The Wire Between Us

“Kiss Me!”

Alicent’s gesture came as a surprise to James.

“What?” He almost shouted. Not that he was shouting, but her demand for a kiss caught him off guard as he was trying to replay last evening in his mind.

“You heard me right… KISS me.” This time, she said in a strict but low voice.

“Are you crazy? Here? …. In front of everyone?” He was unable to comprehend where she was coming from.

“You heard me. Kiss me. Right here.” She stepped closer, chin up, daring him with the stillness.

“Alicent—”

“Just do it.” Her voice cracked on the word do, more than she wanted it to. “Prove to me it’s still there. That I didn’t imagine the last two years.”

He looked at her for a long moment — long enough that she almost believed he might actually do it — and then something in his face closed instead, like a door finding its latch. “Not here.”

“Of course not here.” She let go of his arm, stepped back, some old, familiar bitterness rising faster than she could stop it. “Not at work. Not at home either lately. Not anywhere, James. When’s the last time you kissed me as you meant it?”

“That’s not fair!”

“A while ago, you were smooching that son of a bitch, and now asking me to kiss you. ” He would not meet her eyes, checked who was watching, and his jaw tightened. Like when you’re caught doing something illegal.

“What the fuck? You sent me to him… I didn’t even want to go. And you know what happened. Every fucking person in the room knows what happened.” This time she shouted. Everyone turned their necks to them in curiosity.

“Look. This is my workplace. I don’t want you to create a scene here. Go home, we’ll talk tomorrow.” He said in a firm tone, although it clearly looked like he was frustrated and just wanted her to leave.

“This is my workplace too. And… why tomorrow? Why not now?”

“Our work is still not done.”

“Don’t.” Her voice cracked again, worse this time. “Don’t hide behind the job right now. This isn’t about the case. This is about you not touching me like you mean it in months, and now suddenly getting jealous over a mission you approved.”

“I’m not—” He stopped, exhaled hard, dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m not doing this here.”

“You’re never doing this anywhere.” She said it quietly now, all the anger draining out into something worse — something tired, something that sounded a lot like giving up. “That’s kind of the point, James.”

He didn’t answer. Just stood there, folder still under his arm, jaw working like he had a dozen things to say and had decided, again, that none of them were safe to say out loud in a hallway with cameras in the ceiling and Whitfield two doors down.

“I guess it would be best for both of us if we just give each other some space right now. Especially after what happened last night.” He finished the sentence in one go and took a big sigh.

“Yeah. Right. Space. Yeah, take all you need, because this will be the only thing you will be getting from me.” And she rushed out.

She turned and walked away first this time, and didn’t look back to see whether he watched her go — though some old, stubborn part of her hoped, uselessly, that he did.

That was not the first fight they had. But this time, something changed inside her.

• • •

Alicent and James lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, chose the same college, and even chose the same profession. James was her whole world — her boyfriend, her best friend, and even her enemy. He was the smartest man she knew. She wasn’t any less, either. She was the overachiever of her family. Well, actually, she was the only one to achieve a normal lifestyle in her drastically broken family. Having an absent father, an abusive mother, and an addict brother, some called it a miracle that she didn’t turn out a freak like the rest of them. Due to her unstable childhood and emotionally unavailable parents, she struggled to regulate her feelings. So she heavily relied on James for emotional support and never looked towards any other guy, even when they used to breakup in high school.

James, on the other hand, had a childhood that Alicent could only dream of. His father was a retired FBI officer, and his mother was a corporate attorney, and he had a sister who was studying business.

James naturally followed his father into law enforcement, and Alicent followed him. Although her high school counselor suggested she should consider literature or art, Alicent gave it a thought. But when she discussed it with James, he laughed and called it a profession of fools who just daydream and create scenarios in their head and put them on paper to make some bucks.

His words hurt her, but she kept silent. Her small reading nook was the only corner in the house where she felt happy, because the books let her escape reality when James wasn’t around.

James was a kind person. However, sometimes he used to say things unintentionally that ached Alicent’s heart. But she didn’t want to lose him, so she would just do what he liked.

Things were going smoothly until James got the most-awaited promotion. It came as a little shock to everyone in the office, since Alicent was expected to get promoted to the position of Supervisory Special Agent (SSA). She knew she was the better investigator, but he got the GS-14 slot because he went to the right happy hours, played nice with the SAC, and his dad’s name carried weight in the hallway. But she was still happy for him.

James became more authoritative after his promotion. He had stopped asking and started deciding. Alicent noticed it before she let herself mind it. She used to love this about him — the way he made decisions without flinching, the certainty in his voice when everyone else hedged. It had felt like safety once, like finally being with someone who wouldn’t leave things up to chance.

