He Never Expected to Fall for the Woman He Bet On
PART 1
The bet was Marcus’s idea.
This was important because most bad ideas in Reed Callahan’s life could be traced to Marcus, who had the specific gift of making terrible suggestions sound reasonable at eleven PM over a second drink. Marcus was Reed’s closest friend from law school, his occasional racquetball opponent, and the person who had, on the occasion of Reed’s most recent ended relationship, declared solemnly that the problem was simple: Reed needed to stop looking.
“You look for something,” Marcus had said, “and you find something that sort of fits, and then you spend eighteen months trying to make it fit perfectly, and by the time you admit it doesn’t, you’ve wasted a year and a half and she’s angry and you’re confused.”
Reed had said: “That’s a remarkably specific description of my last three relationships.”
Marcus had said: “Six months. No pursuing. No coffee that’s actually a date. No reading into a smile. Just exist without the agenda.”
Reed had said: “That sounds like a punishment.”
Marcus had said: “It sounds like you’re afraid you can’t do it.”
Reed had said: “I’m not afraid of anything.”
And Marcus had said: “Then it’s a bet. Six months. Not a single intentional romantic pursuit. Whoever breaks first buys dinner for twelve at the place with the tasting menu.”
Reed had said: “Fine.”
He had been three months into the six when he went to James and Claire’s wedding.
He saw her from across the rooftop bar.
Not because she was the most conventionally striking person in the room — though she was striking, objectively, in a yellow dress that she wore with the expression of someone who had been told to wear yellow and was deciding whether to find it annoying — but because she was standing near the edge of the crowd doing something he almost never saw people do at weddings.
She was watching.
Not photographing the evening for later. Not performing enjoyment for the benefit of nearby observers. She was watching the room with the focused, slightly analytical attention of someone who found human behavior genuinely interesting and was filing it away in some internal system.
Reed recognized the expression because he had been told he wore it at every event he attended.
He was on his way to get a drink when she turned too quickly and her elbow caught her glass.
Time did the thing it sometimes did in certain moments: stretched slightly, allowing for the full observation of an arc of dark red wine traveling through warm Edison-bulb air, before landing with considerable precision on the left lapel of his jacket.
He looked down.
He looked up.
She looked at him with an expression that moved rapidly through shock, mortification, professional poise, and something that might have been a very suppressed laugh.
He said: “Normally people buy me a drink before ruining my clothes.”
It was the first thing that came to mind.
The expression on her face shifted from mortification to something else: a reassessment, like a calculation updating its values.
She said: “I’ll pay for the dry cleaning. Or the suit. Whichever.”
“Reed,” he said, extending his hand.
“Lauren.”
She shook it.
They talked for forty-five minutes.
He did not notice the time passing, which happened to him approximately never at weddings.
She told him, in a layered and funny and unexpectedly honest way, exactly why she hated the social architecture of weddings and precisely what kind of evening ended with a full glass of wine becoming airborne. He told her about the tasting menu at the restaurant three blocks from the venue that he had been to twice and which was, he maintained, the best meal available in a twenty-block radius. She asked two specific follow-up questions about the menu that suggested she was genuinely interested and not performing interest for conversational purposes.
He wanted to ask for her number.
He did not ask for her number because he had made a bet, and the bet had felt abstract when he made it and now felt extremely concrete.
He was still thinking about that when she said she should find the friends she had come with, and she said it was genuinely the most interesting forty-five minutes she had had at a wedding, and she walked back into the party and did not look back.
Reed stood at the edge of the rooftop with his stained jacket and his excellent view of lower Manhattan and thought about the very specific consequences of having made a bet three months ago.
Marcus was going to be insufferable about this.
PART 2
The project brief came across his desk two days later.
He read it once.
He read it again.
Callaway Creative, proposed brand refresh partner.
He opened the firm’s website.
Lead principal: Lauren Callaway.
There was a headshot in the About section. Professional, a little formal, completely failing to capture the particular quality of her attention.
Reed sat at his desk for approximately three minutes thinking about whether this counted as the universe being helpful or the universe being funny. The conclusion he arrived at was that it was definitely the universe being funny.
He could recuse himself from the vendor selection process.
Or he could be a professional.
He was a professional.
He approved the kickoff meeting.
PART 3
She arrived four minutes early.
