didn't want to explain to Tessa. Not the three years. The small, humiliating scale of what had finally made me happy.

Grant put the folder down.

"Why did you go to After Hours?"

"I own half of it."

"You haven't performed there in years."

I let the silence sit between us.

He looked away first.

"Owen told me."

"That's helpful of him."

"Who was the man holding your jacket?"

There it was. The actual meeting agenda.

"A person with functioning hands."

"Miles."

"Grant."

"I'm asking a reasonable question."

"You're asking a personal question during a work briefing. I don't want to answer it."

He pressed his mouth into a line.

I knew that expression too. Usually, it meant I had been funny in front of someone whose opinion mattered to him, and he was trying not to encourage me.

"I was concerned about you."

"You sent your brother to a bar. Had you tried calling a licensed adult transportation service?"

"You'd been drinking."

"And I didn't drive. You can close the investigation."

He pushed the water glass an inch to his left, then looked at the papers again.

When we first started working together, that gesture had seemed random. Eventually, I learned he moved things into straight lines when he was avoiding an answer.

I had once found it endearing.

I was beginning to suspect I had been medically optimistic.

"Whoever he was," Grant said, "you shouldn't leave your things with someone you just met. You have cash in that pocket."

I stopped tapping my pen.

On Friday, we had walked past an ATM because I wanted cash for the farmers' market. Grant had watched me fold the bills into my jacket's inside pocket after my wallet wouldn't close.

I had never kept cash there at work.

"Which pocket?" I asked.

He glanced at the jacket hanging over my chair.

"I assumed."

"Of course. You also assumed I hadn't danced in years. You assumed you could send someone to bring me home. Yesterday, you remembered my name before I reminded you what you were supposed to have forgotten."

"People have told me things."

"Nobody told you about the cash."

His gaze met mine.

I hadn't wanted to have this conversation. That surprised me. On the drive over, I had imagined delivering something devastating and elegant. In the actual room, I mostly wanted the part where he looked at me as if I were a problem to stop.

"I don't know what amnesia looks like in every person," I said. "I do know what you look like when you're afraid to say what you want."

He swallowed.

"Tell me directly," I said. "If you don't want to date me, say it. I'll survive a sentence."

He leaned forward. "It isn't that simple."

"It became simple when you asked who I was in front of your parents."

He reached toward me. I moved my hand to the folder.

"Please don't do that. You don't get to push me away and check whether I'm still close enough to touch."

The door opened. A nurse came in to check his observations, and we both went quiet.

I stood by the window while she worked. Outside, an ambulance reversed toward the entrance. Somewhere down the hall, somebody laughed at a television. Life was continuing in its usual rude fashion.

The nurse asked whether he needed anything.

"No, thank you," he said.

When she left, Grant stared at the closed door.

"Miles, will you sit down?"

"I'm comfortable standing."

"Please."

I sat because I wanted him to run out of reasons not to speak.

He looked at my hand, at the ring I had turned inward on my finger.

Then his shoulders dropped.

"I remember you," he said. "I remember everything about us. I lied, and I need to tell you why."