Ask Me

Talia asked Edvard to meet in the city library, where they had once worked at separate tables. He arrived without a statement in his pocket. That was the first thing she noticed and the first thing he had deliberately left behind.

She had considered leaving the conversation for later. A library was not neutral merely because other people could see them; it was a room where she had sent the bid he had never read, a room he might turn into an apology scene while her interview still waited. She had chosen it herself because she wanted a table between them until she no longer did.

He was early. He had a book open and was not reading it. She liked the honest failure of that more than an arranged expression of concern.

“I thought I was protecting you,” he said. “I wrote a sentence about your integrity because I…