❖ ❖ ❖

She almost didn't answer the phone.

Unknown numbers at three in the morning were never good news - and this one, when she checked the screen through half-closed eyes, offered nothing. No name. No recognisable digits. Just a number that meant nothing and kept buzzing anyway.

She lay there for a moment, thumb hovering. Then she turned it off and pulled the covers back over her head.

She didn't fall back asleep after that.

❧ ❧ ❧

The morning was a disaster of her own making.

One heel on, coffee in the wrong hand, blouse inside out - she caught that one in the lift mirror, thank God - and she was late. She had no one to blame but herself. She had known when Liz showed up at her door at nine last night with that particular expression - the one that said we are going out and I have already decided - exactly how Sunday was going to end. She'd gone anyway.

She always went anyway. That was the thing about Liz.

"Good morning, Eva, room four, meeting." The receptionist handed over the office keys without looking up. Eva took them with a grateful smile and kept moving. She'd borrowed those keys on Friday and had been praying since Saturday that Mr. Hendsmien hadn't noticed.

Her name was Evangeline Nova Ashford, Personal Assistant to the most demanding man in the building. A position that felt on mornings like this, held together with nothing but sheer will and Liz's impressive talent for misdirection.

"Morning, sunshine." Liz's voice - warm, entirely too cheerful for a Monday - hit her the moment she stepped off the elevator. Liz was already at her desk looking like she'd had eight hours of sleep and a three-course breakfast. Her smile didn't need a reason. It was simply there, open and easy, the way Liz herself was - ready for whatever the day brought, genuinely unable to understand why anyone wouldn't feel the same.

"You say one word to me," Eva said, dropping into her chair, "and I will end you."

"He thinks you're in the washroom." Liz held out a cup she hadn't noticed she was holding. Chocolate flavoured. Eva took it, drank half of it in one go, and felt her shoulders come down from around her ears. She exhaled and wandered over to Liz's desk.

"You know you're going to get me fired one day."

"Never. He loves you." Liz waved a hand. "Also, we're doing drinks Friday. You can't say no."

"I can absolutely say no."

"Eva." Liz gave her a look that managed to be both warm and deeply unimpressed. "I just told that man you were in the washroom. I have been covering for you since Friday. I deserve drinks at minimum. Arguably a meal."

"You told him I was in the washroom because you enjoy the chaos."

"I told him you were in the washroom because I love you and also because the chaos is a bonus, yes." She tilted her head. "Friday."

Eva opened her mouth.

"Don't," Liz said pleasantly.

Eva closed it.

"Good." Liz picked up her pen with the air of someone who had never doubted the outcome. "Friday. Somewhere nice. You're paying."

"I'm paying?"

"You nearly got us both fired."

"You volunteered—"

"With love. Which is more expensive than obligation. Friday, Eva."

Eva looked at her - at the absolute certainty on her face, the pen already back on the page, case closed - and laughed. She couldn't help it. She never could, with Liz. That was the thing. Liz made laughing feel like something you could do without checking first whether the room was safe. Like it didn't cost anything. Like you were just allowed.

"Fine," Eva said. "Friday."

Liz looked extremely pleased with herself. "Knew it."

❧ ❧ ❧

The boss appeared at ten, issued his instructions - postpone this, call the McGregors, personally oversee the movers, and so on and so forth - and disappeared into his helicopter. Eva watched it shrink to nothing against the grey sky, went back downstairs, and spread her arms across her desk like a woman who had survived something.

"Better?" Liz called from across the office.

"Marginally."

"Good. Because the McGregors want to move the signing date."

Eva called the McGregors. She sorted the shipment documents, rescheduled two meetings, and spent the rest of the morning being so competent and unassailable that by noon she'd almost convinced herself the early start had been intentional.

At lunch she slipped out to the travel agent two streets over and paid for her ticket in cash.

She hadn't told anyone she was going. Not Liz. Not Tess. Certainly not Blaise - the whole point was to surprise him.

A year was long enough. She had things to say that deserved to be said in person, and she missed him in the particular way you miss someone you're supposed to be building a life with - someone who had asked her to, on one knee in her kitchen a year ago, hands not quite steady. She had the weekend. She had a plan. She had a ticket.

She tucked it into her bag, went back to the office, and finished the afternoon without telling anyone anything.

❧ ❧ ❧

"You've been weird since lunch," Liz announced at five o'clock, appearing at the edge of Eva's desk with her coat already on. "What did you do?"

"Nothing."

Liz gave her the look. "Eva."

"I booked a trip. Just a long weekend. It's nothing."

"Where?"

A pause. "Home."

Liz went still.

It lasted less than a second - and then she was reaching for her bag, adjusting her scarf, the motion smooth and ordinary. "Right. When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow morning. Early."

"And you're telling me now."

"I'm telling you now."

Liz looked at her for a moment. Something moved behind her eyes that didn't make it to her face. Then she nodded, slow and careful. "Have you told Blaise?"

"It's a surprise."

The something shifted. "Of course it is." Perfectly even.

"You'd better pack tonight then."

She squeezed Eva's arm once - brief, warm, the kind of touch that meant more than it appeared - and walked towards the elevator.

"Liz." She turned. "You'd tell me, wouldn't you? If there was something I should know."

Liz looked at her across the office. At the bag over Eva's shoulder and the ticket she didn't know about and the face of someone who had already decided everything was going to be fine.

"Get some sleep, Eva," she said. "Long weekend."

She left.

❧ ❧ ❧

Back at the apartment, Eva was halfway through her suitcase when the thought resurfaced - the three a.m. call, the number that no longer existed - and she sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, holding a folded jumper, trying to decide whether it meant anything.

It probably didn't. Wrong number, dead sim. She was good at finding explanations that had nothing to do with her.

She finished packing. Made tea. Went to bed at ten with the particular pleasant restlessness of someone about to do something they'd been putting off for too long.

She was going home. She was going to surprise Blaise. She was going to stand on his doorstep and watch his face and remember why she'd been so certain - about him, about them, about the future she'd been quietly building towards in the margins of her everyday life.

Everything was fine.

She fell asleep smiling.

She didn't know it was the last time she would for a while.