probably warranted — a beat too long, charged and unmistakable, before Elena finally withdrew her hand and reached instead for her wine glass, her pulse considerably louder in her own ears than the restaurant's quiet ambient noise should have allowed.

"So," she said, aiming for breezy and landing somewhere closer to visibly flustered, "tell me about the buildings. Sophie said you renovate them yourself, actually swing a hammer instead of just signing checks."

Damian let her steer the conversation somewhere safer, matching her shift with the same easy grace he'd shown at every charged moment so far, and told her about his first project — a condemned Brooklyn brownstone he'd bought with almost nothing and rebuilt with his own hands over eighteen exhausting, formative months — with a warmth and specificity that made Elena lean forward, genuinely rapt, the earlier tension settling into something that felt, dangerously, like the easiest conversation she'd had with anyone since she arrived in this city.

It was well past ten when they finally left, and Damian walked her the six blocks to the subway despite her insistence that she could manage alone, both of them talking easily the entire way, and it was only standing at the top of the subway stairs, saying goodnight, that the charged silence from the bread basket returned in full — Damian's eyes on hers, something unspoken and enormous passing between them in the space of a single held breath, before he stepped back first, clearing his throat, putting careful distance between them with visible effort.

"Get home safe," he said, his voice rougher than it had been all evening. "I'll see you soon, Elena."

"Soon," she echoed, and made herself walk down the subway stairs without looking back, though she felt his eyes on her the entire way down, and felt, riding the train home alone, considerably more shaken by an evening of "just food, no agenda" than any actual date she'd been on in longer than she could remember.