Chapter 6
Ichanged clothes four times. Evelyn rejected the first two by video and chose the green wrap dress.
“I wore it when I found Laurel at my table.”
“Then don't let her keep the dress too.”
I wore the green.
Nate was waiting outside a narrow Italian restaurant two blocks from the conservatory. He’d changed out of his work boots and put on a dark jacket, although the open collar of his shirt kept him from looking too polished.
He looked at me without pretending he wasn’t looking.
“You look beautiful.”
No cleverness. No surprise. Just the words, plainly offered.
“You look less hostile.”
“I left the budget at home.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“It’s having a nice evening with my calculator.”
Inside, the tables were close enough that the waiter turned sideways to reach us. For once I hadn't chosen the room, checked the lighting or hidden a seating plan in my bag.
I adjusted my fork.
“You've moved it three times,” Nate said.
“The waiter put it down crooked.”
“He may never recover.”
I pushed it deliberately out of line. “There.”
“That looked painful.”
“It was.”
He admitted he'd read the same wine description four times because he was nervous. Then his elbow clipped his water glass. He caught it, but water washed over his hand.
“Very smooth,” I said, passing him my napkin.
“I was hoping to impress you.”
By the time the wine arrived, I'd stopped thinking about my hands.
We traded disaster stories. I told him about rebuilding a collapsed wedding cake while the bride's orthopedic-surgeon uncle reset his own dislocated finger. Nate described eight portable toilets sinking into a donor's lawn until their doors wouldn't open.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Moved the bar in front of them. People thought it was an installation.”
I laughed hard enough to choke on my wine. “You nearly killed me before the entrées.”
“I was trying to make you forget the fork.”
His knee touched mine beneath the table. Neither of us moved.
His phone lit beside his plate. Caleb, his twenty-six-year-old son, had sent a photograph of a dead houseplant captioned, Your grandson didn't make it.
Nate typed: I'm at dinner. Bury him with dignity.
The reply came immediately: A DATE?
Nate locked the screen.
“Apparently I’m the one with no life.”
“Children are supportive like that.”
“Do you have children?” he asked.
“No. We tried for longer than was good for either of us. Then we stopped.”
Nate didn't offer a reason or a consolation. He told me Caleb had been unplanned and that he and his ex had waited for a perfect time to have another until the decision made itself.
“That must have been hard,” he said.
“It was.”
The waiter brought our food before either of us had to make the moment neater.
Nate had ordered ravioli. I looked at his plate once too often, so he gave me one and I traded him the crispest piece of sea bass.
“This feels serious,” he said.
“It's fish, Nate.”
His knee was still resting against mine.
Halfway through dinner, he set down his fork.
“I need to ask you something, and you’re probably going to hate it.”
“Are you secretly married too?”
“No.”
“Good. That would seem careless.”
He rubbed a thumb over the stem of his wineglass. For the first time all evening, he looked uncertain.
“Am I your date,” he asked, “or am I evidence?”
The laughter left me.
“You mean evidence for Bennett.”
“I know what he did. I know it happened yesterday. If you came tonight because you wanted him to know another man wanted you, I’d understand.”
“But?”
“I don’t want to spend the evening wondering whether you’re looking at me or picturing his reaction.”
I could have told Nate exactly what he wanted to hear. I’d spent twenty years making difficult conversations easier for the man across the table.
I wasn’t doing that tonight.
“When I agreed to come, Bennett was part of it,” I said. “I was furious, and you were attractive, and saying yes felt like taking something back.”
Nate’s mouth tightened, but he nodded.
“Then you made me laugh. You spilled water on yourself. You told me about the toilets.”
“A proven seduction technique.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re lying about running a conservatory.”
“I can show you my identification.”
“And now I’m here because I’m enjoying myself. I don’t know what this becomes, Nate. I don’t even know what I want it to become.”
He sat back.
“That’s honest.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
“If it isn’t enough, tell me.”
He looked at me for a moment, then picked up his wine.
“It’s enough for another glass.”
“That’s not a particularly romantic answer.”
“I like you, Claire. I’m trying not to be an idiot about it.”
“Is that difficult?”
“Becoming more so by the minute.”
We shared tiramisu, and he stole the chocolate coffee bean after accusing me of weaponizing pasta. When we finally left, my cheeks hurt from laughing.
We walked without deciding where we were going. Nate asked where I'd travel if nobody else had a vote. I thought of the Amalfi itinerary built around Bennett's preferences.
“I don't know. Maybe I'd go alone and decide when I arrived.”
“You'd hate that.”
“Probably.”
“You should still do it.”
“You're already sending me away?”
“I'm testing whether I'd miss you.”
“Very efficient.”
“I run a nonprofit. We measure outcomes.”
At the corner where we had to separate, we stopped.
Nate touched my elbow. His fingers stayed there, warm against my bare skin, but he didn’t pull me toward him.
I put my hand against his chest and kissed him. For three seconds Nate was careful. Then his hand moved to my waist, and I forgot my age, my husband and every reason this was badly timed.
He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against mine.
“Why did you stop?”
“Because you've had a lot of wine.”
“Two glasses.”
“And half of mine.”
I kissed him again, briefly, then stepped back. “I'll tell you tomorrow whether I still mean it.”
“Please do.”
In the cab, I caught myself smiling at my reflection in the window. On the journey there, I’d checked the neckline of my dress six times.
On the way home, I didn’t check it once.
At my front door, Bennett’s forgotten charger was gone.
He’d been inside while I was out.