Dating My Brother's Best Friend .

Chapter 12 :The Rooftop.

The quarterly company social was on the rooftop.

This was Vale & Associates tradition — every three months, end of day Friday, the entire company gathered on the rooftop terrace for what the official calendar called "team building" and what everyone else called "free food and a chance to talk to people from other floors."

I had heard about it. I had not experienced it.

Zara found me at my desk at 5:45 with an expression of great purpose.

"We're going," she said.

"I was going to finish—"

"You're not finishing anything," she said. "You're coming to the rooftop and you're having one drink and you're being social and you're going to stop working for two consecutive hours."

"That's very specific," I said.

"I've been paying attention to your habits," she said. "Come on."

The rooftop was extraordinary.

I had been in this building for five weeks and I had not known this existed. The entire top floor opened onto a terrace that wrapped around two sides of the building, strung with lights, furnished with tables and low seating, the city spreading out below in every direction like something staged specifically for this view.

By six the space was full. People from every department, drinks in hand, the particular energy of a Friday evening when work was officially over and the weekend was beginning.

Zara handed me a glass of something sparkling.

"Drink it slowly," she said. "Pace yourself. And try to look like you're having fun."

"I am having fun."

"You're scanning the terrace for Roman," she said. "That's not having fun. That's surveillance."

"I'm not—"

"He's near the east railing," she said. "Talking to Diane and two people from finance. He's been there for ten minutes. Now stop looking and talk to me."

I looked at her.

"You're a menace," I said.

"I'm observant," she said. "There's a difference."

I talked to people.

Claire from brand strategy. The analyst who sat near the window. Someone from digital whose name I immediately forgot but who was very enthusiastic about a campaign they were working on. I was good at this when I tried — talking to people, being present, making conversation that felt natural even when I was partly paying attention to where Roman was on the terrace and who he was talking to.

Not because I needed to perform the relationship. Because I wanted to know where he was the way you want to know where something important is even when you're not looking at it directly.

At 6:45 Kai appeared.

He found me near the west side talking to Zara about something I could not remember afterwards, and he joined us with a beer and the easy warmth that was just his default setting.

"Having fun?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Liar," he said, but he smiled when he said it. "You hate crowds."

"I don't hate crowds," I said. "I just prefer smaller gatherings."

"Like dinner with three people."

"Exactly like dinner with three people."

"We should do that," he said. "This week. You, me, Roman. Like old times except extremely not like old times at all."

Zara made a small sound that might have been a laugh.

I looked at my brother. "Are you messing with me?"

"Little bit," he said. "But I'm also serious. I want to have dinner with both of you. See how it actually is when we're all together and not performing anything."

"We're not performing—"

"Lina," he said gently. "I'm not stupid."

I looked at him.

He looked back with that expression — knowing and careful and still trusting even though he could see the edges of something I had not told him.

"Thursday," he said. "My place. I'll cook. You bring wine. Roman brings dessert because he's terrible at cooking and I'm not subjecting you to whatever he'd attempt."

"Okay," I said quietly.

"Okay," he said. He finished his beer. "I'm going to go talk to partnerships. See you later."

He left.

Zara looked at me.

"Don't," I said.

"I'm not saying anything," she said.

"You're thinking very loud things."

"That's different from saying them," she said. She finished her drink. "I'm getting another one. You want?"

"I'm fine," I said.

She left.

I stood alone near the west railing and looked out at the city and felt the particular overwhelm of an evening that was supposed to be simple and was turning into something else.

"You look like you're planning an escape."

I turned.

Roman was standing three feet away with his hands in his pockets and an expression that might have been amusement if Roman did something as straightforward as amusement.

"I'm not planning anything," I said. "I'm just standing."

"Convincingly," he said.

"Thank you," I said. "I've been practicing."

The corner of his mouth moved.

He came to stand beside me at the railing. Not too close. Professionally appropriate distance. The kind of distance that two people maintain when they are aware that the entire company is on the same rooftop and some of them are probably watching.

We looked at the city in silence for a moment.

"Kai invited us to dinner," I said.

"I know," he said. "He texted me ten minutes ago."

"Are you going?"

"Are you?"

"I asked first."

"Yes," he said. "I'm going. It's been three years of friendship. I'm not avoiding him because things are complicated."

"Things are not—" I stopped. Started again. "Okay. Things are a little complicated."

"A little," he said.

We were quiet.