He knew this because he was already in the conference room when she came through the door, and he watched her do what she had done at the wedding: a quick, complete assessment of the room, noting people and their positions, registering the layout, filing it all away in whatever system she ran internally.
Then she looked at him.
The second in which neither of them acknowledged what was obviously being remembered was the most controlled second Reed had experienced in recent professional memory.
He crossed the room.
“Ms. Callaway.”
“Mr. Callahan.”
The handshake was appropriately firm.
The meeting was ninety minutes.
She was, as he had suspected from the wedding conversation, exceptionally good at her work. She presented the agency’s approach with the particular fluency of someone who had thought about this problem from multiple angles before entering the room and had opinions that were defensible from any direction.
He asked three questions, each one designed to go directly to the most interesting and under-examined part of what she had presented, and she answered all three without pause and with the kind of precision that came from someone who genuinely liked the work.
After the third answer, he saw the corner of her mouth move in a way that suggested she had noticed the questions were more engaged than standard vendor evaluation required.
When the others had filed out, he told her the presentation was exceptional.
She told him he had asked good questions.
He said: “I had good material.”
He said: “This is going to be an interesting project.”
She said: “It’s a brand refresh.”
He said: “I wasn’t talking about the brand refresh.”
She looked at him for exactly as long as was reasonable, then looked at her bag with the practiced calm of someone who had every possible thing under control.
She said the preliminary concepts would be with his team by end of next week.
He said he looked forward to the follow-up meeting.
She left.
Reed stood in the empty conference room and thought, with considerable precision, about the four and a half months remaining on the bet he had made with Marcus.
The preliminary concepts arrived on Thursday, not end of next week but three days before end of next week, which Reed noted as a data point.
They were good.
Better than good. They were exactly what the firm needed and had not quite been able to articulate: the design language was confident without being cold, the typography choices were specific and justifiable, and the color palette managed to feel current without announcing its currentness loudly.
Reed sent feedback at nine PM on a Thursday, which was not appropriate by the standards of normal client behavior and which he was aware was not appropriate by the standards of normal client behavior.
Lauren replied at nine-fifteen.
Noted. We’ll refine the secondary palette and push back on the masthead scale. See you at the revision meeting.
He read this three times, then put his phone down.
He called Marcus.
Marcus answered with: “Whatever you’re about to say, I’m going to enjoy it.”
Reed said: “The designer I’m working with for the firm’s brand refresh is the woman from the wedding.”
A pause.
“The wine woman?”
“Yes.”
“How is this possible.”
“She runs Callaway Creative. We selected her firm on merit before I knew who the lead principal was.”
“Reed.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know about the bet.”
“No.”
“Do you want to tell her about the bet.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Because you don’t want to lose the bet, or because you don’t want her to know there was a bet.”
A longer pause.
“Marcus.”
“I’m just asking a clarifying question.”
“The bet was your idea.”
“Yes, and you agreed to it enthusiastically in front of witnesses.”
“One witness.”
“Kevin was there. Kevin is a witness.”
Reed said nothing.
Marcus said: “How many months left.”
Reed said: “Four and a half.”
Marcus made a sound that was technically a laugh but felt more like editorial commentary.
Reed said: “This is fine. We’re working together. It’s professional.”
Marcus said: “Keep telling yourself that.”
Reed said: “Good night.”
Marcus said: “Good luck.”
The revision meeting was on a Wednesday.
Lauren came in with two members of her team: a designer named Felix who had opinions about kerning that were fully committed, and a strategist named Yemi who spoke with the speed and precision of someone who had never had patience for preamble.
The revision presentation was tighter than the first one. She had incorporated his feedback and pushed further, which was exactly what good designers did with useful critique, and he told her so.
Felix looked pleased.
Yemi said: “We had the same argument internally.”
Lauren said: “Yemi is being generous. I had to be convinced on the masthead.”
Reed said: “What convinced you.”
She said: “Looking at it on a phone screen. At that size, the original approach competed with itself.”
He said: “That’s the right test.”
She said: “It usually is.”
After the meeting, in the hallway, waiting for the elevator that took its time, Lauren’s team walked ahead and they were briefly alone in the specific way that brief aloneness happened in professional settings.
She said: “Can I ask you something.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “The questions you ask in meetings. They’re designed to find the weakest point in the argument.”
