Chapter 5: The Interview Aftermath
The green room after the late-night show smelled of stale coffee and adrenaline. Matt stood by the door, his body held in the same easy, relaxed posture he’d maintained for the seventeen-minute interview. It was a lie. Every muscle was a drawn bowstring.
Dasha was a flurry of silent motion, gathering his jacket, his water bottle, her tablet tucked under her arm. She hadn’t looked at him since the segment ended.
The host’s voice, all faux-concern, seemed to echo in the cramped space. “Our viewers have noticed you’re rarely without your assistant, Dasha, these days. The chemistry is quite… palpable. Is there a new muse influencing your choices?” It had been a softball, dipped in arsenic.
Matt had deflected with a laugh that felt like splintering wood. “Dasha’s my secret weapon. If she has a muse, it’s probably a perfectly organized spreadsheet.”
But the damage was done. The question hung in the air, a stain.
Elliot was already on speakerphone, his voice tinny and screeching from Dasha’s device as they moved into the private elevator. “—absolute vulture! I’m drafting a complaint. ‘Palpable chemistry’? What is this, a baking show? I’ll have his toupee in a lawsuit!”
“Elliot, not now,” Matt said, his voice low.
“Not now? The clips are already trending! ‘Matt Bomer’s Office Wife’ is the number three hashtag. This isn’t ‘damage,’ this is a five-alarm structural fire!”
Dasha finally spoke, her eyes on the descending floor numbers. “It’s handled. I’ve already issued a statement to the relevant outlets clarifying my role as Chief of Operations. I’ve contacted the show’s producer with a list of contractual breaches regarding agreed-upon topic parameters. The narrative is being redirected to your upcoming foundation work with veterans.” Her tone was clinical, devoid of inflection. “The ecosystem,” she added, a hollow echo of their joke, “is contained.”
The elevator doors opened to the penthouse’s private foyer. The vast, dark space beyond was silent.
“See?” Elliot chirped, mollified. “A spreadsheet muse. I told you. Crisis averted. Go drink a very expensive scotch. Both of you.”
The line went dead.
The silence that followed was a physical thing, thick and hot. Matt didn’t move toward the lights. He watched Dasha step out, her heels clicking on the marble, a soldier retreating from a completed mission.
“A statement,” he said.
She paused. “Standard protocol.”
“Clarifying your role.”
“Yes.”
“Redirecting the narrative.” He took a step forward. The elevator doors sighed shut behind him, sealing them in the dim, pre-dawn glow from the windows. “Efficient.”
“That’s what you pay me for.”
“Is it?” The words came out sharper than he intended. All the polished composure of the last two hours crystallized into a cold, hard point. “You issued a statement saying what, exactly? That there’s nothing palpable? That any perceived chemistry is a clerical error?”
She turned to face him then, her profile edged in the city’s grey light. Her professional mask was flawless. Impenetrable. It infuriated him. “I stated facts. My qualifications. Your philanthropic schedule. The insinuation was unprofessional and baseless. I made it go away.”
“You made it go away.” He closed the distance between them. He could smell the faint, crisp scent of her perfume, the one that haunted his rooms. It was on his clothes. “Not the question. Not the… insinuation. You just neatly filed it under ‘baseless’ and locked the drawer.”
“What would you have preferred?” Her voice tightened, a hairline fracture. “A confirmation?”
He reached out then, his fingers closing around her wrist. Not hard. But final. The pulse beneath his thumb was a frantic, trapped bird. “I would have preferred the truth.”
Her eyes flashed. “The truth is a non-disclosure agreement and a direct deposit every other Friday. The truth is a sewing kit and a taser. The truth is contained within expected parameters.” She tried to pull her arm back, but he held firm.
“The truth,” he said, pulling her closer, his voice dropping to a rough whisper, “is that you knelt on the floor of the Lincoln Center and your hands shook. The truth is you haven’t looked me in the eye since. The truth is that ‘palpable’ is the most accurate word that idiot has ever used.”
Her breath hitched. The mask didn’t crack; it dissolved. In the weak light, he saw it all—the frayed edges, the exhaustion, the sheer, terrifying want she’d buried under a mountain of efficient protocols. It mirrored his own.
“You let me do it,” she accused, her voice raw. “You let me go out there and professionally deny something, and you stood there looking… composed. You’re always so composed.”
“I’m not.” The admission tore out of him. He guided her wrist, pulling her until her hand was flat against his chest, over his sternum. Her fingers were cold. “Feel that? That’s not composed. That hasn’t been composed for months.”
Beneath her palm, his heart hammered a violent, irregular rhythm. It was the most exposed he’d ever been. No character, no script, no charming deflection.
She stared at their hands, at the point of contact burning through the fine wool of his suit. Her own composure was in ruins. “This is a catastrophic breach of protocol.”
“Fuck protocol.”
“Matt…”
“The desert is tomorrow,” he said, his thumb stroking the inside of her wrist. “We’re going to go see the silent rocks. And then we are going to talk. Not about parameters. Not about ecosystems. We are going to talk about this.” He leaned in, his forehead nearly touching hers. He could feel the heat of her skin, see the dilation of her pupils in the dark. “But talking isn’t what I want to do right now.”
He didn’t kiss her. The tension was too high, too precious to shatter. Instead, he held them there, in that breathless, aching limbo, where every unspoken thing screamed between them.
She didn’t pull away. Her fingers curled slightly against his shirt, clutching the fabric. A surrender. A claim.
Outside, the city began to lighten from grey to a bruised purple. The first true rays of dawn cut across the floor, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air between them. The coffee machine in the kitchen sat cold. The empty mugs were still on the counter.
He slowly released her wrist. Her hand fell from his chest, but the imprint of her touch, and the wild rhythm she’d felt, remained.
“Go home, Dasha,” he said, his voice gravel. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you at the hangar at seven.”
She nodded, once. She retrieved her bag, her movements slower now, unguarded. She walked to the elevator, her footsteps echoing. She didn’t look back.
When the doors closed, he stood alone in the brightening silence, his hand over the spot on his chest where hers had been, the ghost of her touch the only real thing in the entire, hollow room. The statement had been issued. The narrative was redirected. And every single word of it was a lie.