Below us the city did its Friday evening thing. Traffic and lights and people heading towards wherever people go on Friday evenings when work is done. Up here the breeze was cool and the lights strung across the terrace made everything feel slightly removed from real life.

"This view," I said.

"It's why we took this building," he said. "Kai and I came to see the space before we signed the lease. We stood exactly here and looked at this and decided that if we were going to build something we wanted to build it somewhere that reminded us why."

"Why what?"

"Why it mattered," he said. "The work. The company. All of it. You can get lost in the day to day. The deadlines, the clients, the constant motion. This view reminds you that you're building something that exists in a real city with real people. That the work matters beyond the office."

I looked at him. "You should say things like that more often."

To who?"

"To everyone," I said. "The team. The company. People think you're just the business side. They don't know you think about it like this."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I don't know how to say it without it sounding—" he paused. "Soft. People expect me to be one thing. If I'm another thing it confuses the message."

"Or it makes you human," I said.

He looked at me then. That look. The direct one that lasted.

"Is that what you want?" he said quietly. "For me to be more human?"

"I want you to be yourself," I said. "Whatever that is."

The terrace around us was loud with conversation and music someone had started playing from a speaker near the east side. Up here at the west railing it felt quieter. More separate.

Roman looked at the city. Then back at me.

"Lina," he said.

"Yes?"

"This thing we're doing—"

"Don't," I said quickly.

He stopped.

We looked at each other in the string lights and the city glow and the particular kind of silence that happens when someone is about to say something true and the other person is not ready to hear it yet.

"Not here," I said quietly. "Not now. Not with everyone—"

"I know," he said. "You're right."

But he did not step back.

And I did not step away.

We just stood there at the railing with the city below us and the entire company behind us and something between us that was becoming impossible to ignore.

"Roman," I said. Very quietly.

"I know," he said again.

A voice called his name from across the terrace. Diane, waving, needing something.

He looked at me one more time.

Then he walked away.

I stayed at the railing and gripped the metal bar and told myself that I was fine and that nothing had happened and that almost-moments did not count.

Zara found me twenty minutes later.

"You okay?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

"You've been standing in the same spot for twenty minutes."

"I'm enjoying the view."

"Lina."

I looked at her.

She looked back with an expression that was too knowing and too kind at the same time.

"What almost happened?" she said.

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing happened."

"That's what I said," she said. "What almost happened."

I looked at the city.

"He was going to say something," I said. "About the arrangement. About what this is. And I stopped him because I'm not ready to hear it."

"Why not?"

"Because once he says it out loud it becomes real," I said. "And once it's real I have to decide what to do about it and I don't know what to do about it, Zara. I don't know."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Yes you do," she said gently. "You're just scared."

"I'm not—"

"You are," she said. "And that's okay. But you can't stop him from saying true things forever just because you're scared of what happens after."

I looked at her.

"When did you become wise?" I said.

"I've always been wise," she said. "You just never asked."

I left at eight.

The terrace was still full, the evening still going, but I was done. I said goodbye to Zara, waved at Claire, and took the lift down to the lobby with three other people who were also clearly finished with socialising.

Outside the building the city was warm and loud and I walked to the bus stop and sat down and opened my sketchbook.

I did not draw anything.

I just looked at the blank page and thought about a man who almost said something true on a rooftop and the fact that I stopped him because I was not ready.

The fact that I was not sure I would ever be ready.

The fact that ready or not, something was coming and I could feel it the way you feel weather changing.

My phone buzzed.

Roman: You left.

Me: It was getting late.

Roman: Are you okay?

Me: Yes.

A pause. Then:

Roman: I'm sorry.

Me: For what?

Roman: For almost saying something I shouldn't have said.

I stared at my phone.

Me: You didn't say it.

Roman: But I was going to.

Me: I know.

Roman: And you stopped me.

Me: Yes.

The three dots appeared and stayed for a long time.

Then:

Roman: Thank you.

Me: For what?

Roman: For knowing I wasn't ready either.

I looked at that message for a very long time.

Then I typed:

Me: See you Monday.

Roman: See you Monday.

I got home and sat on my kitchen floor and thought about the fact that Roman Vale had just thanked me for stopping him from saying something he wanted to say because he was not ready to say it.

That we were both not ready.

That not being ready together was somehow worse than not being ready alone.

I opened my sketchbook to the page from yesterday. The one where I had written this is not an arrangement anymore three times.

I picked up my pen.

And underneath those three lines I wrote one more:

And I have no idea what to do about it.