SOmeone Worth Knowing

Chapter One

Today is a good day.

The signed contract is open on my screen, my coffee is cold beside me, and I've read the email three times because the first two don't feel real. Signed. Countersigned. Deposit confirmed. The Harlow Day Spa on First Street is officially ours. Tight contract. Real budget. A client who trusts us enough to get out of the way. Eleven weeks working on that proposal. Ten weeks of site visits and sourcing materials, and three different budget revisions, because the client keeps shifting the scope and I keep making it work anyway. Every time they move the line, I move with it, and I never once let them see me sweat.

It's good work. I'm proud of it. I want to keep this feeling private for a little longer.

Pete has been hovering near my door for the last hour, pretending he needs something from the printer that sits six feet from my office. Melanie has already stopped by twice with papers that don't need to be hand-delivered. They both want to know.

When I finally turn my monitor toward the door, Pete's face does something he probably thinks looks professional.

It doesn't.

He pumps his fist at the ceiling. "Hell yes."

"Language," Melanie says

"Sorry. Heck yes." He looks back at me. "This is big, Alise. Seriously."

"I know."

By the time I walk out to my car, the light has shifted. That late afternoon fall light that makes everything look a little better than it really is. Three people have stopped by my office to say congratulations. I take it in, trying not to look cocky.

My heels hit the pavement in steady clicks. I feel taller. Not actually taller. I'm five-three on a good day, and the heels get me to maybe five-six. It's what you feel when something works. When the day goes exactly the way you needed it to, and you earn every bit of it. Today I am ten feet tall.

I drive home with the windows down. I love the feel of fresh air. October air, sharp and clean. I need to tell Pierce. I keep picturing walking through the door and Pierce looking up, just knowing. I don’t say anything; he can read it on my face. Knowing he sees me, not the version of me that has emails to answer and a schedule to manage. Just me.

Tell me everything, I want him to say. And mean it.

I pull into the driveway and sit with the engine off for a minute. The house looks the same as it always does. His car in its spot. The blinds half open. The lamp inside throwing that same warm light against the wall. Everything exactly where I left it. I check my reflection in the mirror, push a piece of hair back, and think about what I'll say.

Not rehearsing. Just planning.

The house smells like him and something he cooked, something warm still faint in the air. Pierce is on the couch. Hair still a little damp at the back from the shower. That gray t-shirt he refuses to throw away, the one with the small hole near the collar that I've mentioned exactly twice and let go, because some things aren't worth the fight. Even after seven years, he's the kind of beautiful that still catches me. Dark hair, sharp jaw, those hazel eyes that shift between green and gold depending on the room.

Right now they're on his phone.

I drop my bag a little louder than I need to. He glances up.

"Hey, babe."

"Hey." I smile. "Guess what?"

His thumb pauses on the screen. His eyes don't really leave it. "What?"

I cross the room and drop into his lap, straddling him easily. God, just looking at him should have been enough. The jawline, the way his shirt fit across his shoulders, even the way he smelled. It was almost unfair. I let myself settle into it. His weight. The feeling of being still.

"I closed it," I say.

"The spa?" His eyebrows lift.

"Signed today. Deposit came through."

"Nice." His hand presses lightly against my hip. "That's great, babe."

The words are right. His face isn't. His eyes drop back to the screen with the ease of someone returning to something they only half set down, and I sit there and wait. Three seconds. Maybe four. Leaving room for him to ask something. Anything. To lean into it the way I've been leaning toward this moment the entire drive home.

The phone lights up in his other hand.

"Alise, hop up," he says, shifting slightly. "I just ate."

I slide off his lap slower than I need to. My hand brushes across his shoulder on the way down. Part habit. Part something I can’t name. He doesn't react.

"Okay," I say, picking up the remote. "I'll find something."

The TV fills with options. I scroll past a movie I actually want to watch and keep going. He'd sit through it if I asked. He'd never say a word about it. But I'd feel it, that low hum of him being somewhere else even when he's right there, and I'd spend the whole two hours half watching the screen and half watching him not watch it. That's worse than just not picking it.

I land on a documentary. Napoleon. Neutral. Easy. It asks nothing of either of us.

"What about this?" I ask. "It's one of those inside look things, the people around him, not just the battles."

No answer.

"Pierce?"

"Yeah," he says. "Whatever you want." He never even looks up.

Whatever you want. Those three words. Like a door being left open so you can let yourself out.

I curl into him anyway. If I'm being honest, I'm not really trying to watch anything. I'm looking for something else. His attention. His focus. To feel wanted. Something that says I matter more than whatever is on that screen.

He lifts his arm so I can tuck in, like he always does. And that's it.

So now I'm sitting here watching a movie I don't care about, by myself.

I don't even notice when I reach for my book. It's just there, familiar, easier. Safer. I open it, but I'm not really reading. The words blur as my mind drifts to something louder. Somewhere where people look at each other like they mean it. Where conversations don't feel like interruptions. Where you don't have to wonder if someone wants you there.

I've had that.

Ben. Callie's dad.