Some nights, watching him talk over the phone to his father — always a little straighter in his chair, always agreeing faster than she’d ever seen him agree to anything — she recognized where the habit had come from. His father corrected people in the way other men breathed, and James had spent a lifetime learning that the fastest way to survive a room like that was to start sounding like the man running it. She never said this out loud. It felt like the kind of observation that could end a relationship faster than any argument would.

Lately, it felt like something else. Like the walls of a room getting smaller each time he spoke.

Now, whenever they were in the same room, they would speak less and argue more.

• • •

The hotel lounge smelled like money — cedar, old scotch, the particular hush of a room where no one asks the price of anything. Elena Cruz sat at the piano in a deep wine-red dress, cut to draw eyes without inviting questions.

She’d watched him come in through the mirror behind the bar and forgot to blink for a couple of seconds. He was in his late thirties to early forties, the kind of handsome that came with money attached. Well suited, light brown eyes, grown-out, ear-length hair that was sleekly tied in a small ponytail; and an Italian-style beard. He’d taken his usual table, back to the wall, eyes on the door out of habit rather than fear. Two men flanked him. A woman sat across the table — the meeting, she assumed, since numbers were murmured over wine that neither of them touched.

Elena let her fingers find the opening chords before she had fully decided to play it. Dernière Danse. French, aching, a little theatrical, the kind of song a struggling singer might choose to prove she was more than a hotel act. She let her voice climb into the parts about a heart breaking loud enough for a whole city to hear it, about wandering through empty streets with nowhere left to fall apart. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t supposed to be.

She felt him before she saw him. That’s how she’d describe it later, in the debrief; she wouldn’t actually be honest. A shift in the room’s weather. She kept her eyes half-closed, professional, and lost in the music and let herself look up exactly once, on the last note, timed like she’d practiced it in the mirror that morning.

He was already watching her.

Not the polite, distracted attention of a man waiting for his associates to finish talking numbers. He’d turned his chair slightly. His wine sat untouched. And when their eyes caught, he didn’t look away first — he let it stretch a beat too long, then tipped his head, the smallest possible acknowledgment: I see you. I see you seeing me.

Elena finished the song to soft applause and let her hand rest on the closed piano lid a moment longer than necessary, giving herself the luxury of not moving yet.

Across the room, he said something to the woman beside him. She rose, gathered her folder, and left with the two men—the meeting apparently concluded. He remained. Turned the second wine glass, the one he hadn’t touched, a slow quarter turn on the tablecloth. An invitation—he wasn’t going to bother speaking aloud.

She took her time walking over. Not rushed, not shy — a woman deciding, in real time, that she wanted to.

“You’re better than this room deserves,” he said, before she’d even reached the table. His voice was low, unhurried, the voice of a man who’d never once needed to raise it to be heard.

“The room doesn’t deserve much. Low bar.” She let herself sit without being asked, which she saw land — a flicker of surprise, quickly smoothed into something like approval.

“Vincent.” He extended a hand. “I’d say you have me at a disadvantage, except I don’t actually know your name yet.”

“Elena.” She took his hand, held it a second longer than a handshake required. “And you’re not at a disadvantage. I’m the one who works for tips in a hotel bar. You’re the one with a lawyer and a Rioja.”

“Fair point.” A faint smile. “What do you do when you’re not making this room sound better than it deserves?”

“This is it, unfortunately. Struggling singer, very on the nose, I know.” She shrugged, easy, self-deprecating in a way that was calculated down to the shoulder movement. “And you? Let me guess — something boring and profitable.”

“Cars,” he said. “Import, export. Boring, like you said. Profitable, also like you said.”

“A car dealer who tips like he’s buying the room.” She glanced at the empty second glass. “You do this often? Sit through a whole set for a girl who just introduced herself?”

“Confidence. I like that in a singer who introduces herself as struggling.” His eyes moved over her face, unbothered about being caught doing it.

“I said, struggling. I didn’t say untalented.” She reached for the wine glass he’d left untouched, took a slow sip without asking, held his gaze while she did it. “Someone left this. Seemed a shame to waste it.”

Something shifted behind his eyes — amusement, maybe, or the specific interest of a man used to people asking permission. “Careful. That’s a fifty-year Rioja.”

“Then I’ll enjoy it properly.” She set the glass down between them, an inch closer to his side of the table than her own. He laughed — surprised out of him, unguarded in a way she doubted happened often. She smiled back.

“Do you always sit through the whole set, or was tonight special?”

“Tonight,” he said, “I hadn’t heard anyone sing something that sounded true in a long time.”

