Page 9 of Lost With My Enemy

The restaurant is good. She was right about that. A bistro with a patio overlooking the National Gallery's massive spider sculpture, tables shaded by market umbrellas. She orders a Cobb salad with the dressing on the side and a sparkling water. I order a burger and a coffee, and she watches me add four sugars with an expression that suggests I'm committing a minor crime.

"How do you take your coffee?" I ask, stirring.

"Black."

"Of course you do."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing. It's just very on brand."

Her chin lifts. "I don't have a brand."

"Everyone has a brand. Yours is 'competence with a slight air of disapproval.'"

The pause lasts three full seconds. Then the corner of her mouth moves. Barely. A millimetre at most. But it moves.

"That's... not entirely inaccurate."

"See? Brands are useful."

"What's your brand, then?"

"I don't know. What did your due diligence say?"

She takes a sip of her water, eyes steady over the rim. "'Charming avoidance.'"

The burger is halfway to my mouth when I set it down. "Charming avoidance?"

"You're warm and likable and you deflect every personal question with humour. It's effective, but it's a strategy, not a personality."

The patio is busy around us. Tourists photographing the spider. A busker playing fiddle on the corner. Regular city noise, regular Sunday energy. And across the table, a woman I've known for four hours has just described me more accurately than most people manage in four years.

"That might be the nicest and meanest thing anyone's ever said to me."

"I wasn't trying to be either."

"Which somehow makes it worse."

She almost smiles. Almost. The muscles are there, the intention is there, but Elise Boyd does not give away smiles for free. They have to be earned, and I'm suddenly aware that earning one is going to require more than charm.

Good thing we've got fourteen days.

My phone is in my pocket and my camera is in the truck, but for the first time in a long time, I'm not thinking about the next shot or the next location or the distance between here and wherever I'm heading next. I'm sitting still. Eating a burger. Watching a woman eat a salad and judge my sugar intake, and the afternoon feels oddly unhurried.

Which is either a very good sign or a very dangerous one.

She finishes her salad, folds her napkin into a precise rectangle, checks the time on her phone, and says, "We're four minutes ahead of schedule. The rental check-in is in two hours and twelve minutes. I suggest we walk the Rideau Canal path to kill time efficiently."

"Kill time efficiently?"

"It's a thing."

"It's really not."

"It is when you have a schedule."

My chair pushes back as I stand, leaving cash on the table because splitting the bill feels too transactional for whatever this is. She notices, frowns, and says nothing, which I'm learning is Elise's version of a concession.