The Weight of Waiting

Maya smoothed the brim of her hat, the wide straw one she'd bought specifically for this corporate retreat in Cabo. Too theatrical, maybe, but it shielded her face from the merciless Mexican sun, and from having to make eye contact with Richard.

He stood by the hotel pool, phone pressed to his ear, that ethernet cable still dangling from his laptop bag like some outdated talisman. Twenty years of wireless everything, and Richard refused to trust the cloud. Not with his work, not with his secrets, and certainly not with her.

Their affair had ended three years ago—she'd ended it—though nobody at the firm knew. Richard had been her mentor then, the married senior partner who'd taken a chance on a neurotic analyst from the wrong side of the tracks. He'd taught her to read balance sheets and boardrooms alike, how to smoke cigarettes without coughing, how to disappear into herself while men explained things she already understood. The things she'd let him take from her in exchange.

Now he was divorced. Now he was the one being pushed out, a merger making his position redundant. Now he was looking at her like he had that night in Chicago, after the awards ceremony, when they'd both had too much champagne and he'd whispered that she was the only person who really saw him.

He ended his call and walked toward her, the cable swaying against his leg like a pendulum counting down something neither could name.

"They're offering me the VP role in London," he said, not bothering with hello. "If I want it."

"Congratulations."

"I told them I'd need to think about it." He stepped closer, into the shadow of her hat. "The question is whether there's anything here worth staying for."

Maya's palm went cold, a Pavlovian response she thought she'd outgrown. She should tell him to go. Should say she was happy now, that she'd rebuilt herself on her own terms, that she didn't need or want his messy, complicated love anymore. All true.

What she didn't say: that she still dreamed of his hands on her, that she'd compared every man since to his impossible standard, that she was lonelier than anyone knew.

"London's beautiful," she said instead.

Richard reached out, his fingers brushing her wrist where her pulse jumped traitorously. "I didn't say I was going alone."

Beneath them, the pool pump hummed, a heartbeat they both could feel.