I couldn’t walk away from that. The expansion was my responsibility. I had brought us to that point, and I was going to oversee taking us all the way through it.
The most stressful aspect of dealing with losses like we had just sustained was having to slow down in the process. I had to take it easy because we’d just faced a major setback while also experiencing a huge gain. If I didn’t proceed carefully, I would lose it all.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the warm steamy air in my shower. I brought in the fresh new air and exhaled the negative stress. I had to learn when to put work away. If there was a point when I couldn’t move forward with something, I had to put it away. I had to put work aside so I could enjoy my personal life.
I calmed my nerves so I could go join the beautiful, sexy woman waiting for me on my balcony. As the last little bit of work left my tired, beaten body, I shut off the shower and listened to the water dripping in the tub.
The dripping seemed to cover a profound silence, the dark silence on the side of the interstate in the middle of the night when we’d stopped shooting at each other. That silence seemed to be following me. It wanted to be addressed, but I couldn’t remember anything about it other than the fact that there were places in my memory where it seemed to steal the sound and the voices from me.
I tucked it away. I figured it was one of those things I had to handle on my own, alone, like Sasha had said, but I wasn’t alone right now. I had a guest to entertain.
I grabbed a pair of boxers from my dresser and pulled them on over me before walking into the kitchen to fix my own glass of whiskey. Then, I joined the beautiful Sasha Winters on my balcony.
It was already the afternoon. The day was moving quickly past us. I sat down with her at the table and looked out over the city with her while we sipped our drinks.
“You need to catch up,” she said playfully. “I’m already on my second one.”
“Well, I can make that happen,” I told her, taking mine down in one gulp. I set the bottle on the table and poured another glass.
“You came prepared, I see.”
“I did,” I told her, turning to look back out over my city. “I figured we would want more.”
“Yeah, I think the word is need. We’ll need more.”
I nodded, drinking to her assessment.
We sat in silence and sipped after that. Neither one of was wanted to talk. It was enough to just be there together. We’d gone through so much together that there was no point in using words just then anyway.
The golden afternoon light reflected off some of the glass towers standing in town. We were above most of the worst glares. We watched as birds flew by in clouds beneath us. Up where we sat, we couldn’t hear the streets below. The city seemed vacant, quiet, and peaceful. It was a great escape from everything to be able to come out up here and look out over everything I spend so much time down in the thick of, and to get a different perspective on it all.
“It’s a beautiful view,” Sasha finally said after a few minutes of silence.
“It really is, isn’t it?” I agreed. “I love it.”
“I do, too, Cole. I really do. The city is gorgeous from up here,” she continued.
I took a deep breath and long drink from my glass, letting any apprehension I had burn off as the whiskey flowed down my throat.
“How would you like to have this view every day?” I asked her.
“Who’s to say the view from my apartment isn’t better?” she asked.
“I’m serious, Sasha.”
“I am, too, Cole. You haven’t even seen my apartment,” she teased, but I hadn’t. We had spent all of our time here in my apartment. There had never been any discussion of going to her place. It might have been nice to give it a shot, I found myself thinking.
“We should go to your apartment some time,” I told her.
“Only to get my things,” she said flatly.
I shot her a puzzled look.
“Yeah, I was just kidding. Your apartment is way cooler. You’ve got a much better view than I do. I’m sandwiched between two old apartment buildings, so when I walk outside, I get to see my neighbors across the street.” She laughed.
“My neighbors are at the tops of other buildings,” I told her, holding my hands out over my city. It really was going to be my city once we started consolidating after Fang’s collapse.
“You know what I would really like?” she asked abruptly.
“What’s that?” I poured myself another glass.
“A house,” she said.