For the first time since I had met him, the most controlled man in Manhattan looked unsure of what to say.
“I didn’t understand it then.”
“And now?”
His gaze shifted toward Mia.
Then back to me.
“Now,” he said quietly, “I’m beginning to wonder if he understood me better than I understood myself.”
—
The next several weeks should have returned everything to normal.
They didn’t.
At work, Adrian remained Adrian.
He questioned budgets.
Rejected lazy thinking.
Returned decks with comments so precise they sometimes felt surgical.
But occasionally, something unfamiliar appeared between us.
He asked whether Mia had enjoyed the photograph.
She had.
She had asked thirteen questions about why her father had been painting a wall with “Mommy’s scary boss.”
Adrian had objected to the adjective *scary.*
Mia had promised to reconsider it.
Then one Thursday, Rachel stopped me after a meeting.
“Mr. Kane asked whether your department would be interested in participating in the foundation’s Saturday family design workshop.”
I stared at her.
“He asked the department?”
Rachel’s mouth twitched.
“Technically.”
The workshop was held in a renovated community center in Brooklyn.
Our creative team helped children design fictional neighborhood businesses—bakeries, bookstores, pet shops, toy stores—and create signs and logos.
I brought Mia.
Adrian arrived halfway through the morning in jeans and a navy sweater.
Thirty children immediately covered him in questions.
He handled it surprisingly well.
Then Mia marched up and gave him an apron.
“You need this.”
“I don’t.”
“You do if you’re painting.”
“I’m not painting.”
Ten minutes later, he was painting.
I stood across the room, watching him help an eight-year-old carefully outline a rocket ship on a cardboard sign.
Something strange moved through my chest.
My colleague Priya appeared beside me.
“Stop.”
I kept looking straight ahead.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re doing several things with your face.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Priya had known me long enough to be dangerous.
She followed my gaze.
“Interesting.”
“It isn’t.”
“Julia.”
There it was.
My name, spoken in the tone friends used immediately before making your life more complicated.