He said: “Most of the time.”
She said: “Is that a legal thing or a you thing.”
He said: “Both, probably.”
She said: “I’ve worked with a lot of lawyers. Most of them ask questions that perform evaluation without actually evaluating.”
He said: “That sounds inefficient.”
She said: “It is.” She looked at the elevator panel. “Yours do the opposite.”
He said: “Is that a compliment or a warning.”
She said: “Both, probably.”
The elevator arrived.
Her team stepped in.
She followed, and just before the doors closed, she looked back at him with the expression she had had at the wedding when he had said something that turned out to be more interesting than she expected.
Reed walked back to his office.
His assistant, who had worked with him for four years and had the specific gift of noticing things and not commenting on them, had placed a stack of contracts on his desk that needed review.
He sat down.
He reviewed the contracts.
He was productive for forty-five minutes.
The complications arrived the way most complications did: from an unexpected angle.
The unexpected angle was a person named James, who was both the groom from the wedding and, it turned out, a mutual friend of Marcus’s from college, which was why Reed had been at the wedding in the first place.
James called on a Saturday.
Reed answered.
James said: “Claire wants to have a dinner. Six people. You, Marcus, the Hendersons, and a friend of Claire’s she wants you to meet.”
Reed said: “I’m working on a deadline Saturday.”
James said: “It’s Friday.”
Reed said: “Friday I’m working on a Saturday deadline.”
James said: “Reed.”
Reed said: “Tell Claire I appreciate the thought.”
James said: “The friend is impressive. You’d like her.”
Reed said: “I’m sure I would.”
James said: “She’s a designer. Runs her own agency. I think you two would actually—”
Reed set his coffee down.
He said: “What’s her name.”
James said: “Lauren Callaway. Why?”
Reed said: “I need to call you back.”
He called Marcus.
He said: “James is trying to set me up with Lauren.”
Marcus said: “Lauren the wine woman.”
He said: “Lauren my current client.”
Marcus said: “Oh this is extraordinary.”
He said: “It’s not extraordinary, it’s a conflict of interest problem.”
Marcus said: “You know, when I made the bet I was thinking more of a bar situation, not a fully developed romantic comedy situation.”
He said: “This is not a romantic comedy situation.”
Marcus said: “The universe is having an excellent week.”
He said: “Marcus.”
Marcus said: “Yes.”
He said: “What do I do.”
Marcus was quiet for a moment.
He said: “What do you want to do.”
He said: “Tell me about the bet first.”
He said: “I’m asking seriously.”
Marcus said: “The bet expires in three months. You know what you want to do. The question is what you’re going to do about it.”
He said: “She’s a client.”
Marcus said: “Currently.”
He said: “The project runs another eight weeks.”
Marcus said: “So in ten weeks, she’s not a client anymore.”
He said: “That is an extremely convenient calculation.”
Marcus said: “I’m a lawyer. We calculate.”
He said: “I made a bet.”
Marcus said: “Reed. You made a bet so you would stop looking for something that sort of fit. You found something that actually fits. Those are different situations.”
He said nothing.
Marcus said: “Also the bet expires in three months and the project runs eight weeks, so if you wait until after the project closes, you’re still inside the bet by like five weeks.”
He said: “You are the worst.”
Marcus said: “I’m excellent. This is me being excellent.”
He said: “Good night.”
He called James back and said he had a conflict on Friday and would give Claire his regrets.
James said: “What conflict.”
He said: “Work.”
James said: “You’re a partner. You don’t have weekend work conflicts.”
He said: “I’m a partner who is actively creating one.”
James said: “I’m going to tell Claire you said no.”
He said: “That’s accurate.”
James said: “She’s going to be disappointed.”
He said: “Tell her I’m sorry.”
He put the phone down and looked at the city through his office window and thought about the very specific problem of having made a bet that had seemed like a reasonable idea four months ago.
Lauren found out about the bet on a Tuesday.
Not from Reed.
From Marcus.
This was also Marcus’s fault, which Reed would say later, to Marcus, at some volume.
What happened was: Marcus ran into Lauren at a client event because Marcus’s corporate consulting firm occasionally overlapped with the creative sector and this was apparently one of those occasions. They were introduced by a mutual contact. Marcus recognized the name, because Reed had said her name enough times in the preceding weeks that Marcus had developed an association. Marcus, who was extremely good at reading rooms and slightly too honest for his own good, said, “Callaway Creative — Reed’s been talking about this project constantly. He rarely talks about projects constantly.”
