CHAPTER TEN
Nadine was seven minutes late to our first date and called from half a block away to tell me not to make a thing out of it.
“I wasn’t going to,” I said.
“You put three reminders on a contract meeting.”
“That was your phone.”
“See? You’re already defending yourself.”
I watched her turn the corner at the end of the block. “You’re walking past the restaurant.”
She stopped beneath a streetlamp and looked around. “Where are you?”
“Behind you.”
Nadine turned. The expression on her face made the seven-minute wait worth it.
She wore a dark red wrap dress beneath a black coat, gold hoops, and boots with a heel high enough to change the way she moved without making her look uncomfortable.
Her hair fell in loose curls around her shoulders instead of the knot or scarf I had seen most often at the house.
I had spent the drive into the city reminding myself I was forty-nine years old. The reminder had not been useful.
“You could’ve said something,” she said when I reached her.
“I did.”
“After I passed you.”
“You were on the phone accusing me of being dramatic.”
“I said don’t make a thing out of it.”
“That’s not the same word.”
“It was the same spirit.”
I opened the restaurant door.
She paused before stepping inside. “You look good.”
I had chosen a charcoal suit, open collar, no tie. Nothing I would wear to a job site and nothing that tried too hard to prove the night was different.
“Thank you.”
“That’s it?”
“You want me to turn around?”
Her gaze moved over me once, slow enough to be deliberate. “Maybe later.”
Then she walked inside. The Morrow Room occupied the first floor of an old brownstone a few blocks from Rittenhouse.
Twelve tables. Low light. A bar in the back with no television mounted above it.
The owner had refused to expand twice because she liked knowing who was in her room.
Nadine took in the dark wood, white tablecloths, and the trio setting up near the front window.
“This is quiet,” she said.
“You sound disappointed.”
“No. Surprised. Portia said you were taking me somewhere with a reservation list and edible flowers.”
“Portia doesn’t know where we are.”
“She tried to find out.”
“She called my office.”
Nadine stopped beside the host stand. “She did what?”
“My assistant told her client dining information is confidential.”
Her eyes closed. “I’m firing her as my friend.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“She’ll appeal.”
The host took our coats before Nadine could answer. We were seated near the front window. Not hidden, but far enough from the trio that we could talk once the music started. I had requested the table because I liked being able to see the door. Nadine noticed me checking it.
“You always do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Know where everybody is.”
“Usually.”
“Even on dates?”
“This is my first one with you.”
“That was smooth.”
“It was accurate.”
“There you go ruining it.”
She opened the menu. For the first ten minutes, we talked about food because it was safe and because Nadine refused to order anything described as deconstructed.
“If the chef took it apart, he can put it back together before it gets to me,” she said.
“The short ribs are good.”
“You’ve brought women here before?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes lifted from the menu. I waited.
“That was honest,” she said.
“You asked.”
“I did.”
“Do you want a different answer?”
“No. I’m trying to remember how dating works.”
“It works better when both people tell the truth.”
“That sounds good on paper.”
“It usually does.”
She smiled, then the smile faded when her phone lit beside her plate.
Asha.
Nadine turned it over without reading the message. I ordered the short ribs. She ordered sea bass after asking the server six questions about the sauce. When we were alone again, she kept one hand near the phone.
“You can answer it,” I said.
“I’m on a date.”
“You’re also somebody’s mother.”
“She’s twenty-one.”
“Milan is twenty-five. She still calls when a tire-pressure light comes on.”
“Does she know how to put air in a tire?”
“Yes.”
“Then why does she call?”
“Because she wants me to tell her which gas station has a working machine.”
Nadine’s mouth curved, but she did not touch the phone.
“She texted me Wednesday,” she said. “Terrence told her he might move out of state.”
“I remember.”
“I haven’t called him.”
“Do you need to?”
“I need to talk to Asha. I don’t know if I need to talk to him.”
I left the answer where it was.
She watched me for a moment. “You’re not gonna ask where he’s going?”
“You’ll tell me if you want me to know.”
“That gets on my nerves.”
“What does?”
“You leaving all the doors unlocked emotionally.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you don’t push. Then I hear myself filling the silence because you’re sitting there calm.”
“I can interrupt if that helps.”
“It won’t.”
“Then I’m out of options.”
The trio started with an old Anita Baker song. Nadine looked toward them and let the music sit between us for a minute.
“He says Charlotte,” she said finally. “His company has an office there. The woman he’s with got offered a position, and apparently he can transfer.”
“When?”
“He didn’t tell Asha. Just said he was thinking about it.”
“That’s a hard way to give somebody news.”
“He gives half the information so people have to come closer for the rest.”
She looked out the window. I recognized the habit she was describing because I had used my own version of it. Silence could make people chase you. So could withholding a decision until everybody else arranged themselves around your uncertainty.
“You don’t have to solve it tonight,” I said.
“I’m not trying to.”
“You’re holding your jaw like you are.”
Her hand went to it. “You study me too much.”
“I notice things.”
“That’s a prettier word.”
Our food arrived before the conversation could become an argument neither of us wanted. Nadine tasted the sea bass and closed her eyes.
“That good?”
“Don’t talk to me for a second.”
I ate while she took another bite.
When she opened her eyes, she pointed her fork at my plate. “Let me taste that.”
I cut a piece of short rib and held the fork across the table. She looked at it.
“What?” I asked.
“You could put it on my plate.”
“I could.”
“That fork has been in your mouth.”
“So has mine.”
