11. Jenna #2
His mouth curves, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes now. “You can’t revert to the original terms just because the amended version scares you.”
“There is no amended version.”
“Sweetheart.”
“Don’t sweetheart me.” I lean forward too, because apparently the negroni has decided my survival instinct is decorative. “You agreed. I gave you paperwork today that gives both of us a clean exit. Sign it, and we can both pretend to have learned a valuable lesson.”
At least that’s what I try to say.
What actually happens is the drummer cracks his sticks together, the upright bass comes in with a low, rolling pulse, and the horn section detonates three feet from my left shoulder with enough brass to rearrange my organs.
I flinch.
Dominic doesn’t.
Of course he doesn’t. He just sits there, eyes on me, while the singer steps to the microphone and pours a smoky note into the room that swallows the end of my sentence whole.
Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
I lean forward and try again. “Sign the papers.”
The trumpet answers for him.
Dominic tilts his head, cups a hand behind his ear, and gives me an exaggerated look of tragic confusion.
I narrow my eyes.
He smiles.
I am going to kill him.
Slowly.
Over many years if I have to.
The food arrives and it’s obscene—seared scallops in brown butter, little curls of citrus, bread so warm it steams when Dominic tears it open with his hands.
There’s a salad with shaved fennel and pear, a dish of olives, something with burrata that looks like it was assembled by a person with both knife skills and unresolved sensual aggression.
I almost moan around a mouthful and catch Dominic watching me.
“Don’t,” I say, even though I know he can’t hear me.
He shrugs and mouths something like, “I didn’t say anything.”
We eat. And I try not to visibly enjoy the food. But it’s impossible. The music is good, the food is fantastic, and the company—and I’ll never admit this out loud to anyone—is decent. Just because I don’t trust his intentions doesn’t mean I’m immune to his charm.
The man is a master at working a room, and over the years he’s developed the skill of being able to disarm me.
Every time the set breaks and I gather my case, he asks me something specific—what my first Chicago apartment looked like, whether I miss real bagels, what the first thing I ever bought with a bonus was, whether my sister looks like me, whether I ever wanted to be anything other than devastatingly competent.
He doesn’t ask all of this in one barrage. He’s too clever for that. He does it between courses and trumpet solos, in the small pauses where a person might otherwise remember why she’s angry.
Normally it would infuriate me. But somehow he makes it feel like an invitation to exist as something other than the professional version of myself. Which is more dangerous, honestly, since I can see how a person could get used to being seen like this.
In the space between dinner and dessert, the band slides into something slow, and Dominic stands, holds out his hand, and says, “Come on. One song, and I promise to let you glare at me through all of it.”
My body reacts before my brain can protest. I take his hand.
His palm is warm and his grip is the kind that doesn’t force, just waits for you to notice you want to say yes.
I stand, resentment blurring with adrenaline, and allow him to lead me onto the small wooden patch at the front of the room that passes for a dance floor.
Dominic pulls me in, one hand at my waist, the other still holding mine. He doesn’t do the cliché dip or suggest a spin. He just settles us into a slow sway, bodies so close I can count the eyelashes that fall across his cheek every time he blinks.
I try to keep my distance. But he’s big and everywhere and my God, every time I let this man touch me I melt in a matter of seconds. All the old rules—no dancing at work parties, don’t let anyone see you at less than full aperture—crumble in the light of Dominic’s focus.
He puts his mouth near my ear and says, quietly, “You’re allowed to have fun, you know.”
I roll my eyes, but I soften into his chest. “My therapist would say you’re emotionally coercing me.”
“I’m not. I’m just giving you an excuse.” He draws a lazy figure eight with our hands. “You ever notice how the best moments in life don’t look planned from the outside?”
“All moments are planned,” I say, just because it’s the only defense I remember having. But even I can tell I don’t sound convinced.
He hums, not disagreeing. “I bet you were insufferable as a teenager. Yearbook committee? Student council? Spreadsheet for your crushes?”
“Crushes were beneath me,” I say because the truth is just sad.
