Chapter 284: Mia True Feelings
She was waiting outside the Aldermere when the car pulled up.
Standing at the entrance with her hands in the pockets of her jacket, her weight distributed the way it always was, even and deliberate, not fidgeting, which meant she’d been nervous earlier and had resolved it before he arrived.
She was wearing something dark and precisely chosen, the specific look of someone who had given thought to what the Aldermere’s interior would require without overdoing it. Her hair was down, which he hadn’t seen before. She’d always worn it practical. Down it was longer than he’d realized and it changed the shape of her face slightly.
She looked at the car.
Then at him when he stepped out.
Her expression did the evaluating thing. Ran over him once, quickly, registering the suit. Then she looked at the building behind her like she was checking the math she’d done earlier.
"You look like you belong here," she said. Stating a fact.
"So do you," he said.
She looked at him. "I looked up the dress code four times."
"What did it say," he said.
"Smart casual with an asterisk," she said. "The asterisk said use your judgment."
"Your judgment was correct," he said.
She pressed her lips together. Not quite a smile. The version she used when she’d received information she was filing away.
"Come on," she said. "Our table is upstairs."
====================
The forty-second floor was exactly what the website had suggested and slightly more than that.
Floor to ceiling glass on the east side showing the city laid out below in its Friday evening version, warm and lit and entirely indifferent to the specific dinner happening forty-two floors above it. Tables set far apart with the particular spacing of somewhere that understood its clientele valued privacy over atmosphere. The lighting doing what good restaurant lighting did, making everything look like it was exactly where it was supposed to be.
Mia walked to their table with the forward energy she brought everywhere, and the host seated them, and she sat down across from Sean and looked at the view and then at the menu in front of her.
She didn’t open it.
"You already know what you’re ordering," he said.
"I looked at the menu online," she said. "Three times."
"Which night," he said.
She looked at him. "Tuesday."
"You’ve been sitting with the menu for four days," he said.
"I wanted to be prepared," she said.
"For what," he said.
"For." She paused. "I don’t know. Being prepared is just. It’s what I do."
"I know," he said. "It’s one of the things I like about you."
She looked at him with the evaluating quality, checking whether he meant it or was being polite. Then she picked up the menu and opened it like she was closing the topic.
"The third option on the tasting menu," she said. "The seasonal one. I read that the chef sources the main from a specific farm in the south that only supplies twelve restaurants in the country."
"Is that why you chose it," he said.
"I chose it because it seemed like the kind of thing you’d find interesting," she said, still looking at the menu. "You pay attention to where things come from."
Sean looked at her.
She was not looking at him. She was reading the menu she’d already memorized on Tuesday.
"Mia," he said.
"What," she said.
"Put the menu down," he said.
She put it down.
"Look at me," he said.
She looked at him with the sharp dark eyes that had been evaluating things since a Sunday afternoon on a road outside a hotel, and there was something in them tonight that was different from the professional assessment. Something that was sitting closer to the surface.
"You chose a restaurant based on what you thought I would find interesting," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"And you researched which table had the best view," he said. "Because this isn’t the standard corner table, this is the one they put in the booking notes as preferred window position."
She blinked. "How do you know that."
"James called ahead to confirm," he said. "The host mentioned it."
"I." She looked at the table briefly. "I asked when I made the reservation."
"I know," he said.
"It seemed like the kind of thing that would matter," she said. "The view. For someone who." She stopped. "You’ve seen a lot of views."
"Not this one with you," he said.
She was quiet for a moment.
The city outside sat forty-two floors below them, the particular version of it that existed at this hour, warm and moving and enormous.
"I’m not good at this," she said.
"At what," he said.
"At." She picked up her water glass and held it without drinking. "At normal. I spent two months in a situation that was the opposite of normal and before that I was writing LSAT prep notes in my spare time and before that I was." She set the glass down. "I don’t have a lot of practice at just. Sitting across from someone and being here."
"You’re here," he said.
"Barely," she said.
"Mia," he said. "You researched this restaurant for four days. You asked for the window table. You memorized the menu. You planned what you were going to wear and you figured out the dress code and you showed up seven minutes early because I saw you from the car when we turned onto the street."
She opened her mouth.
"You’re here," he said. "You’ve been here since Tuesday."
She closed her mouth.
Looked at the view.
"I wanted it to be right," she said. Quietly.
"It’s right," he said.
The sommelier arrived with the kind of timing that good restaurants cultivated, appearing at exactly the moment when a pause needed filling, and Mia ordered the wine she’d decided on Tuesday with the decisive efficiency that was entirely hers, and the sommelier left, and they sat in the easy quiet of two people who had just gotten past the first honest thing of the evening.