"You," Ethan said, appearing at her desk the next day with his jacket already half on, "are taking an actual lunch today. Not a sad desk lunch. A real one, with a table and everything."
Ava glanced up from her screen, still a little tired around the eyes from yesterday. "I have three things to finish."
"They'll still be there in an hour." He held out her cardigan, which she was fairly sure he'd taken off the back of her chair without asking. "Come on. You earned it yesterday. Let me buy you a sandwich you'll actually rate above a six."
She laughed, surprising herself with how easy it came, and took the cardigan from him. "Fine. One hour."
"That's the spirit."
Outside, the air was warm and a little sticky, the kind of early-afternoon heat that made the sidewalk shimmer faintly near the curb. Ethan walked with his hands in his pockets, and his jacket slung over one shoulder, matching his pace to hers without seeming to think about it.
"You know what I like about you," he said, dodging a woman with a stroller without breaking stride, "is that you actually looked tired just now. Most people around here fake being fine so hard it's exhausting to watch."
"I am fine."
"You're fine and tired. Two things can be true." He glanced sideways at her, something easy and warm in his expression. "It's a good look on you, for what it's worth. The tired-but-fine thing."
"That's a strange compliment."
"I have a lot of those." He held the café door open for her, gesturing her through with a small, exaggerated bow that made her roll her eyes and laugh at the same time.
The café around the corner from Blackwood was small and a little too warm, sunlight pooling across the wooden tables, the smell of fresh bread thick in the air. Ava slid into the seat across from Ethan and felt her shoulders drop for the first time all week, a slow loosening she hadn't realized she needed.
"So," Ethan said, unwrapping his sandwich with the focus of a man handling something important, "hotel management. Is that the actual dream, or is that just where you landed?"
Ava turned her water glass slowly on the table, watching the light catch in it. "It's the dream. I know that probably sounds boring."
"Doesn't sound boring to me."
"I used to watch my dad come home from work and talk about his day like it was the most interesting thing in the world. Guests, problems, the way one good decision could turn someone's whole trip around." She smiled, a little self-conscious, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I wanted that. I still want that. I want to run a hotel someday. My own hotel, eventually. Not just work in one."
"That's a real answer." Ethan leaned back in his chair, studying her with something warmer than his usual teasing. "Most people give me the fake version of that question. The version they think sounds impressive."
"What's your version?"
"Honestly? I don't know yet." He shrugged, easy about it in a way that made the admission feel light instead of heavy. "I like this job. I like the chaos of it. But I don't have some big five-year plan as you do."
"That's allowed too."
"Is it?" He grinned at her over his sandwich. "Feels like everyone at Blackwood has a five-year plan except me."
"Well, you helped me survive yesterday without one. So clearly it works out fine."
He laughed at that, head tipping back, and she found herself laughing along with him, easy and unguarded, the kind of laugh that came without her checking first whether it was allowed.
They talked for the rest of the hour about nothing important, and somehow it felt like the most important conversation Ava had had in weeks.
"Okay, but the roommate," she said, pointing her fork at him. "You can't just mention 'the incident' and move on. I need details."
"It's genuinely not a fun story."
"I don't care. Details."
Ethan sighed, dragging a hand down his face like the memory physically pained him. "Fine. Sophomore year. My roommate decided, at two in the morning, that he was going to 'test the fire alarm system.' Every single alarm. In the whole building. While the entire floor was asleep."
"No."
"We were outside in the parking lot until four a.m. In February." He shook his head slowly, like the injustice of it still hadn't fully worn off. "I have never trusted a man with a smoke detector since."
Ava laughed so hard she had to set her sandwich down; one hand pressed to her chest like she could hold the laugh in. "That's the worst story I've ever heard."
"It gets worse. He blamed it on me."
"He did not."
"He absolutely did. Told the RA it was my idea. I spent a week being the most hated person on the third floor for a crime I didn't commit." He shrugged, a small, rueful smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. "Character building, probably."
"Character building," she agreed, still grinning, wiping a stray tear of laughter from the corner of her eye.
"Your turn. Tell me something equally humiliating."
"I don't have anything that dramatic. My mother calls me three times a day. That's about the extent of my chaos."
"Three times a day?"
"Minimum. If I don't pick up by the third call, she assumes I've been kidnapped." Ava shook her head, fond exasperation warming her voice. "Yesterday she called during the whole Ambassador Reyes thing. I had to text her I am fine, I am working, please stop calling in the middle of the crisis."
"Did she stop?"
"She called one more time. To make sure I meant it."
Ethan laughed at that, a real laugh, warm and unguarded, and she found herself watching him for a second longer than she meant to, struck by how easily he let himself be delighted by small, ordinary things.
They kept going like that for most of the hour: his terrible college roommate, her mother's calling habits, a long, genuinely heated debate over whether the hotel's new pastry chef was a culinary genius or just very talented at making things look prettier than they tasted. None of it mattered. All of it felt good.
It was easy. That was what Ava kept noticing, underneath the conversation itself: how easy all of it was. No second-guessing. No wondering what a look meant, or replaying a sentence later to decide if it had carried more weight than it should have. Just two people who liked each other's company, sitting in the sun, eating sandwiches that weren't actually that good.
She was mid-laugh, one hand pressed lightly over her mouth, when she caught a familiar shape passing the café window.
Adrian.
He walked past on the sidewalk outside, phone to his ear, deep in some conversation that had nothing to do with either of them. For a second, just a second, his eyes flicked sideways through the glass and found her.
He didn't stop walking. He didn't even really slow down, just the smallest catch in his stride, barely there, gone almost before it happened.
His eyes held on her for a beat longer than they needed to.
Then he looked away, said something into the phone, and kept walking, disappearing past the edge of the window.
Ava's laugh faded into something quieter. She wasn't sure why. Nothing had happened. He'd just walked past, the way anyone might walk past a café window on a Tuesday afternoon.
"You good?" Ethan asked, following her gaze to the now-empty sidewalk.
"Yeah." She picked her water glass back up, turned it once more in her hand. "Yeah, I'm good."
She didn't know why her pulse had done that small, strange stumble. She didn't examine it too closely. She just let the moment pass, the way she'd been letting a lot of moments pass lately, and turned her attention back to Ethan, back to the easy, uncomplicated warmth of an ordinary lunch.
But some small, quiet part of her stayed by that window a moment longer than the rest of her did.
They walked back to Blackwood together, unhurried, the sun still warm overhead and the sidewalk crowded with the ordinary drift of people on their lunch hour. Ethan talked the whole way, something about a guest complaint from last week that had somehow ended with a free upgrade and a thank-you card, and Ava let his voice wash over her, nodding in the right places, laughing when the story called for it.
But some small part of her kept replaying the café window anyway. The catch in Adrian's stride. The half-second his eyes had held on her before he looked away. It meant nothing, probably. People noticed people through windows all the time. It didn't have to mean anything at all.
"You're doing the thing again," Ethan said, glancing over at her as they reached the east doors.
"What thing?"
"The going-quiet thing. You did it back at the café too."
"I'm just thinking about work."
"Sure, you are." He held the door for her, that same easy, teasing warmth in his voice, though something a little more careful sat behind his eyes now, as he'd noticed more than he was saying. "Well. Whatever it is, I hope it works itself out."
"There's nothing to work out."
"Okay," he said, in the tone of someone who didn't believe her but wasn't going to push. "Back to the grind, then."
She followed him back into the lobby, back into the noise and motion of the afternoon, and told herself, the way she'd been telling herself a lot lately, that it really was nothing.
She almost believed it.