The Biker's Regret: The Enemy I Became.

The right call

(Reese)

I was up at five thirty.

Not because I had slept well. I hadn't. I had spent most of the night somewhere between awake and not, listening to the city outside the window and telling myself that what I was feeling was just the disruption of moving somewhere new and not anything else. By four in the morning I had stopped pretending and just lay there until it was a reasonable hour to get up.

I was in the office by seven fifteen.

The new location was everything I had needed it to be. Twelve minutes from the apartment, four floors up with a view of the street below and enough natural light coming through the front windows that the space felt open even when it was full of people. I had chosen this building for the same reason I had chosen the apartment. Efficiency. Proximity. The ability to move between the two without losing hours of my day to traffic.

I walked through the empty floor before anyone else arrived and stood at the window with my coffee and looked down at the street and felt the particular calm that came from being in a space that was entirely mine. No history here. No complications. Just the work and the people I had chosen to do it with and the collection that was going to be the biggest thing my brand had ever produced.

I needed this day to go well.

By nine the room was full. My creative director Simone had the boards up along the east wall, twelve panels showing the full collection from concept to finished piece. The color story ran from deep burgundy through to a bone white that had taken us three months to get exactly right. Beside her my head of marketing had the campaign materials laid out on the table, print, digital, press strategy, the whole picture.

The investors came in at nine thirty. Four of them, all people I had worked with before, all people who understood that when I brought them into a room it was because I had something worth their time.

I presented for forty minutes.

I had done this enough times that the nerves, if there were any, stayed somewhere I could not feel them. I knew this collection the way I knew everything I had built, completely and from every angle, because I had been inside it from the first sketch to the last fitting. I knew which pieces were going to lead the campaign and which ones were going to close the show. I knew the numbers and the timeline and the market positioning and I had answers ready before the questions finished being asked.

By the time I was done the room had the particular energy that meant things were going the right way. Simone was trying not to smile. Two of the investors were already leaning toward each other and talking in low voices which was always a good sign.

We wrapped at eleven fifteen.

I shook hands, answered the last three questions in the hallway on the way to the elevator and walked the final investor to the lobby myself because that was the kind of detail that mattered. By the time I came back upstairs the creative team had already started breaking down the boards and the energy in the room had shifted from formal to loose, the specific relief of people who had worked hard on something and watched it land the way it was supposed to.

"Good?" Simone said when I came back in.

"Good," I said.

She handed me a coffee I hadn't asked for and went back to what she was doing, which was exactly why I had hired her.

I stayed for another hour going through the follow up list with my marketing director, locking in the press dates and confirming the venue for the show. By the time I picked up my bag and headed for the elevator it was just past twelve thirty and I had the particular satisfaction of a morning that had gone exactly as planned.

The lobby was cool and quiet. The doorman nodded as I pushed through the front door.

I stopped on the pavement.

Noah was leaning against a motorcycle on the street directly outside my building.

Not on the pavement. On the street, one foot on the ground, his jacket on, his arms crossed, looking at the building entrance like he had been there long enough to get comfortable. He had not parked in any kind of legal spot. He was simply there the way he was simply everywhere I seemed to go now, present and unhurried and completely unbothered by the fact that he had no business being here.

He saw me the moment I came through the door.

I did not stop walking. I came down the two steps from the entrance and crossed the pavement toward him because stopping would have looked like something and I was not going to give him that.

"You followed me to work," I said.

"I was in the area," he said.

"You were not in the area. You don't know where my office is."

He looked at me without answering. Not confirming it, not denying it either, just looking at me with that expression that said he had said what he was going to say and was comfortable leaving it there.

"Noah."

"I was on my bike," he said. "I ride through this part of the city all the time."

It was a smooth lie. Delivered without any of the tells most people had when they were not telling the truth. No shift in his eyes, no change in his voice. If I hadn't known him as well as I did I might have believed it.

I knew him well enough.

"You followed me," I said again.

"You look like your morning went well," he said, which was not a denial and we both knew it.

I looked at him standing there against that bike in the middle of the street like the city had agreed to pause around him and I thought about how I had told Ethan this morning that I needed to keep a clear head.

"What do you want, Noah?"

He looked at me the way he had looked at me in the hallway yesterday morning. Direct and certain, like he had already decided something and was just waiting for me to catch up to it.

"Dinner," he said.

"No."

"Tomorrow then."

"Also no."

"Reese."

"I have a fiancé," I said. "I have a brand launch in three months and a full calendar between now and then. I don't have dinner."

He was quiet for a moment. He looked at me the way he always looked at me when he was deciding whether to push and I could see him making the calculation in real time.

"You worked all morning," he said. "You haven't eaten."

"That is none of your business."

He looked at me for a moment longer. "There's a place two blocks from here. Thirty minutes. That's all I'm asking."

I looked at him standing there against that bike and I thought about the presentation I had just nailed and the follow up calls I had waiting upstairs and the very clear decision I had made this morning about keeping my head straight.

"I have to get back," I said.

"Reese."

"I mean it, Noah. I have a fiancé and I have work and I need you to respect that." I stepped back from the bike. "Whatever you think is happening here, it isn't. I want you to leave me alone."

He did not move right away. He just looked at me the way he always looked at me, like he was reading something I had not said out loud and finding it more useful than anything I had.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "Just so you know."

I did not answer that. I turned and walked to my car in the lot beside the building. I got in, put my bag on the passenger seat and started the engine.

He was still standing beside his bike when I pulled out.

I did not look back at him when I drove away.

I looked straight ahead and told myself that was the right call.

It was the right call.