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Bill considers lying, or doing the usual job of saying he’s fine, things are good, he’s getting by. But this is Jeanie, and there’s no reason for him to lie. “I’ve been better.” He holds her gaze. “How are you?”

Jeanie shrugs as she looks around. There is a slight nervous energy to her. “It wasn’t the best holiday season I ever had,” she says with an unconvincing smile. “But my sister is able to stand up, and she’s taken her first few steps, so my family is thrilled.”

“Hey,” Bill says, mustering what he thinks is the appropriate amount of excitement. “That’s fabulous news!”

The summer before, Jeanie had gone to Chicago for her brother and sister’s nineteenth birthday party. She’d gone out with the twins after, and her brother, Patrick, had been driving when they were in an accident on a dark country road. Jeanie had escaped with minor injuries, Patrick with none to speak of, but Angela had been badly hurt, and it was unclear for months whether she’d ever be able to stand up and walk again.

“Yeah,” Jeanie goes on, still avoiding Bill’s gaze for the most part. “Her goal was to be able to walk down the aisle at her wedding this summer, so it looks like she might be able to do that.”

“I’m really happy to hear it,” Bill says. He puts his hands into his pockets and looks at the man whose back is still to them. Finding time to talk to Jeanie since they’d kissed the night of the accident has been nearly impossible, but now that they’re alone here, he isn’t even sure what to say. “Um,” Bill tries. “Do you think we could step outside and take a break together?”

“A smoke break?” Jeanie wrinkles her nose, referring to the time that Bill had taken her outside and given her a cigarette, which had been her first.

“Nah, we don’t need to smoke.” Bill pushes his chair in and leads the way, hands still in his pockets. He looks over his shoulder uncertainly, as if Jeanie might not follow him. “We can just talk.”

Outside, the afternoon has a sharp, clear feel to it. The humidity of summer is gone, and the blue skies are breezy, not blazing. Nearly everyone who works outside during the day has parked their open-top trucks and gone to eat lunch in the shade somewhere. The doors to a hangar in the distance are open, and Jeanie and Bill can see men sitting around on the concrete, eating their lunches out of metal lunch pails.

“So you went home for Christmas?” Bill starts.

At the same time, Jeanie says, “Bill, I’ve been thinking.”

They both laugh.

“You go first,” Bills says solicitously. “Please.”

Jeanie takes a deep breath. “I did go home for Christmas, yes, and there was snow,” she says, smiling at him gently. This is obviously her way of couching whatever she’s about to say in kindness. “But Bill, we need to talk.”

“I agree.” He nods. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you since that night, but it seems like there’s never a good time.”

“There never will be a good time,” Jeanie says quietly. “But there’s no way to ignore what happened between us.”

“And I don’t want to,” Bill says. “I’ve thought of it so many times.”

Jeanie flushes bright red as his words land on her. “I’ve thought of it too, Bill,” she says, stammering. Jeanie drags the toe of her sandal across the dusty pavement as they stand near the building. “And I wasn’t lying: I do feel something for you. But it’s something I shouldn’t feel. It’s something that I shouldn’t want or even think about. You’re a married man with children, and everything about it is wrong, Bill.”

He wants to argue with her on this point, but of course he can’t. Itiswrong. All of it.

“I just…I like you so much as a person, Jeanie. Talking to you is like having this great conversation with someone whose voice just, you know.” He pauses. “Makes my heart leap a little.”

At this, Jeanie laughs and she looks incredibly young. Girlish. When he looks away, she grows serious. “I’m sorry, Bill. That was just such a sweet thing to say.” She swallows hard. “It was nice. And I understand what you mean, because mine does, too. Talking to you about books or space or anything, really, is just so damn fun for me. Seeing you and catching your eye across a room makes me feel weightless. But we’re not. There’s a definite gravity to both of us, and to our lives, and we can’t ignore that. This isn’t some passionate love affair set on a planet where no one gets hurt.”

Bill makes no attempt to dispute this. “Of course,” he says.

“And I’m not the kind of girl who does those things anyway.”

A storm cloud passes over Jeanie’s face and Bill wants to grab her and pull her close. He wants to kiss her again, but this time not in a stairwell; this time right here, on the tarmac, within shouting distance of fifty men eating tuna fish sandwiches and sliced pears and thermoses of water. Only he doesn’t do it. Instead, he leans the back of his head against the wall behind him, closes his eyes, and turns his face up to the sky.

“I don’t go around kissing other women’s husbands,” Jeanie says, her words as forceful as bullets. “And I certainly don’t fall in love with men who aren’t free to love me back.”

Bill opens his eyes and turns his head to look right at her. “Then why not go back to dating Peter Abernathy?”

“Oh, that’s rich, Bill. You know I don’t have feelings for Peter,” Jeanie says sharply. She’d casually dated Peter Abernathy back in the fall and early winter, but it had been a bid for companionship more than it had been a real play for love and romance. If anything, what it had truly been was a way for Jeanie to stop thinking about Bill. And it had failed miserably, by her own admission.

“He’s single at least. He has no kids. No ex-wife who just killed herself. No past at all, it would seem.” This is Bill’s way not of pushing Jeanie towards Peter, but of pointing out just how boring and dull Abernathy truly is.The man is a dolt, Bill thinks, picturing Peter standing dumbly beneath a single streamer at his thirtieth birthday office party one afternoon just a couple of months before. “He’s a blank slate, and you can make him into anything you want him to be.”

Jeanie looks angry now, and she turns her full body towards Bill, nearly touching his arm with her breasts as she steps closer to his ear. “I don’t want a blank slate, William Booker,” she whispers, her eyes searching his as she stands up to him. “I want a man who brings something to the table. I want a man with a past. I want someone who challenges me.” She stops talking and stares at him for a beat before taking a step back. “But what Idon’twant is someone else’s husband.”

Bill is aroused by her nearness, and this alone floods him with guilt. He needs to walk away from her, but he can’t. He can’t physically make himself move.