The basement archives of Summit Strategies were where good ideas went to die, and where junior strategists went to cry.
It was a windowless, climate-controlled concrete bunker filled with rows of towering metal shelving units. It smelled of old paper, ozone, and the distinct, metallic tang of forgotten ambition. It was also the only place in the entire building where Ava knew she wouldn’t be interrupted by Sarah’s interrogations or Marcus Kline’s booming voice.
She was sitting cross-legged on the cold linoleum floor in Aisle 14, surrounded by a fortress of cardboard banker’s boxes. She was looking for the original 1998 Bean & Leaf brand book-a mythical document that supposedly contained the founder’s original mission statement.
Mostly, though, she was hiding.
It had been twenty-four hours since the focus group fiasco. Twenty-four hours since she and Ethan had seamlessly tag-teamed a room full of crying consumers. Twenty-four hours since they had stood inches apart under the fluorescent lights, breathing the same air, looking at each other like the last six years had been nothing but a temporary clerical error.
Ava pulled a dusty manila folder from a box labeled 1999-2001 Q3
and sneezed violently. “Bless you.”
Ava jumped, dropping the folder. Papers spilled across the linoleum.
Ethan was standing at the end of the aisle. He was wearing a dark grey sweater over a collared shirt, his hands shoved into his pockets. The harsh, overhead lighting of the archive room cast sharp shadows across his face, highlighting the strong line of his jaw.
“Do you have a bell on you?” Ava asked, pressing a hand to her racing heart. “Or do you just naturally materialize wherever my blood pressure is finally starting to stabilize?”
“I asked Sarah where you were,” Ethan said, walking slowly down the narrow aisle. “She told me you were either in the basement looking for the Holy Grail of coffee marketing, or you had fled to Mexico to start a new life as a bartender. I took a gamble on the basement.”
“Sarah talks too much.” Ava scrambled to gather the spilled papers, her cheeks flushing.
Ethan knelt down on the floor across from her, helping her stack the documents. He was close enough that she could see the faint dusting of flour on the knee of his dark trousers.
“Did you go to the bakery across the street?” Ava asked, nodding at his knee.
Ethan brushed the flour away with a sheepish smile. “I may have bought a croissant. Or three. I stress-eat carbohydrates when I’m trying to figure out how to map a wireframe to a twenty-year-old brand identity.”
“I stress-bake,” Ava reminded him. “You stress-eat. We were a very dangerous combination for our metabolisms.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them. It was a casual reference to their shared past, the kind of easy, domestic shorthand they had been trying so hard to avoid.
Ethan paused, a stack of papers in his hand. He looked at her, his hazel eyes softening. “We were,” he agreed quietly.
He handed her the stack of papers. As she took them, his fingers brushed against hers. The contact lasted for less than a second, but it felt like a static shock.
Ava pulled her hand back, clutching the folders to her chest. She looked down at his hands. Specifically, she looked at his left wrist.
The vintage 1970s Omega watch gleamed in the harsh basement light. The leather band was worn soft and dark with age, the silver casing scratched from years of daily wear.
She had bought it for him at an estate sale in Wicker Park. It had cost her two weeks’ worth of groceries. She had given it to him on a
rainy Tuesday night, sitting on the floor of his apartment, celebrating his promotion to Senior Copywriter. Two hours later, he had told her about the job offer in Los Angeles.
“Why do you still wear it?”
The question hung in the dusty air, heavy and irrevocable. Ava hadn’t planned to ask it. She had spent the last three days actively avoiding the subject. But sitting here on the floor of the archives, surrounded by the ghosts of old campaigns, the words simply demanded to be spoken.
Ethan froze. He looked down at his wrist, his thumb instinctively coming up to trace the edge of the silver dial.
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the low, steady hum of the climate control system.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Ava said quickly, suddenly terrified of what he might say. “It’s none of my business. It’s a nice watch. It keeps good time. I get it.”
“It loses three minutes every week,” Ethan said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Ava blinked. “What?”
“It loses three minutes every week,” Ethan repeated, looking up at her. His eyes were dark, stripped of all their usual charismatic armor. “I have to reset it every Sunday morning. The jeweler in LA told me the internal mechanism is shot. He said it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to keep fixing it.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Ava asked, her voice trembling slightly.
Ethan let out a slow, ragged breath. He leaned back against the metal shelving unit, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“When I moved to LA,” Ethan started, staring at the opposite wall, “I thought I was stepping into the life I was supposed to have. The corner office, the massive accounts, the money. And I got it. I got all of it.” He turned his head to look at her. The raw vulnerability in his expression made Ava’s chest ache.
“But the thing they don’t tell you about climbing that fast,” Ethan continued, “is that the air gets really thin. You look around, and you realize you don’t actually know anyone. You’re surrounded by people who want something from you, or people who want to be you, but nobody actually knows you.”
