Ava was drying a plate when her father said it, so casually that at first the words didn't fully land.
"Invited Adrian to dinner Sunday," Daniel said, not looking up from the paper. "Been meaning to have him over for months. Man works too hard. Needs a proper meal that isn't takeout eaten at his desk."
The plate slipped a little in Ava's hands. She caught it before it fell, gripping it tighter than she needed to, water dripping off the edge and onto her sock.
"Adrian's coming here?" she said. "To this house?"
"Sunday. Six o'clock." Daniel finally glanced up, mildly puzzled by her tone. "Something wrong with that?"
"No." Her voice came out a half-step too fast, too bright. She set the plate down carefully, both hands flat against the counter for a second, steadying herself. "No, that's fine. That's nice."
"You sure? You've gone a bit pale."
"I'm fine." She picked the dish towel back up, twisting it once between her hands before she made herself stop. "Just surprised, that's all."
Daniel watched her a moment longer, the particular considering look he gave things he suspected but hadn't confirmed yet, and then went back to his paper, apparently satisfied.
Ava was not fine. Ava spent the rest of the evening trying very hard to convince herself that she was.
By Sunday afternoon, she'd changed her shirt three times and hated herself a little for it each time.
"It's just dinner," she told her reflection, straightening the collar of the one she'd finally settled on. "He's Dad's friend. This isn't about you."
Her reflection did not look convinced. Neither, really, was she.
Chloe leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her with open curiosity. "You've been weirding all day."
"I haven't."
"You alphabetized the spice rack an hour ago. You've never once cared about the spice rack." Chloe tilted her head, studying her the way she might study a puzzle missing a piece. "What's going on?"
"Nothing. Dad's friend is coming for dinner. I want the house to look nice."
"Uh-huh." Chloe didn't sound like she believed a word of it, but the doorbell rang before she could push further, and Ava's stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Adrian looked different in their living room. That was the first thing Ava noticed, watching from the kitchen doorway as her father pulled him into a brief, easy hug at the door the kind of hug you only gave someone you'd known for years, no hesitation in it at all.
He wasn't wearing a suit. Just a soft gray sweater and dark jeans, his hair slightly less perfect than it was at the office, and something in his shoulders sat looser than she'd ever seen it, even that rainy Saturday in the SUV.
"You didn't have to bring anything," Daniel was saying, taking the wine bottle from Adrian's hands.
"I know. I wanted to." Adrian's eyes swept the room once, taking it in, and then found Ava standing in the kitchen doorway.
For a second, neither of them said anything.
"Ava," he said, and something in his voice was different here than it was at the office. Softer, maybe. Less careful. "Good to see you outside work for once."
"You are too." She twisted the hem of her sleeve between two fingers before she caught herself and let go. "I mean, good to see you. Here. Outside work."
He almost smiled at that. Almost.
Dinner was, against every one of Ava's nervous predictions, easy.
Daniel talked the way he always did once he got going, hands moving through the air as he spoke, gesturing wide enough to nearly knock over his water glass twice, telling old stories with the particular relish of a man who loved an audience.
"So, there we are," he said, leaning forward over his plate, "twenty-three years old, and this one" he pointed his fork at Adrian "convinced the entire front desk staff he was fluent in French because he memorized four phrases off a cereal box."
"It was a very convincing four phrases," Adrian said, mouth twitching at one corner.
"A guest asked him a real question in French, and he just nodded very seriously and said oui, bien sûr about eleven times until she walked away confused."
Chloe laughed so hard she had to set her fork down. "That's the most embarrassing thing I've ever heard."
"It worked, though," Adrian said, leaning back in his chair, arms loosely crossed, something easy and unguarded in his face that Ava had genuinely never seen at Blackwood. "She left a good review."
"She left a review that said, 'the young man at the desk seemed very sincere,'" Daniel said, laughing so hard his eyes watered. "Sincere. That was the compliment."
Ava found herself laughing too, real and unguarded, watching Adrian across the table with his sleeves pushed up and his guard entirely down, telling a story about being young and useless in a way she'd never once imagined him being.
He caught her laughing at him and raised an eyebrow, a small, easy challenge. "You're enjoying this too much."
"I really am."
"Your father exaggerates."
"I don't," Daniel said, wounded. "I remember it exactly as it happened."
"You remember it exactly as it makes the best story," Adrian said, but there was no real argument in it, just warmth, the easy back-and-forth of two men who'd had this exact fight a hundred times before and enjoyed it every time.
Chloe noticed first. She always noticed first.
She caught Ava watching Adrian across the table, really watching him- not the glance of casual interest but something longer, something that lingered on the way his laugh lines deepened when Daniel told a story, on the loose, easy set of his shoulders that hadn't been there at the office.
Chloe kicked her under the table.
Ava jumped, nearly knocking over her own water glass, and shot her sister a look. Chloe just raised her eyebrows meaningfully and went back to her plate as nothing had happened.
Ava made herself focus on her food after that. Made herself keep her eyes on her plate, on her father, on anywhere that wasn't directly across the table.
It didn't entirely work.
It happened during dessert, small and quick, easy to miss if you weren't paying close attention.
Ava was laughing at something Daniel said really laughing, head tipped back slightly, one hand pressed to her collarbone and for just a second, her eyes swept back across the table and caught Adrian.
He was watching her.
Not the polite, distant watching of a boss checking in on an employee. Something quieter than that. Something that made her breath catch somewhere in her throat before she could stop it.
The moment he realized she'd caught him, his expression smoothed over fast too fast, like a door closing quickly enough that you almost didn't notice it had been open at all.
"Good story, right?" he said, reaching for his water glass, his voice perfectly ordinary.
"Right," Ava said, her own voice coming out a little unsteady. "Great story."
Nothing had happened. She told herself that firmly, gripping her fork a little too tightly, staring down at her half-eaten dessert. He'd just looked at her. People looked at people across dinner tables all the time. It didn't mean anything.
But the air in the room felt different after that. Warmer, somehow, and thinner at the same time, like something invisible had shifted just slightly out of place and hadn't yet settled back down.
Daniel kept talking, oblivious, already launching into another old story. Chloe kept glancing between the two of them with poorly hidden interest. And Ava sat very still, hands folded carefully in her lap, trying very hard not to look across the table again.
She lasted almost four minutes before she did anyway.
He wasn't looking at her that time. But she found herself disappointed anyway, and hated, just a little, how much that disappointment told her.