CHAPTER TWENTY THREE **ALEXANDER**

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

**ALEXANDER**

Sunday arrived and I spent an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to bring.

Not flowers, she'd find that performative. Not wine, too formal for her apartment on a Sunday. I settled on good coffee beans from the place near Pike Place she'd mentioned once in passing, because paying attention was the only currency she'd accept from me that actually meant anything.

She opened the door in a dark green dress, simple, no effort performed, which meant she'd thought about it. Her apartment smelled like garlic and something warm.

"You remembered the roaster," she said, looking at the bag.

"You mentioned it once."

"Three weeks ago."

"I was listening."

She stepped back to let me in and I followed her to the kitchen where something was simmering and the counter had the particular organized chaos of someone who actually cooked rather than someone performing cooking.

"Sit," she said. "It's twenty minutes out."

I sat at the counter and watched her work. She moved efficiently, no wasted motion, tasting and adjusting without consulting anything written down. This was the version of her that existed when nobody was evaluating her and I was aware of the specific privilege of being allowed to see it.

"How's Catherine's sentencing looking?" I asked.

"March fifteenth. Rebecca thinks four to six years given the cooperation variable." She stirred without looking up. "I've stopped tracking it closely. The verdict was enough."

"Good."

"Don't say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're relieved I'm letting go of it. You didn't earn an opinion on my process."

I paused. "Fair."

She glanced back. "Not a criticism. Just a boundary."

"Noted." I meant it. "Tell me about the London trip."

That redirected her naturally. She talked through the exhibition logistics while she finished cooking, the venue complications, the artist she was most excited to feature, a young sculptor she'd found eighteen months ago whose work she described with the particular energy she only deployed for things she genuinely loved.

She set plates down and came around the counter to sit beside me rather than across. Close enough that her shoulder was occasionally against mine as she reached for things. She didn't acknowledge it and neither did I.

The food was extraordinary. Simple and precise, exactly like her.

"You can cook," I said.

"I learned in the first year. Turned out I liked it." She picked up her fork. "I didn't cook in the other timeline. I had staff. I ate what was put in front of me at appropriate times."

"I didn't know that version of you cooked."

"That version of me didn't." She looked at her plate. "She didn't do a lot of things she wanted to."

We ate in comfortable quiet for a while. Outside the February dark had settled over Seattle, rain against the windows, warm light inside.

"My mother wants to meet you," I said. "She called again Thursday."

"You mentioned that before."

"She's more persistent than I gave her credit for."

Sophia was quiet for a moment. "What do you tell her about us?"

"That it's new and it's real and she should be patient."

"Is that accurate?"

"Completely." I looked at her sideways. "Is that how you'd describe it?"

She considered. "New, real, and requiring patience. Yes." She reached for her glass. "I'll meet her. When I'm ready. Don't set anything up without asking first."

"I wouldn't."

"You would have in another version."

"I know. This version asks first."

She accepted that and we moved on, clean and simple. That was what I appreciated most about how we were operating. Things got said and then they were done. No residue.

After dinner she left the dishes and we moved to the sofa, the city dark beyond her windows, the only light the lamps she'd left on low. She sat close, her feet curled underneath her, turned slightly toward me.

"I looked up your Tokyo hotel," she said.

"Which one?"

"The Shimizu property. The one anchoring the exhibition partnership." She tilted her head. "It's beautiful work. The architecture. The integration with the neighborhood."

"That was a five year project."

"It shows." She looked at me. "You're good at building things. You just spent too long building the wrong ones."

"Yes."

She reached out and straightened the collar of my shirt, a small unnecessary adjustment, her fingers briefly at my neck. I stayed still.

"I keep waiting for it to feel strange," she said quietly. "Being here with you like this."

"Does it?"

"No." She sounded almost puzzled by it. "That's the strange part."

I turned toward her on the sofa, one arm resting on the back behind her. Not closing the distance, just orienting toward her the way I always did now regardless of conscious decision.

"Sophia."

"Mm."

"I'm not going to tell you I love you and expect it to land well."

She looked up at that. Alert.

"I'm also not going to pretend I don't know what this is for me," I said. "I just want you to know I'm aware of the gap between where I am and where you are and I'm not asking you to close it on my timeline."

She studied my face for a long moment. Reading it the way she read everything, carefully and without rushing to conclusion.

"That's the most honest thing you've said to me," she said.

"I'm practicing."

She leaned forward and kissed me, more certain than the times before, one hand against my chest. I brought my hand to her waist and she shifted closer without breaking it, and for a long unhurried moment there was nothing but that.

When she pulled back she stayed close, her head tilting to rest briefly against my shoulder. I didn't move, didn't make anything of it, just stayed exactly as I was.

"I'm getting there," she said quietly.

"I know."

"Don't rush me."

"I'm not going anywhere."

She stayed like that for a while. Rain against the windows. The city below carrying on without us. My hand at her waist, her breathing evening out, both of us in the particular stillness of two people who have stopped performing and started simply being.

Eventually she straightened. Looked at me with clear eyes.

"Stay for another hour," she said.

Not the whole night. One hour. Her terms, her pace, exactly as she'd established from the beginning.

"Yes," I said simply.

She got up to make coffee and I sat in her apartment in the Sunday evening dark feeling something settle in my chest that I recognized finally for what it was.

No hope not this time. Not strategy. Not the complicated pull of someone unattainable.

Just the quiet certainty of being exactly where I was supposed to be. I could work with that.