Her gaze stayed on my face as she leaned forward and took the bite. The movement was simple. The effect was not.
Nadine sat back slowly. “That is good.”
I set the fork down before I did something less appropriate with it.
For the rest of dinner, we stayed away from Terrence.
She told me about the foundation’s summer studio program and the thirteen-year-old who had argued an entire grant panel into funding a photography lab.
I told her about buying Mercer Row’s first building with a roof that leaked in six places and one working outlet.
“You were married then?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Was your wife part of the company?”
“Not officially. She handled everything I pretended happened by itself.”
“Books?”
“Books. Insurance. Milan. Dinner. My mother when she got sick.”
Nadine’s expression changed. “You say that plainly now.”
“I didn’t then.”
“What did you say then?”
“That I worked hard for my family.”
“You did.”
“I also used the sentence to end conversations.”
She put down her wineglass. “Did you ever want her back?”
“For a while.”
“Because you loved her or because you lost the life?”
“Both.”
Her attention sharpened, as if she expected me to clean up the answer. I did not.
“My divorce was final eleven years ago,” I said. “I dated after. I had one relationship that lasted almost three years. It ended because she wanted us to live together, and I kept finding practical reasons not to.”
“Were they practical?”
“Some.”
“And the rest?”
“I liked my life separated into rooms. Business in one. Milan in another. A woman in a third. Nobody could take down the whole house if I kept the doors closed.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It was controlled.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
The server cleared our plates.
Nadine traced one finger along the stem of her glass. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“With dinner?”
“With you.”
I leaned back.
She continued before I could answer. “I don’t want to use you to prove I’m free.
I don’t want to wake up three months from now and realize I picked a man because he was the opposite of Terrence.
And I don’t want you thinking because I was married a long time, I’m looking for somebody to move into the empty position. ”
“I’m not auditioning to be your next husband tonight.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I’m trying to eat with you and see if you still like me when I’m not fixing your house.”
“And?”
“You corrected the server’s pronunciation of haricots verts.”
“He asked.”
“He did not.”
“He looked unsure.”
“I still like you.”
Her smile came slowly.
“I still like you too,” she said.
The trio moved into a faster song. A few people near the bar applauded.
Nadine’s shoulders had lowered. Her phone remained face down and quiet.
After dinner, we walked three blocks because she said sitting down any longer would make the wrap dress stop forgiving her.
The cold had sharpened. I put my hand at the center of her back when we crossed the street, then removed it once we reached the curb. She noticed.
“You ask permission for everything?”
“No.”
“What don’t you ask for?”
“Things that belong to me.”
Her steps slowed.
“And what belongs to you?” she asked.
“My work. My word. My mistakes. My daughter, in the way a grown child can belong to anybody.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not yet.”
We reached the parking garage where her SUV waited beside my truck. She stopped beneath the fluorescent light and looked at the Ford.
“You drove the lawn mower on our first date.”
“It got us here.”
“I met you here.”
“It still got me here.”
“That is exactly the kind of answer a man gives when he refuses to buy a new truck.”
“It has seventy-eight thousand miles.”
“It’s ten years old.”
“It spends most of its life at job sites.”
“Warren.”
“Nadine.”
She laughed, and I moved closer. The laughter left her face without the warmth leaving it.
“I’m not going upstairs with you,” she said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“I’m saying it before the kiss so I damn sure don’t have to say it after.”
“Okay.”
“That easy?”
“Yes.”
She searched my face. “You’re not disappointed?”
“I can be disappointed and still hear you.”
That seemed to settle something. Nadine touched the front of my coat, smoothed a lapel that did not need it, and looked at my mouth.
“You can kiss me,” she said.
I put one hand against the concrete wall beside her instead of touching her first.
“You’re sure?”
“There you go asking again.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Yes.”
I kissed her. No cameras. No plywood island.
No unfinished ceiling above us. Her mouth opened beneath mine almost immediately.
She caught the front of my coat in both hands and pulled me closer.
I put one hand at her waist, feeling the heat of her through the dress, and kept the other against the wall until she reached for it and placed it on her hip.
That was the permission I trusted. Nadine kissed like she had spent too many years being careful and had not decided whether she was angry about it yet.
I gave her room to set the pace. She did.
When her back touched the wall, I broke the kiss before the garage became a place neither of us had chosen for more. Her breathing was uneven. So was mine.
“You keep stopping,” she said.
“I’m trying to get you home with your dress still arranged.”
She looked down. The wrap had shifted enough to show more thigh than it had at dinner.
“Damn.”
I adjusted the edge without putting my hand beneath it. Her eyes followed the movement.
“You are very controlled,” she said.
“Tonight.”
The answer made her inhale. I stepped back and opened her car door. Nadine did not move.
“Friday next week,” she said.
“For what?”
“A second date.”
“You’re asking me?”
“I’m trying something new.”
“I have a site meeting.”
Her face changed. I let it last one second.
“It ends at six,” I said.
“You are not funny enough to play like that.”
“I disagree.”
“Seven thirty.”
“Where?”
“My house.”
“The job site?”
“Bring food. No plans. No invoices. And don’t bring anything that needs to be deconstructed.”
I smiled. “Done.”
She got into the SUV. Before she closed the door, her phone lit in the cup holder. Asha again. Nadine looked at it, then at me.
“Answer your daughter,” I said.
She nodded. I waited until her doors locked before walking to my truck. The date had gone well. That was not the same as simple. Nothing worth building was.