CHAPTER 66: The Argument

POV: Selene Castellano

It started with the calendar.

Avalon’s phone on the kitchen counter showing a notification for a board dinner she hadn’t known about and hadn’t been asked about and was apparently expected to attend in four days.

She saw it while making coffee and didn't say anything immediately.

She made the coffee, drank half of it while thinking about whether this was worth saying something about.

Which, she eventually decided it was.

“There’s a board dinner on Thursday,” she said.

Avalon was reading something at the table. “Yes. Robert’s organizing it. New board member introduction, the Osei woman Thomas recommended.”

“I didn’t know about it.”

He looked up. “I mentioned it.”

“You didn’t.”

“I’m certain I did sometimes last week.”

“Avalon.” She set down the mug. “You didn’t mention it, I would remember if you did”

He had the expression of a man who was genuinely certain he had mentioned something and was now encountering the equally genuine certainty of someone who had not heard it. Both of them correct and committed to their version.

“It might have been in passing,” he said.

“In passing isn’t mentioning.”

“It’s approximately mentioning.”

“It’s not approximately mentioning. It’s thinking about mentioning while talking about something else.”

He set down whatever he was reading. “Is this actually about the dinner?”

“It’s about being consulted, being part of decisions that involve me rather than being informed of them afterward.”

“It’s a board dinner Selene not a treaty negotiation.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point.”

She looked at him.

This was the thing about Avalon that hadn’t changed and probably wouldn’t. He was decisive, fast and he  made choices and moved and the infrastructure of his life had been built around him moving quickly and alone and telling people what was happening rather than asking what they thought. He’d spent ten years running a company that way and one year of marriage hadn’t entirely rewired it.

She’d known that.

Knowing it didn’t make it not frustrating.

“The point,” she said carefully, “is that I have a life too. I have a work, I’m building too. Things I’m trying to do that require my time and my attention, then when you schedule something that involves me without checking whether I’m available—”

“Are you available Thursday?”

“That’s not—” She stopped. Then start again. “Yes, I’m available on Thursday but I might not have been and you didn’t ask.”

“But you are.”

“Avalon.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” he said. Which was what he said when he understood the words but was still deciding whether the feeling behind them was proportionate to the situation. She’d learned that too.

“Do you?” she said.

“You want to be consulted not informed.”

“Yes.”

“About board dinners.”

“About anything that involves me.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I’ve been doing this alone for a long time,” he said.

“I know.”

“Making decisions alone is—” He paused. “It’s a habit that runs deep.”

“I know that too.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

They sat with it.

The kitchen held the morning while their coffee was getting cold and the board dinner notification was still sitting on his phone and neither of them had moved significantly in the last five minutes.

“I’ll check with you first, before I confirm anything that involves us both.” He said

“Thank you.”

“I mean it, I am not just agreeing to stop the conversation.”

She looked at him. “I know the difference.”

He picked up his phone and looked at the notification before asking;

“Do you actually want to go?”

“To the dinner?”

“Yes.”

She thought about it honestly. “I want to meet Amara Osei, Thomas’s recommendation makes me cautious but the woman’s background is interesting.”

“Her work on corporate ethics is significant.”

“I know, I read her paper on governance frameworks last month.”

Avalon looked at her.

“Of course you did,” he said.

Something in his voice made her look up to see him looking at her the way he sometimes looked at her when she did something that reminded him she was her own person with her own interior life that existed entirely independently of him.

She never quite knew what to do with that look.

It always landed somewhere soft.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing.” He picked up his coffee. “You read academic papers on corporate governance.”

“I find them useful.”

“You find them useful,” he repeated quietly. Like he was adding it to something he kept somewhere.

She looked at him for a moment.

The argument had been real, the frustration had been real. He’d scheduled something without consulting her and she’d been right to say something and he’d heard it properly and agreed to change it and she reading governance papers were things that made up who she was.

She picked up her mug.

“The dinner,” she said. “I’ll go, but, you’re telling Thomas we’ll make our own assessment of Amara Osei regardless of his recommendation.”

“Already planned to.”

“Good.”

“Selene.”

She looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For not asking.”

“Okay,” she said.

She meant it.

He went back to his reading while she refilled her coffee then the kitchen settled back into its morning self.

Outside Maya was somewhere in Accra deciding whether to almost stop.

Inside a man was learning, slowly and genuinely, that partnership was a different thing entirely from management.

And a woman was watching him learn it and feeling something she could only call grateful. Not for the perfection of him but for him trying.