Chapter 6
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— Austen —
“Elizabeth Bennet would have hated you,” I said.
Handful pointed his fork at me. “Elizabeth Bennet would have been fascinated by me.”
“She’d have seen through you in the first forty seconds.”
“Right. That’s why she’d be fascinated. Darcy she doesn’t see through for two hundred pages — she has to work at it.
With me she’d have it figured out by the end of page one and spend the rest of the book thinking about me anyway.
” He took a piece of bread from the basket. “I’m the more interesting read.”
I looked at him across the table at Fir & Salt. The corner booth. Our corner booth, technically, since the owner had started holding it for us on Sundays without being asked after we’d turned up several Sundays in a row.
“You finished the book,” I said.
“Last Tuesday. Mostly.” He tore the bread in half. “I might have skimmed the last few pages.”
“You skimmed the ending of Pride and Prejudice.”
“I got the guts of it. They get together, everybody’s happy, some cousin is annoying.”
“Mr. Collins is not a cousin—” I stopped. “Wait, you know who Mr. Collins is.”
The corner of his mouth. “Yeah, I know who Mr. Collins is.”
Six weeks of this. Five Sundays at this table — minus the third Sunday of the month, when he rode to Glenwood to see Mark, Heather and the boys and came back after nine that evening.
He’d told me about it in the first week.
It wasn’t an invitation. Just an explanation for why I wouldn’t see him some Sundays, offered the way he offered the club business texts — you’ll know when I’m not going to be here.
Next Sunday was the third Sunday again. I knew that without checking a calendar, which told me something I didn’t love about where this was headed.
You don’t memorize a man’s absences unless you’ve started to mind them.
And I’d told myself, in week two and with some force, that I was not going to be that woman.
“The Wickham thing,” he said, moving on without ceremony.
“That’s the tell. Wickham is better looking, better manners, better with people.
He’s the one you’d actually want to talk to at a party.
And he’s the disaster.” He looked at me.
“Jane Austen’s point is that the charming one isn’t dangerous because he’s charming — he’s dangerous because he knows he is and uses it. ”
“And this is meant to be reassuring because?”
“Because I know I’m charming and I’m telling you about it. Full disclosure.” He picked up his glass. “That makes me the safe one.”
“That is genuinely the worst argument I’ve ever heard.”
“But you’re still thinking about it.”
He had a point. I looked at the bread basket instead of at him, and was, unfortunately, still thinking about it.
Five weeks ago I’d still have been waiting for the reset Derek kept promising. The charm would slip and show me what was under it.
I read people for a living. I’d been reading Handful since the first night at Velvet, waiting for the catch. And somewhere in the last month I’d stopped. Not decided to. Just realized one day that I wasn’t watching for it anymore, and hadn’t been for a while.
“You’re doing the face,” he said.
“What face.”
“The one where you’re adding things up.” He was noting it, the way he noted most things about me. He’d been building a file on me for months, the same way I’d been building one on him. “Good total or bad total?”
I looked at him. The grin was already starting, the one that had set my teeth on edge the first night and somewhere since had started doing the opposite. He was waiting on the answer like it counted.
“Ask me again in a month,” I said.
He smiled — slow, satisfied, not pushing it. He reached over and stole the last piece of bread from my side of the basket, which he had no right to.
I let him. A month ago I’d have taken it back just to win. I didn’t, because he was right. He really was the safe one.