And Lauren, who was perceptive in the way that made her good at design and slightly dangerous in conversation, said: “Does he?”
And Marcus, who was running an internal cost-benefit analysis on whether to say the next thing, apparently calculated incorrectly and said: “He made a bet three months ago that he’d stop pursuing anyone for six months. He’s had some trouble sticking to it since your project started.”
Lauren said: “What kind of bet.”
Marcus said, in a tone that suggested he was immediately aware he had overstepped: “Just a friendly one.”
Lauren said: “A bet about love.”
Marcus said: “More of a bet about strategy.”
Lauren looked at him for a moment.
She said: “How long does the bet run.”
Marcus said: “Three more months.”
She said: “He’s been trying not to pursue me because of a bet.”
Marcus, who was now visibly regretting the entire conversation, said: “That’s a very specific interpretation—”
Lauren said: “Thank you for telling me.”
She left the event.
She was in a cab on her way home when she called Priya.
Priya said: “How was the event.”
Lauren said: “I found out Reed Callahan made a bet that he wouldn’t pursue anyone romantically for six months and apparently I am the complication in that bet.”
Priya said: “Wait.”
Lauren said: “Yes.”
Priya said: “He’s been—”
Lauren said: “For weeks. All the questions in the meetings. Staying late in the conferences. The emails at nine PM.”
Priya said: “And none of it was pursuit because he bet someone he wouldn’t.”
Lauren said: “Apparently.”
Priya said: “Lauren.”
Lauren said: “Yes.”
Priya said: “That’s either the funniest thing I’ve heard this month or the most annoying.”
Lauren looked out the cab window at the city.
She said: “I haven’t decided which yet.”
She was professional at the next project meeting.
This was, Reed would later understand, the more frightening of the two options. The other option was that she would be visibly cold or visibly different, which would have been readable. Professional was its own kind of information. Professional said: I know something I didn’t know before and I’m choosing how to handle it.
He did not know what she knew.
He knew something was different.
The meeting covered the final asset delivery timeline and the website launch schedule. Her team was efficient and prepared. She answered his questions with the same precision as always and asked her own questions about the firm’s internal communication channels for the rollout.
Everything was correct.
Nothing was the same.
After the meeting, as the team filed out, she stayed.
She said: “Can I ask you something.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “Did you make a bet with Marcus about not pursuing anyone for six months.”
He was quiet for approximately two seconds.
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “When.”
He said: “About a month before James and Claire’s wedding.”
She said: “So when you didn’t ask for my number at the wedding—”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “And when you asked questions in meetings that were significantly more engaged than standard client evaluation—”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “You were technically not pursuing me.”
He said: “Technically.”
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
He said: “The bet was Marcus’s idea. The premise was that I kept finding things that sort of fit and then spending a year trying to make them fit. His argument was that I needed six months of not looking.”
She said: “And then you found the wine situation.”
He said: “And then I found the wine situation.”
She said: “And then the project.”
He said: “Which I approved before I knew you were the lead principal.”
She said: “I know that.”
He said: “Lauren.”
She said: “Yes.”
He said: “I am aware that the bet was a juvenile arrangement made late at night. I am aware that using it as the reason I haven’t said the obvious thing for the past several weeks is not my most mature behavior. I am aware that you have every reason to find this—”
She said: “Ridiculous.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “Or efficient, depending on how you look at it.”
He stopped.
She was looking at him with the expression from the rooftop, the reassessment expression, the calculation-updating-values expression.
She said: “At the wedding you said I was either embarrassing or efficient. I think I said it was definitely efficient.”
He said: “You did.”
She said: “So by that logic, making a bet that unintentionally kept things professional while we figured out we actually liked each other is either ridiculous or efficient.”
He said: “I’m hoping you’re going to say efficient.”
She said: “I’m deciding.”
She looked at the conference room table.
She said: “The project closes in six weeks.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “And the bet expires in three months.”
He said: “Marcus pointed out that six weeks after project close still puts us inside the bet by several weeks.”
She said: “Marcus is calculating very hard on your behalf.”
He said: “He feels responsible.”
