Research

Rossi's smelled like garlic bread and candle wax, and Everly felt distinctly out of place in her nicest jeans compared to the effortless way Nathaniel wore his blazer, like fine dining was just another Tuesday for him. He'd texted her that morning, no preamble, just *seven o'clock, wear something comfortable, this one's not for an audience.*

She'd told herself the flutter in her stomach reading that text was about the free meal.

"You've really never been here?" Nathaniel asked, sliding into the booth across from her. "This is a crime. Best gnocchi in the city."

"I don't exactly have a gnocchi budget, Nathaniel."

Something flickered across his face, there and gone, and he reached for the menu without comment. "Tonight's on me. Actually on me, not the fake-relationship expense account."

"Careful. Keep being generous and I'll start thinking you like me."

"Would that be so terrible?" he asked, and though his tone stayed light, his eyes didn't quite match it.

Everly busied herself with the menu, grateful for the excuse to look away. "Let's stick to research. If Priya's really digging, we need this to hold up under interrogation."

"Right. Research." He cleared his throat, some of the ease returning to his posture. "First date story. We came here, obviously, since we're actually here now. What did I order?"

"The gnocchi, since apparently that's non-negotiable."

"Good instinct. What about you?"

"Something I can't pronounce that turns out to be delicious."

He laughed, and the waiter arrived to take their actual order, which turned into its own small negotiation, Nathaniel insisting she try the burrata to start, Everly protesting that appetizers weren't part of any research budget, until he simply ordered it anyway and told her to bill her complaints to management. Once the waiter had gone, they spent the next twenty minutes building their fictional history over the real food in front of them, half of what they invented barely feeling invented at all.

He told her he'd noticed her the first week she moved in, when she'd argued with the moving company for forty-five minutes over a scratched dresser and won. She told him about the time she'd locked herself out in the rain and he'd let her wait in his hallway, an actual memory neither of them remembered to fold into the fake timeline because it had really happened, eight months before either of them thought this arrangement would exist. They argued cheerfully over which detail sounded more believable as a proposal story, in case anyone ever asked that far ahead, and for a while the whole exercise felt less like damage control and more like two people simply enjoying each other's company over good pasta.

"So the truth is," Nathaniel said, twirling gnocchi around his fork, "half our real history already sounds like a rom-com. We barely have to lie."

"Don't get used to it. The lying's the whole point."

"Is it, though?" He set his fork down, something in his expression shifting, quieter and more direct. "I keep thinking about the car ride home last night. About this being business. And I get it, that's how it started. But last night didn't feel like business to me."

Everly's fork paused halfway to her mouth. "Nathaniel."

"I'm not trying to make this weird," he said quickly, though the flush climbing his neck suggested otherwise. "I just don't want to sit here pretending I don't enjoy your company. That part isn't fake. Whatever else is."

She set her fork down slowly, buying herself time she didn't need, because she'd been thinking the same thing since the car ride and hadn't let herself say it out loud.

"I enjoy your company too," she admitted. "That doesn't change the rules, though."

"I know."

"A month, Nathaniel. Then this ends. We both agreed to that."

"I know," he said again, softer this time, and something in the resignation of it made her chest ache more than she wanted to admit. He picked his fork back up, some of the weight easing out of the moment as he steered them back toward safer territory, favorite childhood memories, the worst vacation either of them had ever taken, small ordinary things that had nothing to do with contracts or cover stories, and by the time the check came, Everly had almost managed to forget there was a clock running on any of it.

Nathaniel walked her to her door afterward, both of them lingering in the hallway between their apartments, close enough she could smell his cologne, warm cedar, already tangled up in too many good feelings for her comfort.

"Thank you," he said. "For tonight. Research or not."

"You're the one who paid."

"That's not what I meant." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the touch so light and unnecessary for any performance that her breath caught. "Goodnight, Everly."

"Goodnight," she managed, and watched him disappear into his apartment before she let herself exhale, standing alone in the hallway a moment longer than she needed to, replaying the whole evening like she was trying to catalogue exactly where the line between research and something real had quietly moved without her permission.

Her phone buzzed the second she was inside, and she assumed it was him, some teasing follow-up about gnocchi or research. Instead, the screen showed an unknown number, and a message that made her blood run cold.

*I know it's fake. I saw the whole thing from the window Saturday night. You'd better tell Nathaniel the truth before I do it for you. — P*

Everly stared at the screen, her heart hammering, the warmth from dinner curdling into something sharp and panicked in her stomach. She read it three times, as if it might rearrange itself into something less catastrophic, her mind racing through every detail Priya could have seen from that upstairs window, the missing photos, the hesitation over dates, the small unrehearsed things that had never been part of any script.

A second message landed before she could decide what to do.

*I'll be at your building tomorrow morning. We should talk. Just the two of us.*

Everly sank onto her kitchen floor, phone clutched in both hands. Through the wall she could hear the faint sound of Nathaniel's television, oblivious to the storm that had just landed in her inbox. She thought about the rules she'd set that first night, no blurring the lines, and thought about the way his hand had felt tucking her hair back, gentle and unrehearsed, entirely outside the terms of any deal she'd agreed to.

She typed a reply with shaking hands.

*Fine. Tomorrow. Alone.*

Then she sent one more message, this one to Nathaniel, three words heavier than anything she'd said to him all night.

*We need to talk.*

The reply came back almost instantly, and it was not what she expected.

*I was about to send you the same thing. Something's happened on my end too.*