Her pulse ticked up — not for him, never for him, but for the shape of the opening he’d just handed her without knowing it.

“What’s someone like you doing in a hotel bar on a Tuesday, missing dinner with — was that your accountant?”

He laughed, a real one, surprised out of him. “Lawyer. And I don’t discuss business with beautiful women I’ve just met.”

“I should get back,” she said eventually, standing before the wine or the conversation could talk her out of it. “Second set.”

“Before you go.” He stood too. “Have dinner with me. Saturday. I’ll pick you up.”

“In one of your fancy cars?”

“Hmm hmm. Be ready on Saturday.” Oh, he takes charge of planning the date. Nice.

“Looking forward to it.” She said it lightly, turned, and walked back toward the piano without letting herself look back — though she felt his eyes stay on her the whole way, which was, she reminded herself, exactly the point.

• • •

The breakup text is still open on her phone when Elena sits down on the windowsill, knees pulled to her chest, in the apartment that hasn’t felt like home in weeks. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I did not mean to say those words. But I think we are just different people now. A few words to end a years-old relationship, sent like a memo. She doesn’t cry. She thought she would, and the fact that she doesn’t scares her more than the breakup itself.

She stares out at the building across the street instead, because staring at something is easier than staring at nothing. Especially when she had finished the whole bottle of wine.

The lights are on in his apartment. They always are, this time of night. She’s stopped pretending she doesn’t look.

He’s there again — shirtless, bent over something low to the ground, his arm moving in slow, even strokes. It takes her a moment to place the rhythm of it: sanding. A table, half-finished, pale wood catching the lamplight, sawdust drifting in the air like static. She’s pieced together enough of his nightly routine by now to guess he’s a carpenter, or wants to be one — the mask he always wears isn’t a mystery for mystery’s sake, she’s decided, just a dust mask, the kind you’d wear so you don’t breathe in a lungful of cedar shavings. And the big frame glasses make him look faintly, absurdly attractive in a way she can’t quite explain. It should make him less interesting. It doesn’t.

Tonight is different. Tonight, he isn’t just sanding away in his window with his back half-turned. He sets the block down, straightens, and looks directly at her.

She should look away. Some old, sensible part of her — the part that pays rent on time and locks doors twice — tells her to close the blinds and go to bed. She doesn’t listen to that part tonight. Tonight, there’s a breakup text on her phone and a hollow, reckless feeling in her chest that wants to be filled with literally anything else.

He tilts his head. Doesn’t move, just watches her with an attention that feels like a hand on her skin from thirty feet away.

She stands. Opens the window wider, lets the cold air in, and before she can talk herself out of it —

“If you’re daring enough,” she calls across the gap between buildings, her voice steadier than she feels, “why don’t you come over and fuck me?”

For a long moment, he doesn’t move at all, just looks at her — two, three seconds that stretch out like they’re testing how serious she is.

Then he closes the window.

Elena stands there, suddenly cold, suddenly stupid. Great. Perfect timing, humiliating yourself on the worst night of the month. She turns back into the room, already reaching to shut her own window, already composing the version of tonight she’ll tell herself tomorrow — I was drunk on heartbreak and some wine; it didn’t mean anything —

Her front door bangs. Once. Hard.

She freezes. It bangs again, more urgent this time, and every instinct in her says check the peephole, call someone, do anything literally except—

She opens it in a hurry.

He’s still wearing the mask and glasses. Still shirtless, like he ran straight down and across the street without a single thought toward decency or weather. Up close, he’s taller than the distance let her guess, and the streetlight from the hallway catches nothing of his face — just the mask, unreadable, and the rise and fall of his chest like he took the stairs two at a time.

“I’m here to fuck you,” he says. His voice is low, rough at the edges, and it lands somewhere in her chest before it lands anywhere else.

For a second, real fear flickers through her — a stranger, a mask, a door she opened without thinking. Every rule she’s ever been taught says slam it shut.

She doesn’t.

Something in her — reckless, heartbroken, tired of being careful — gives up instead. She reaches out and wraps her arms around him.

He picks her up like she weighs nothing, her legs finding their way around his waist on instinct, and carries her back through the apartment toward the bedroom. The lights were already switched off. He lays her down and leans over her. She wants to remove his glasses, but somehow her fingers slip into his hair instead — raw, messy hair, still holding traces of sawdust. He smells like wood and sweat, an unlikely, overwhelming thing to find beautiful, and yet she does.

The night goes exactly where it was always going to go, unhurried and certain on his part, reckless and grateful on hers, and when it’s over, she sleeps better than she has in months.