He laughs, a low rumble vibrating through his chest and into my palms. “Why am I not surprised?”
He pulls me closer, and we dance the way we danced at the wedding, which is to say, too well.
His hand rides low on my waist, sure and warm.
I’m in heels and he’s still taller, which I will always love, and somewhere in the second verse I stop demonstrating indifference and just—dance.
Cheek near his jaw. His thumb moving in absent little circles against my spine and every time I think to myself, I should let him go, I should walk back to the table and turn this into a joke, he does something small, like squeeze my hand or tip his head down so his mouth is closer to my hair, and I never do.
The song ends. Before I can break away, he leans in, his lips grazing the top of my ear as he whispers, “I meant it back in Tokyo—ends of the earth, Pemberton.”
Something in me cracks, a fault line I had cemented years ago and called safety. But I nod, just enough for him to feel it, and pretend it’s the negroni talking.
We sit again. Dessert comes—a miniature cake, chocolate and blood orange and not nearly big enough.
He forks a piece and holds it out to me.
I want to say, “I’m not doing the couple thing,” but I let him.
Because I like the way his gaze waits for me to close my mouth and swallow and maybe I like dessert, maybe I like being chased. Maybe I like him.
Maybe there are worse mistakes I could make, and one of them might be not letting myself want what’s right in front of me.
He dabs at my lip with a napkin. “Chocolate,” he says, like I needed the update, and I wonder if anyone has ever looked at me the way Dominic does right now, half delighted, half starving, all in.
By the time the check comes, I’m loose and warm and a bit off my game, almost forgetting to reach for my card until Dominic already has his out.
“Nope,” he says. “Maybe I’ll let you get the next one.”
“There’s not going to be a next one.”
He studies my face for a second, long enough that I want to squirm. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.” He signs the bill, slides out of the booth, and offers me his hand. I take it.
On the drive back to my apartment, the peonies ride in the back seat like a child who fell asleep before the night was through.
At the curb outside my building, he comes around and opens my door before I can decide whether tonight ends with a handshake or fucking, and then he’s passing me the peonies and we’re standing on the sidewalk, under the terrible lighting, and he’s looking down at me with the grin dialed down to something that hits harder.
“I had a horrible time,” I inform him. “The music was beautiful, the food was perfect, and the company thinks he’s far more charming than he is.”
“None of those is a complaint.”
“They’re all complaints—”
He kisses me.
Slow. Unhurried. One hand at my jaw, the other nowhere at all, which is its own kind of arrogance—no pinning, no crowding, nothing to blame it on.
Just his mouth and the whole evening behind it, and my fingers curling into his lapel with the peonies crushed somewhere between memory and intention.
By the time he eases back, I’ve lost the thread of the argument, the argument’s genre, and most of my ZIP code.
“Good night, Jen,” he says softly.
I blink at him. The sidewalk reassembles itself. He’s not moving toward my door. He’s not angling for the lobby. He’s just standing there with the streetlight in his hair, entirely at ease, saying good night.
“You aren’t going to try and come up?” The words are out before my dignity can file an injunction.
Dominic slides his hands into his pockets. Slowly, deliberately, he shakes his head, and the look on his face is gentle and immovable at once.
“That’s something you’re going to have to ask for yourself, Pemberton.”
And then he turns and walks toward the driver’s side like a man with nowhere urgent to be, and I stand on my own sidewalk holding a paper cone of squashed flowers, outmaneuvered on home turf, wanting to ask and unable to make my mouth do it, hating him with a purity that feels suspiciously like something else.
“Dominic.” It comes out sharp and possibly a little proud. He stops, hand on the car door. “The paperwork is only valid for ninety days. You need to sign it.”
For a second he doesn’t move. When he looks back at me, the charm is gone, and what’s underneath is so quiet and so unguarded that my breath forgets its job.
“That paperwork is a lie,” he says, jaw ticking.
“No, Dominic. Tokyo was the lie.”
He holds my eyes a moment longer. Then he nods, once, like a man absorbing terms.
“Then I’ll have my lawyer look it over.”