COLD TERMS

EPISODE SIX OPPOSITE ENDS

The dining table was the problem.

It was a beautiful table — Aria would give it that. Dark walnut, long enough to seat twelve, polished to the kind of shine that suggested it had never once been used for anything as undignified as actually eating. She stood in the doorway of the dining room on her first proper evening and looked at it, and then she looked at the two place settings that someone on Damian’s household staff had arranged — one at each end, separated by approximately eight feet of gleaming wood.

Eight feet. She counted.

This is going to be a very long dinner.

Damian was already seated at his end. He had changed out of his suit — she had not expected that, somehow, as if she’d assumed he slept in it — and was wearing a dark grey shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He had a glass of water and his phone face-up on the table. He set it face-down the moment she walked in.

“Good,” he said. “Sit anywhere you’d like.”

She looked at the two place settings eight feet apart. “Anywhere?”

Something moved in his expression. “The staff arranged it. I’ll have them reset tomorrow.”

She sat at her end. He sat at his end. A member of staff brought out two plates of something that smelled extraordinary and then quietly vanished, which Aria appreciated because she did not want an audience for whatever this was.

The silence was immediate and total. Not the comfortable silence of people who’d run out of things to say — the loud silence of two people who hadn’t yet found anything to say and were both too composed to admit it.

Aria picked up her fork. The food was excellent. She ate three bites and became very aware that the sound of her cutlery was the only sound in the room.

She tried starting twice. The first time she opened her mouth she closed it again because what she’d been about to say was “nice table” and that was not a sentence she was willing to be responsible for.

The second time she looked up and found him already watching her.

“Do you eat here every night?” she asked.

He considered the question. “Usually at my desk.”

“At your desk.” “It’s efficient.”

She looked at the table. At the two place settings eight feet apart. At the chandelier overhead that was almost certainly worth more than her old apartment’s entire contents.

“This is not efficient,” she said.

He looked at the table too. “No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”

Another silence. But shorter this time. Less like a wall and more like a door that was not yet open but was at least a door.

“Where did you eat?” he asked. “In your apartment.”

She thought about her kitchen counter. The microwave clock. The noodles gone cold while she stared at the eviction notice. “Standing up, mostly,” she said. “Or on the sofa. Depends on whether I’d done something bad enough to deserve sitting at the table.”

He looked at her. “That’s a system.”

“It worked.” She picked up her fork again. “Did you always eat at your desk?”

A pause. “No. Not always.” He did not elaborate. She did not push. The space between his words was where the actual information lived — she was already beginning to understand that.

By the time the plates were cleared she had learned three things about him.

One: he had opinions about architecture that were more specific and more interesting than she would have expected from a man whose primary relationship with buildings was buying them.

Two: he was currently reading a history of post-war European reconstruction. He’d mentioned it only because she’d asked what was on his phone and he’d answered before apparently deciding whether he wanted to.

Three: he asked real follow-up questions. Not the polite kind that meant someone was waiting for their turn. The kind that meant he’d actually processed what she said and found something in it worth examining.

It was, she thought, walking back to her room afterward, the most dangerous thing about him. Not the money. Not the composure. The fact that he listened like it mattered.

She closed her suite door and stood in the dark. Gerald sat on the windowsill. The lamp glowed warm on the nightstand.

“Twelve months,” she told Gerald. “That’s all.”

Gerald said nothing. She went to bed and lay in the too-quiet dark, thinking about the dining table and the eight feet and the fact that tomorrow it would be reset and she didn’t know yet what closer would feel like.

She told herself it didn’t matter. She almost believed it.