The Distance Between Us

The pen was a Montblanc. Black resin, gold nib, a gift from a client I’d billed three hundred thousand dollars the previous year. It was a good pen. It wrote a clean, dark line, and it felt substantial in my hand, which is why I was holding it, and why I was staring at the contract on my desk, and why I had not signed the goddamn thing.

The words on the page were simple. Standard. A non-disclosure agreement for a new software development firm out of Austin. I’d read it twice. It was fine. I knew it was fine. I’d negotiated worse terms for bigger deals while eating a sandwich. But the pen wasn’t moving.

Because I could hear her.

Not her voice. Not exactly. The sound was more specific than that. It was the particular squeak of the third floorboard from the left in the hallway outside my study, the one she always managed to find no matter how carefully she tried to walk. She was trying to be quiet. She was always trying to be quiet in the mornings, as if the sound of her existence was an imposition.

The squeak came again. Then the soft brush of fabric against the wall. She was probably carrying her mug of tea, the one with the chip on the rim that she refused to throw away, and she was probably wearing one of those nightgowns. The gray one. The one that was thin from too many washings and fell to just above her knees.

I set the pen down. It made a small, precise click against the mahogany.

The door to the study was open a crack, just enough for a sliver of hallway light to cut across the Persian rug. I didn’t look up. I looked at the contract. I looked at the clause about proprietary information and intellectual property rights. I looked at the word “heretofore” and thought about how much I hated the word “heretofore.”

She passed by the door. I saw the shadow first, a darkening of the light on the rug. Then the scent of her. Not perfume. She didn’t wear perfume in the mornings. It was just soap and warm skin and the faint, clean smell of her shampoo, something with coconut in it. It hit me in the chest like a physical blow.

My hands flattened on the desk. The wood was cool under my palms.

She didn’t stop. She never stopped. She just walked on toward the kitchen, and I sat there like a man who’d been shot, waiting for the pain to arrive.

It always did.

I forced myself to pick up the pen again. I signed the contract. My signature was a slash of black ink, angry and illegible. I tossed the pen into the drawer and slammed it shut. The sound echoed in the quiet room.

This was ridiculous. I was a grown man. I ran a company that employed four hundred people. I’d stared down hostile takeovers and boardroom coups. I’d made decisions that affected the lives of everyone in this building, and I’d made them without flinching. But I couldn’t walk into my own kitchen because a woman might be standing there in a nightgown.

I stood up. The chair scraped back. I walked to the window and looked out at the city. The sun was just coming up over the East River, turning the water a dull, pewter gray. It was going to rain. I could feel it in the air, that heavy, electric pressure that precedes a storm. Good. Maybe the weather would match my mood.

I heard the clink of a spoon against ceramic. She was making tea. Then the soft thud of the refrigerator door closing. She’d be getting the milk. She always put milk in her tea, a splash, no more. I knew the rhythm of her mornings better than I knew my own.

My phone buzzed on the desk. I ignored it. It buzzed again. I turned and picked it up. A text from my brother. *Did you see the Times piece on the merger? Call me.*

I typed back. *Later.*

I put the phone in my pocket and walked to the door. I had to go out there eventually. I had to be a person. I had to be the man who shared this apartment with her, the man who was supposed to be her friend, her protector, the man who had made a promise.

The hallway was empty. The floorboard didn’t squeak under my feet. I was too controlled for that. I walked into the kitchen and she was there, standing at the counter with her back to me. Her hair was wet, darker than usual, and it was twisted up in a loose knot at the back of her head. A few strands had escaped and were stuck to the nape of her neck. The gray nightgown was exactly as I remembered it, thin and soft and clinging to the curve of her hip.

She turned when she heard me. Her face was bare, no makeup, and there was a small crease on her cheek from the pillow. She looked tired. She looked beautiful.

“Good morning,” she said. Her voice was quiet, still rough from sleep. “I made enough for two.”

She gestured to the teapot on the counter. I nodded. I couldn’t speak. I was too busy cataloging the details. The way the light from the window caught the fine hairs on her forearm. The small, faded scar on her knee, a souvenir from a bicycle accident when she was twelve. The way her toes curled against the cold tile floor.

“You’re up early,” I managed. My voice sounded like gravel.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She turned back to the counter and picked up her mug. “Chip was barking at something around four. I think there’s a raccoon in the alley.”

She took a sip of her tea. I watched her throat move as she swallowed. I watched her lips touch the chipped rim of the mug. I thought about what it would taste like, the tea on her mouth, the warmth of it.

“I have a meeting at nine,” I said. It was a lie. My first meeting was at ten-thirty. But I needed an excuse. I needed a reason to leave the room.

She turned to face me again. She leaned back against the counter, the mug held in both hands. The nightgown pulled across her chest, and I saw the outline of her, the shape of her breasts, the small, hard points of her nipples against the thin cotton. The air in the kitchen was suddenly too thick to breathe.

“Okay,” she said. She smiled. It was a small, hesitant smile, the kind she gave me when she wasn’t sure what I was thinking. “I’ll be at the library most of the day. I have research to do.”

“Right,” I said. “The library.”

I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the floor, a man made of stone and want. She was three feet away from me. Three feet. I could close that distance in a single step. I could put my hands on her waist and lift her onto the counter. I could push the nightgown up her thighs and bury my face between her legs and taste her until she forgot her own name.

I did none of those things.

I turned and walked out of the kitchen. I walked down the hall and into my bedroom, and I closed the door behind me. I leaned my forehead against the wood and closed my eyes.

My hands were shaking.

I heard her in the kitchen, moving around, rinsing her mug in the sink. Then her footsteps, soft and quick, heading toward the stairs. She was going up to her room to get dressed. She was going to put on clothes, and then she was going to leave, and I was going to spend the rest of the day thinking about the way she’d looked standing in the morning light, holding that chipped mug, with her wet hair and her tired eyes and her soft, thin nightgown.

I pushed away from the door and walked to the bathroom. I turned the shower on cold and stepped under the spray. The water hit my skin like needles. I stood there until I couldn’t feel anything but the cold, until the wanting was just a dull ache in my gut, a bruise I could live with.

It didn’t work.

It never did.