I can see us in a booth that was too small for both of us, our knees pressed together under the table, not by accident. He was always finding ways to close the space between himself and whoever he loved. I'd teased him about it once, told him he was like a golden retriever always needing to be touching someone, and he'd laughed and said yeah, probably, and kept his knee against mine.

"You're staring at me again," he said, smiling

"I can't help it. You're just a lot."

"A lot good or a lot bad?"

"Depends on the day."

He leaned in, elbows on the table, and looked at me the way he always looked at me. Like, I was the most interesting thing in whatever room we happened to be in. His eyes didn't drift. He didn't check his phone. He didn't glance toward the door. He was just there. Completely there. With me.

"What kind of day is today?"

"Medium."

"Medium." He pressed a hand to his chest like I'd stabbed him. "I'm giving you my best, and it’s medium?"

"Well, good news for you, your medium is everyone else's great."

He reached across the table and laced his fingers through mine without checking to see if I wanted him to, because he already knew I did, and that certainty — that absolute confidence in being wanted — was one of the most intoxicating things about early Ben. He rubbed his thumb across my knuckle and smiled, and I felt, in the specific unrepeatable way you feel things at twenty-two, that I had found something most people spend their whole lives looking for.

The memory frays the way memories do.

Back on the couch. TV still going. Pierce still on his phone.[C1]

It glows again. He shifts slightly, and I feel him smile, that small quiet exhale of amusement he gets when he is holding a laugh. He doesn't share it. Doesn't look over. Just keeps scrolling.

Same room. Different silence.

I stand up slowly. Slow enough that he should notice. Slow enough that it should mean something.

Nothing. No glance. No question. Just the soft glow of his phone lighting up his face.

I walk down the hall without saying anything. If he wanted to come, he would.

In the bedroom, I crawl into bed and read for real this time. Or try to. The couple in the book is fighting. But even that feels louder than this. More real. More something.

A few minutes later, I hear him shift on the couch. The TV still on. No footsteps.

I stare at the page.

Eventually, I turn off the light. I lie there in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Listening. Waiting.

Nothing.

He's not coming.

I feel this. Quietly. Without drama. The knowing isn't hurtful anymore. It's more like a low-grade ache, the kind you notice most when everything else gets quiet.

I close my eyes. Think about the contract. The office. Pete's face. Eleven weeks of work and the particular satisfaction of something landing exactly the way you planned it. I hold onto that for a while.

That night I texted Laurel.

Alise: closed the Harlow deal today

Alise: signed sealed deposited

Laurel: WAIT

Laurel: the spa one??

Alise: eleven weeks

Laurel: ALISE

Laurel: that is a huge deal you need to be celebrating right now

Alise: I'm in bed reading

Laurel: why are you in bed reading

Laurel: where is Pierce

Alise: couch

Laurel: did you tell him

Alise: yes

Laurel: and

Alise: he said nice

Laurel: ...

Laurel: nice.

Alise: nice

Laurel: I cannot with this man

Alise: he was tired

Laurel: you worked eleven weeks on that proposal and he said NICE

Alise: Laur

Laurel: I'm just saying

Alise: I know what you're saying

Laurel: do you want me to drive up there

Alise: it's ten o'clock

Laurel: I have wine and no moral objections to a Tuesday night drive

Alise: I'm fine

Laurel: you're in bed reading on the night you closed the biggest deal of the year

Alise: I like reading

Laurel: Alise Marie

Alise: don't

Laurel: I'm just going to say one thing and then I'll drop it

Alise: you never say one thing

Laurel: you deserve someone who comes and finds you in the bedroom when you close a deal like this. not someone you have to go tell. someone who already knows something happened just by looking at your face.

Alise: ...

Laurel: okay I'm done

Laurel: I'm proud of you by the way. eleven weeks. you're incredible.

Alise: thank you

Laurel: get some sleep

Laurel: and next time you close something like this you call ME first so we can celebrate properly

Alise: deal

Laurel: Also nice. I cannot.

Alise: goodnight Laurel

Laurel: night babe. you're a whole thing.

The knock comes at ten forty-three.

I know it's her before I even check my phone. Nobody else knocks like that — three fast, two slow, like she's doing a little rhythm just to announce herself. I've known that knock for twenty-two years.

I open the door. She's standing on my porch in her nursing scrubs and a cardigan that has definitely seen better days, holding a bottle of wine and a container of leftover something from what smells like a real dinner.

"I was already in the car," she says.

"You texted me twenty minutes ago."

"I was already in the car when I texted you." She holds up the wine. "It's the good kind. Not the Tuesday kind."

I step back and let her in.

She drops her bag on the chair by the door, finds the wine opener in the second drawer without asking. I sit at the kitchen island and watch her and something in me puts itself down.

"Pierce asleep?" she asks.

"Couch."

She glances toward the living room, then back at me, and her expression says everything she doesn't say out loud. She pours two glasses and slides one across the island.

"So," she says. "Eleven weeks."

"Eleven weeks."

"The spa on First Street."

"Signed, sealed, deposited."

She holds up her glass. I hold up mine.

"To you," she says. "Who is an actual genius and deserves a better Tuesday night."

We drink.

"He said nice," she says. Not a question. She already knows.