Ava hugged the folders tighter to her chest. “Ethan…”
“I wore the watch,” Ethan said, his voice dropping to a fierce, quiet intensity, “because it was the only thing I took with me that actually mattered. I wore it because every time I looked at it, it reminded me of the guy I was when I was with you. The guy who cared about the work, not just the paycheck. The guy who ate cold pizza on the floor and thought he was the luckiest bastard in the world.”
A single, traitorous tear pricked the corner of Ava’s eye. She blinked it away furiously.
“You left, Ethan,” she whispered, the old, familiar hurt rising in her throat. “You chose the corner office. You chose the thin air.”
“I know,” he said, his voice cracking. He leaned forward, closing the distance between them until they were only inches apart. “I know I did. And it was the biggest mistake of my life. I wore the watch because it was my penance, Ava. It was a reminder of what I threw away.”
Ava stared at him, her heart hammering a frantic, chaotic rhythm against her ribs. This wasn’t a line. This wasn’t a slick LA consultant trying to smooth over a rough patch. This was the man she had loved, laying his deepest, most painful regrets bare on the linoleum floor of a basement archive.
He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and gently tucked a stray strand of auburn hair behind her left ear.
Ava didn’t pull away. She leaned into his touch, her eyes fluttering shut as his fingers brushed against her cheek. The warmth of his hand sent a shockwave of longing straight to her core.
“Ava,” Ethan breathed, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw.
She opened her eyes. He was so close she could see the individual flecks of gold in his hazel eyes. The air between them was thick, electric, and entirely undeniable.
He leaned in, his gaze dropping to her mouth. Ava tilted her chin up, her breath hitching in her throat. Six years of anger, of carefully constructed walls, of telling herself she was better off without him-it all dissolved into absolute nothingness.
She wanted him. She had never stopped wanting him.
Their lips were a millimeter apart. She could feel the heat of his breath.
CRASH.
A sound like a bomb going off echoed through the archive room, followed immediately by the unmistakable sound of a human body colliding with a metal shelving unit.
Ava and Ethan sprang apart, scrambling backward like two teenagers caught making out under the bleachers.
“Ow! Mother of-“
From the adjacent aisle, Tyler the Intern stumbled into view. He was covered in a thick layer of grey dust, clutching his left shoulder, and looking wildly disoriented. A massive cardboard box labeled PROMOTIONAL MUGS 2004 lay overturned on the floor behind him, its contents shattered into a hundred ceramic pieces.
Tyler blinked, looking from Ava’s flushed face to Ethan’s white-knuckled grip on the edge of the shelving unit.
“Oh,” Tyler squeaked, his eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. “Oh, wow. I am… I am so sorry. I was looking for the extra printer toner. I think I took a wrong turn at the 2010 tax returns.”
Ava pressed the heels of her hands against her burning cheeks, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s fine, Tyler. Are you hurt?”
“Just my pride,” Tyler said, rubbing his shoulder. He looked at the shattered mugs on the floor. “And possibly my employment status. Should I… should I go get a broom?”
“Yes,” Ethan said. His voice was an octave lower than normal, tight and strained. He cleared his throat, standing up and brushing the dust off his trousers. “A broom would be great, Tyler.”
“Right. Broom. On it.” Tyler backed away slowly, his eyes darting between them. “I didn’t see anything. I am a vault. A dusty, clumsy vault.”
Tyler turned and practically sprinted down the aisle, disappearing toward the stairwell.
Silence descended on the archive room once again, but the heavy, intimate spell was completely broken. The reality of the office, of their jobs, of the fifty-million-dollar campaign they were supposed to be leading, came crashing back down.
Ava stood up, her legs feeling slightly unsteady. She gathered the folders she had dropped, refusing to look at Ethan.
“Ava,” Ethan started, taking a step toward her.
“Don’t,” Ava said, holding up a hand. Her voice was shaking, but she forced herself to keep it steady. “Ethan, please. We can’t do this. We work together. We have a pitch on Friday. If we cross this line…”
“If we cross this line, what?” Ethan asked, his voice fierce and urgent. “We realize that we’re still in love with each other? Is that really so terrifying?”
The words hit her like a physical blow. Still in love with each other.
“Yes,” Ava said honestly, finally meeting his eyes. “It is terrifying. Because the last time I loved you, it broke me. And I don’t know if I can survive you leaving me twice.”
Ethan flinched, the truth of her words landing with devastating accuracy. He opened his mouth to argue, to promise her he wouldn’t leave, but he didn’t have the right to make those promises. Not yet.
Ava turned and walked down the aisle, her flats clicking against the linoleum.
“I’ll see you upstairs, Ethan,” she called back over her shoulder. “We have a wireframe to finish.”
She didn’t look back. If she looked back, she knew she would drop the folders, run back down the aisle, and kiss him until neither of them could breathe.
And that was exactly why she had to walk away.