She said: “He should.”
He said: “Yes.”
She looked at him.
She said: “Reed.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “I’m going to say something that I want you to hear correctly.”
He said: “Okay.”
She said: “I don’t care about the bet. The bet is between you and Marcus and is not my problem.”
He said: “Understood.”
She said: “What I care about is what the bet means. Because you made the bet because you kept finding things that sort of fit and then you—”
He said: “Made the mistake of thinking I could make them fit perfectly.”
She said: “Yes.” She looked at the table. “I do the same thing.”
He said: “I know.”
She looked up.
He said: “I mean — I suspected. The way you were watching the wedding. The way you said you’d been invisible all evening. The yellow dress you’d never have chosen for yourself.”
She said: “You noticed all of that.”
He said: “I notice things.”
She said: “So do I.”
She said: “That’s going to be either a problem or—”
He said: “Efficient.”
She said: “Efficient. Yes.”
She looked at the table one more time.
She said: “The project closes in six weeks. After that, you’re not my client anymore.”
He said: “Correct.”
She said: “And I am not going to pretend the last several weeks haven’t been—”
He said: “Neither am I.”
She said: “Then we have a plan.”
He said: “Six weeks.”
She said: “Six weeks.”
He said: “And then I would like to take you to the tasting menu place.”
She said: “You mentioned that place at the wedding.”
He said: “I’ve been waiting for the right occasion to bring it up again.”
The corner of her mouth moved.
She said: “Six weeks.”
She picked up her bag.
He walked with her to the elevator.
They stood there with the particular companionable silence of two people who had just reached an agreement that both of them found somewhat satisfying.
The elevator arrived.
She stepped in.
She said: “Reed.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “For what it’s worth — the questions in the meetings. The engaged ones.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “Those were the most interesting project meetings I’ve had in two years.”
He said: “The material was good.”
She smiled.
The doors closed.
Six weeks later, the brand refresh launched.
The website went live on a Thursday morning. The new visual identity was rolled out across the firm’s materials, the digital platforms, the reception signage, and the email templates that Harmon Legal sent approximately eighty times a day.
Reed sent Lauren an email at nine AM.
It said: The launch looks exceptional. The team has been very complimentary. Thank you for the work.
She replied at nine-fifteen.
It was a good project. Thank you for the questions.
He replied: The tasting menu place. Saturday at seven. Unless you’re debugging code.
She replied: I haven’t debugged code since 2019.
He replied: Saturday at seven.
She replied: Yes.
He was already there when she arrived.
This was not a surprise to her because she had decided, sometime around the third revision meeting, that Reed Callahan was the kind of person who arrived early and waited without making the waiting seem like pressure.
She was wearing gray — not the gray blazer from the project meetings, but a dress in a specific shade that she had chosen herself, which felt relevant.
He stood when she came through the door.
Not performatively. Just stood.
She sat down across from him.
He said: “You chose the color.”
She said: “I choose all my colors.”
He said: “At the wedding you said the yellow was not one you’d have picked.”
She said: “I was a bridesmaid. The bridesmaid dress situation is a different context.”
He said: “What would you have chosen.”
She said: “Something in this range.” She gestured at the dress. “I like colors I have to think about.”
He said: “Meaning.”
She said: “Meaning colors that change depending on the light. This dress looks different in here than it did outside.”
He said: “What does it look like in here.”
She said: “Better, I think.”
He looked at her.
He said: “Yes.”
He said: “Can I tell you something.”
She said: “Tell me.”
He said: “I called Marcus the Monday after the wedding and told him the vendor selection had gone to a designer whose name I recognized.”
She said: “And.”
He said: “He immediately understood this was a problem for the bet and was immediately delighted by it.”
She said: “Marcus sounds like a lot.”
He said: “He is. He’s also usually right about things, which is the problem.”
She said: “Was he right about the bet.”
He said: “He was right that I needed to stop trying to make things fit. He was wrong that six months of not looking would accomplish that.”
She said: “What did accomplish it.”
He said: “Forty-five minutes on a rooftop with someone who was watching a wedding the same way I watch parties.”
She looked at her menu for a moment.
She said: “I want you to know something.”
He said: “Tell me.”
She said: “I looked up Calloway Creative’s client list before I went to that kickoff meeting.”
