"Milkshake? You want me to order a milkshake for you? Olivia, you're almost 30. Don't make me sick with this childish crap."
Those exact words. I'd memorized them the way you memorize the location of a bruise so you stop pressing on it by accident.
But now, behind me, there he was. Bringing me a milkshake.
I kept my eyes fixed on the computer screen and ignored the sweating cup he'd set beside my keyboard. The sweetness of it reached me anyway, faint and artificial.
I could feel his expression shifting. The silence had a texture to it, the particular quality of Dominic Sloane realizing something wasn't going the way he expected.
"You used to beg me for this," he said. Confused. As if I were the one who had changed the rules.
"It's past ten. If I drink it now, I won't be able to sleep," I said, and my voice came out flat. Emptied of everything I used to pour into it when I spoke to him.
A pause. The kind of pause that, in the old days, would have sent me scrambling to soften whatever I'd said, to smooth the crease forming between his brows.
Then, cold: "I'm going to the bathroom. We'll go home together after."