Dating My Brother's Best Friend .

Chapter 13 :The Aftermath.

Monday morning arrived with the specific dread of someone who has to see a person they almost had a moment with on a rooftop and pretend that everything is completely normal.

I arrived at 8:52.

No coffee on my desk.

I noticed this immediately and told myself it meant nothing and that I was being ridiculous for noticing it at all.

Roman's office door was closed.

I sat down. Opened my laptop. Stared at my screen and tried to look like someone who was working and not someone who was thinking about a Friday evening and a railing and the exact quality of silence that had existed between two people who both stopped something from happening.

At 9:15 his door opened.

He came out with papers in his hand and walked to the printer without looking at my desk. Professional. Distant. The version of Roman Vale that everyone else in the building saw and that I had not seen directed at me in three weeks.

I opened my sketchbook and drew nothing.

At 10:30 I had a question about the Harmon account that required his input.

I knocked on his office door.

"Come in," he said.

I came in. He was at his desk, looking at his screen, and he glanced up briefly when I entered and then back at his work.

"The Harmon client wants to adjust the timeline," I said. "They need the final materials two weeks earlier. Is that possible?"

"Yes," he said. "If you can accelerate the refinements."

"I can," I said.

"Good," he said.

Silence.

I should have left. That was clearly the end of the conversation. But I stood there for one moment longer because something about the way he was not looking at me felt deliberate and wrong.

"Roman," I said.

"Yes?"

"Are we—" I stopped. Started again. "Is everything okay?"

He looked up then. Finally. A proper look, direct and tired and something else I could not quite name.

"Everything is fine," he said. "I'm just busy this morning."

"Okay," I said.

"Was there anything else?"

"No," I said.

I left.

I went back to my desk and stared at the Harmon file and felt the particular discomfort of someone who has just been professionally dismissed by someone who three days ago texted them about a green dress.

Zara found me at lunch.

I was eating alone at a table in the corner of the sixth floor canteen because eating alone felt safer than eating with people who might ask questions about things I did not know how to answer.

She sat down across from me without asking.

"Talk," she said.

"There's nothing to talk about," I said.

"You're eating lunch alone in a corner," she said. "That's your I'm avoiding something posture. I know this posture. I've seen this posture many times. Talk."

I put my fork down.

"He's being distant," I said.

"Roman?"

Yes, Roman. Who else would I be talking about?"

"Fair point," she said. "How distant?"

"Professional distant," I said. "Like we're just supervisor and intern and nothing else. Like Friday didn't happen."

"Friday when nothing happened?" Zara said.

"Yes," I said. "That Friday."

She looked at me for a moment.

"Lina," she said gently. "Did you consider that maybe he's being distant because Friday did almost happen and he's trying to handle it the only way he knows how?"

"By pretending I don't exist?"

"By giving you space," she said. "You stopped him from saying something. You made it very clear you weren't ready. So he's respecting that. He's stepping back."

I looked at my food.

"I don't want him to step back," I said quietly.

"Then you need to tell him that," she said.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because—" I stopped. I did not know why not. Or I did know and I did not want to say it out loud because saying it made it real.

"Because you're scared," Zara said. "Of what happens if you both stop pretending this is just an arrangement."

I looked at her.

"Yes," I said. "That."

She picked up her fork. "Then stay scared," she said. "Or stop being scared. But you can't have it both ways. You can't want him close and also keep pushing him away every time he gets close."

"That's extremely direct advice," I said.

"You needed extremely direct advice," she said. "I'm eating now. Think about what I said."

At 3pm Roman sent me an email.

Not a text. An email. Subject line: Harmon timeline adjustment.

Professional. Formal. The kind of email a supervisor sends to an intern when they need to communicate information without any additional context.

I read it twice.

Then I closed it and went back to work because what else was I supposed to do.

At 5:30 I was packing up my desk when he appeared.

Not at my desk. At the entrance to the floor. Standing there like he had been working up to this for hours and had finally decided to do it.

"Lina," he said.

I looked up.

"Can we talk?" he said. "Briefly."

"Okay," I said.

He gestured towards his office.

I followed him in. He closed the door. We stood on opposite sides of his desk like two people having a professional meeting except that nothing about this felt professional.

"Friday," he said.

"You don't have to—"

"I do," he said. "Because today has been—" he paused. "I've been distant. I know I have. And that's not fair to you."

"You were giving me space," I said. "Zara told me."

"Zara is very wise," he said.

"She is," I said. "But I don't want space."

He looked at me.

"You don't?" he said.

"No," I said. "I want—" I stopped. I did not know how to finish that sentence in a way that was true and also safe.

Roman watched me try and fail to find words.

Then he said: "I almost told you something on Friday. Something I've been thinking about for longer than I want to admit."

"I know," I said.

"And you stopped me."

"I know," I said again.

"And I'm grateful you did," he said. "Because I wasn't ready. I'm still not ready. But—" he paused. "I also can't keep pretending that this is just a professional arrangement. Because it's not. It hasn't been for weeks. And today — pretending that it is — it was the worst day I've had in this office in three years."

I looked at him across his very organised desk with the city behind him and the photograph of his mother on the shelf and the small plant that was somehow still alive.

"So what do we do?" I said quietly.

"I don't know," he said. "But I know that stepping back doesn't work. And pretending doesn't work. So maybe—"

"We stop pretending?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "We stop pretending."

"And then what?"

"I don't know," he said again. "I genuinely don't know. But it has to be better than this."

The office was very quiet.

Outside on the floor people were packing up, heading home, ending their Monday the way Mondays end.

In here it was just this conversation and what it meant.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?" he said.

"We stop pretending," I said. "Starting now."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Starting now," he said.

He did not drive me home.

I did not ask him to.

We both left the building separately — him first, me ten minutes later — because some things needed to be decided slowly and not rushed into just because a conversation had happened.

I took the bus home and sat with my sketchbook open on my lap and thought about what it meant that we had both just agreed to stop pretending without deciding what we were pretending to be instead.

My phone buzzed.

Roman: I meant what I said.

Me: Which part?

Roman: All of it.

Me: Okay.

Roman: But especially the part about today being the worst day.

Me: It was pretty bad for me too.

Roman: Good.

Me: Good?

Roman: If it was bad for both of us then at least we were suffering equally.

I smiled at my phone like an absolute fool.

Me: That's a strange thing to take comfort in.

Roman: I'm a strange person.

Me: You're not strange.

Roman: Then what am I?

I looked at that question for a long time.

Then I typed:

Me: You're Roman. That's enough.

The three dots appeared and stayed for a very long time.

Then:

Roman: Goodnight, Lina.

Me: Goodnight.

I got home and made dinner and ate it sitting on my kitchen floor because that was where I did my best thinking.

I thought about a Monday that had started terrible and ended with a conversation that changed the shape of everything.

I thought about what it meant to stop pretending when neither of us knew what we were pretending to be.

I thought about Kai's dinner on Thursday and how we were all going to sit in the same room and try to be normal when nothing about this was normal anymore.

I opened my sketchbook.

I drew the rooftop railing from Friday. The city behind it. The space between two people who almost said something.

And at the bottom of the page I wrote:

Week six. We stopped pretending. Now what?