Cece found him in the kitchen, reaching for a glass.
The way she leaned against the counter, arms crossed, weight on one hip, the particular stillness of someone who’d planned this conversation, told him this wasn’t a coincidence.
She’d been waiting for the right moment.
Jess was in the bathroom.
Schmidt and Winston were in the living room, arguing about whether the spreadsheet needed a Ferguson category.
Nick was half-watching television, which in Nick’s language meant he was listening but not participating.
The kitchen was theirs.
“We need to talk,” she said.
The words landed the way Cece’s words always landed: directly, with no padding.
She wasn’t the kind of person who softened bad news or sweetened hard questions.
She said the thing and let you handle it.
Robby set the glass down.
He’d known this conversation was coming since the Pollack night, when he’d seen her watching him with an expression he couldn’t decode, not hostile, not warm, just reading him, the careful assessment of someone who’d been burned by partners before.
“Okay,” he said.
She didn’t threaten.
She didn’t warn.
She just looked at him, letting the silence test his composure.
“What are you doing here?”
“Getting water.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
“Then answer the real question, not the water question.”
He knew what she meant.
She meant why are you here, what do you want from Jess, and what happens when it gets hard.
Every best friend’s question, compressed into three words.
The over-nice reflex surged.
I really like her.
I’m not going anywhere.
I’d never hurt her.
All the agreeable fillers that would smooth the conversation and cost him nothing.
He held it down.
The urge to fill the silence with agreeable nothing was almost physical, a pressure in his chest, the body’s reflex to smooth things over before they could get sharp.
He’d spent a lifetime defaulting to that reflex, and it had made him pleasant and forgettable.
Not this time.
“You’ve been watching me all week,” he said.
“You’ve been trying to decide if I’m real or if I’m just good at seeming real.”
“I’ve been trying to decide if you’re good for Jess.
Those are different questions.”
“Are they connected?”
“For you, I think they might be.”
“That’s fair.
I’d rather you ask the hard version than the easy one.”
“Nobody asks the easy version.
The easy version doesn’t tell you anything.”
The refrigerator hummed its low steady note.
Through the wall, Schmidt’s voice carried in, something about weighted averages and why Winston’s methodology was fundamentally flawed.
Winston countered that Schmidt was threatened by a system he couldn’t control.
The argument was familiar, comfortable, the background music of a loft that had been arguing for years.
“They’ve been at that for twenty minutes,” Robby said.
“They’ll be at it for another twenty.
It’s basically ambient noise at this point.
Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not trying to change it.
I’m trying to survive it.”
“Survive faster.
I don’t have all night.”
“I wasn’t.
I was buying myself two seconds.”
“You don’t get two seconds.
You get one honest question, and I want to know what you’re going to do with it.”
“That’s a strange way to phrase a question.”
“I didn’t ask you a question yet.
I told you what’s coming.”
“Feels like a question already landed.”
“It landed when you walked in here for water and stayed for an interrogation.
You knew that the second I crossed my arms.”
“I knew it before that.
I knew it the first night, actually.
You watched me eat that casserole like you were grading a thesis defense.”
“I was grading a thesis defense.
You just didn’t get the rubric.”
“Would it have helped if I had?”
“No.
The whole point is you don’t get the rubric.
Anyone can perform to a rubric they’ve seen.
I need to see what you do without one.”
Cece’s eyes didn’t move from Robby’s face.
She was waiting.
Testing.
Seeing if he’d break the silence first.
He had one honest question.
One charge to spend this scene.
He could feel it waiting, the scarce resource he’d learned to recognize and deploy carefully.
“Can I ask you something real?”
“That depends on what it is.”
“What’s the thing everyone knows about Jess but never says out loud?”
Cece’s posture shifted, a fraction of an inch, a tiny recalibration.
“What do you think it is?”
“I think everyone loves her energy but braces for it to be too much.
I think nobody’s ever told her she can take up space without having to earn it first.”
The silence stretched.
Long enough for the television laugh track to cycle through two jokes.
Long enough for him to wonder if he’d overstepped.
“That’s exactly right,” Cece said.
“Then that’s why I’m here.
Not to manage her energy.
To match it.
And when I can’t match it, to be honest instead of disappearing.”
“You can’t match Jess’s energy.
Nobody can.”
“I can try.
Trying honestly is better than pretending and then pulling away when the energy gets real.”
Cece picked up the glass he’d abandoned.
She turned it in her hands, studying it the same careful way she’d studied him all week, looking for a crack, a flaw, something that would validate her skepticism.
“That’s a good answer,” she said.
“Not a perfect one.
But good.”
“A perfect answer would have been rehearsed.”
Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close.
“You’re sharper than you let on.”
“I find it’s better to let people discover that.”
“Don’t push it.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it.
I’ve seen every version of this.
The guys who promise they’re different and then prove they’re exactly the same, three weeks in, right when it stops being convenient.”
“I’m not promising I’m different.
I’m promising I’ll try.
That’s all I’ve got, and I think it’s more honest than pretending I have the whole answer.”
“Most guys give me the whole answer.
Practiced, smooth, ready before I finish the question.”
“I figured that’s what got them caught.”
“It’s exactly what got them caught.
You’re the first one who didn’t have a speech.”
“I have a speech.
I’m choosing not to give it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d see through it in a sentence, and then we’d both be pretending you hadn’t.”
“Most people don’t think that far ahead.”
“I think about outcomes for a living.
Occupational hazard.”
“Is that what this is to you?
An outcome you’re managing?”
“No.
This is the one conversation I can’t afford to manage.
If I try to manage you, you’ll know, and I lose whatever this was worth.”
“So what is it, if not managed?”
“Honest.
Slower than I’d like.
Probably worse for my case than a good speech would be.”
“It’s not worse.
It’s just harder to fake, which is the only reason I’m still standing here instead of telling you to leave.”
She looked at him for a long moment, reassessing, recalibrating.
Then she handed him the glass back.
In Cece’s vocabulary, that small gesture was significant, a return of something she’d been holding, the signal that the interview was over.
“I’m not giving you my blessing,” she said.
“Not yet.
But I’m not warning Jess to be careful, either.
That’s the best you’re getting right now.”
“That’s more than I expected.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“Can I ask what would tip it into a full blessing?”
“You already used your one question tonight.”
“That was a follow-up, not a new one.”
“There’s no such thing as a follow-up with me.
Every question is a new question.
Try again another week.”
“Fair.”
“You’re taking that better than most people take a no.”
“It’s not a no.
It’s a not-yet.
I can work with a not-yet.”
“Everyone says that.
Fewer people mean it.”
“I’ll show you instead of saying it again.”
“That’s the correct answer.
Say it once more and I’ll take it back.”
In the living room, Jess’s voice carried in, something about the spreadsheet and whether Ferguson’s evening routine counted as a measurable category.
Schmidt was arguing that cats were outside the rubric’s scope.
Winston was countering that Ferguson was a loft citizen with equal rights.
Cece turned toward the living room, then paused at the doorway.
“One more thing.”
“Okay.”
“If you’re lying, about any of this, I’ll know before you’ve finished the sentence.
And I’ll make sure you regret it.”
“I know.”
“Good.
You should know that I know.”
She left the kitchen without waiting for a response, already calling out to Winston that Ferguson absolutely deserved a category and Schmidt could take it up with legal.
Robby stood there a second longer, the water glass sweating in his hand, and let himself feel the small, specific relief of having survived something without performing his way through it.