He said: “Standard preparation.”
She said: “I looked up who the project contact was.”
He said: “Also standard.”
She said: “I spent three extra minutes on the firm’s partnership page when I found your name.”
He said: “Three extra minutes.”
She said: “I was deciding whether to recuse myself from the project.”
He said: “Why didn’t you.”
She said: “Because it was a good project. And because I decided that being a professional was more important than whatever was happening in my head.”
He said: “And what was happening in your head.”
She said: “I was thinking about forty-five minutes on a rooftop.”
He said: “Three months before we were in the same room again.”
She said: “Yes.”
He said: “I thought about it too.”
She said: “I know.”
He said: “How.”
She said: “The nine PM emails.”
He said: “Those were legitimate feedback.”
She said: “They were. The timing was the tell.”
He said: “Fair.”
The server came and they ordered and the evening moved the way good evenings moved: easily, with the specific pleasure of two people who were interested in each other and had decided to stop pretending otherwise.
They talked about the work — not the project, which was closed, but the broader question of how design shaped the way people understood things, which turned into a conversation about how lawyers understood the same problem from the opposite direction, which turned into an argument about whether form or function came first that was genuinely unresolved and that both of them seemed to find more interesting for being unresolved.
He told her about the moment he had decided on law, which was not a dramatic story but was a specific one: a high school debate where he had argued a position he didn’t agree with and had realized, in the middle of the argument, that understanding a position well enough to make the case for it was more interesting than winning.
She told him about the first project she had done that was actually good, which was a rebrand for a coffee shop that no one would ever see or remember, and which had required her to figure out what she actually thought about color theory rather than what she had been taught to think.
He said: “Was it the right color?”
She said: “It was a very specific shade of orange that I don’t think would work for anyone else.”
He said: “But it worked for them.”
She said: “It worked completely.”
He said: “That’s the best kind of solution.”
She said: “Yes.”
Later, when the tasting menu had run through its courses and the room had thinned to the unhurried remainder of people who had nowhere more important to be, he said: “Marcus wants to know how dinner went.”
She said: “You’ve been texting Marcus.”
He said: “He texted me. Four times. I have not responded.”
She said: “What will you tell him.”
He said: “That the material was good.”
She said: “That’s all.”
He said: “And that I lost the bet.”
She said: “You broke the bet.”
He said: “Worth it.”
She looked at him.
She said: “The tasting menu was good.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “Though for the record, I did not need six courses to form an opinion.”
He said: “When did you form it.”
She said: “About forty-five minutes into a rooftop conversation.”
He said: “The wine did that.”
She said: “The wine started it. You did the rest.”
He said: “And what was the opinion.”
She looked at him with the reassessment expression, the calculation-updating-values expression, the expression he had been recognizing for months and which he now understood was what she looked like when she had already decided something and was deciding whether to say it.
She said: “That this was either going to be embarrassing or efficient.”
He said: “And.”
She said: “Definitely efficient.”
He smiled.
She smiled back.
Outside, the city was doing what it always did: everything at once, indifferent and luminous, all that geography of living running parallel and oblivious.
Inside, the particular quiet of two people who had found the right distance and then deliberately closed it.
He said: “Dinner again.”
She said: “Yes.”
He said: “Not a tasting menu. Somewhere more informal.”
She said: “I know a place in SoHo. It’s close to the office. The food is good.”
He said: “You’re comfortable choosing.”
She said: “I choose all my own colors.”
He said: “You do.”
They left the restaurant and walked two blocks in the direction of nothing in particular, with the specific companionable quality of people for whom walking somewhere together felt natural before it was routine.
At the corner, she said: “Reed.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “For what it’s worth, I don’t actually hate weddings.”
He said: “What do you hate.”
She said: “The social arithmetic. The equation about where a life is supposed to be by now.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “I don’t hate the other parts.”
He said: “The other parts.”
She said: “The part where two people decide something.”
He said: “Decide what.”
She said: “That the distance is unreasonable.”
He looked at her.
She looked back.
He said: “Yes. That part is good.”
She said: “Efficient.”
He said: “Definitely efficient.”
She laughed.
It was the same laugh from the rooftop — real and unhurried, the kind that didn’t perform itself — and Reed thought, with considerable certainty, that he was going to hear that laugh for a very long time.
He was right.
THE END