15. Richard
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Richard
I’m nervous, and it’s ridiculous.
I have had dinner with senators. I’ve closed deals with more zeros than most people see in a lifetime, given speeches to rooms of thousands without breaking a sweat, walked into negotiations where the other side wanted to eat me alive and walked out owning the table. I do not get nervous.
I’m driving Emily to a restaurant I booked three weeks ago, and my hands are shaking on the wheel.
Because this is real. That’s the difference.
The cabin wasn’t real, not like this is, it was a wildfire neither of us planned.
The arrangement isn’t real either, not officially, it’s a thing we’ve both agreed not to name so neither of us has to risk anything.
But this is a date. I picked her up at her door like a teenager.
I’m taking her somewhere I chose. There’s no deniability built into it, no it-just-happened, and that terrifies me more than any boardroom ever has.
She’s in a black dress, simple, nothing fancy, and she’s so beautiful I had to remember how to speak when she opened the door.
“You clean up all right, Reed,” she’d said, which was unfair, because she’d just walked out looking like that and I’d lost the ability to form a compliment back, so I’d said something deeply suave like “you too,” and she’d laughed at me the whole way to the car.
“You booked a table three weeks ago,” she says, somewhere around the third red light, eyeing me sidelong. “Before you’d asked me anything. That’s presumptuous, Reed.”
“That’s hopeful.”
“What if I’d said no?”
“Then I’d have eaten a very expensive dinner by myself and felt extremely sorry for myself.” I glance over. “Probably ordered a second dessert out of grief.”
“Two desserts.”
“At least two. Maybe a third, for spite.”
Her laugh fills the whole car, and it does something to my chest I’m not going to examine while operating a vehicle.
Here’s the thing I can’t say to her, not yet, the thing sitting in me the whole drive: I have been in love with this woman for ten years.
I have slept beside her now, made her coffee exactly how she likes it, watched her reorganize my entire filing system and bully my assistant into bringing her coffee.
And this, picking her up like an actual boyfriend, taking her to dinner like it counts, feels more like a first time than any of it.
I want to tell her everything. The whole truth.
The years I wasted, the cowardice, all of it.
Not tonight. Too much, too fast. She’s three weeks out of a marriage and still flinching at notes on pillows. I can wait. I’ve waited ten years. I can wait a little longer to say the whole thing.
The restaurant’s tucked down a side street, no sign out front, one of those places you only find if someone tells you it’s there.
“How’d you even find this place?” she asks.
“Helen found it. She has opinions about every kitchen in this city.”
“Of course she does.” She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, and she takes my arm when I offer it, and we go in.
They put us at the back table, candlelight, private, exactly what I asked for.
“This is romantic,” she says, sliding into her seat, looking around.
“Is that a complaint?”
“An observation.”
“I can do romantic. When I’m trying.”
“Are you trying right now?”
“Extremely hard.” I watch her bite back a smile. “It’s frankly embarrassing how hard I’m trying. I rehearsed asking you to dinner and then panicked and did it in a hallway during a security removal.”
“It was a very memorable proposal of dinner.”
“I peaked at a bad moment. In my head it was much smoother. There were possibly flowers.”
“You own a company that has a fountain in the driveway and you couldn’t manage flowers?”
“I panicked,” I say again, with dignity, and she laughs, and I would burn the whole company to the ground to keep her laughing like that.
We order. I don’t taste a bite of it, because I spend the entire meal watching her instead, the candlelight in her face, how she gestures with her fork when she’s making a point, the fact that she’s here, across from me, choosing to be.
She tells me about a donor at the gala who tried to bid on the silent auction with a coupon.
I tell her about the time a board member fell asleep in a meeting and I let him stay asleep for forty minutes out of spite.
She tells me Paul has started saving her the good parking spot, which means I’ve officially lost him to her, and I tell her I lost him in week one and I’ve made my peace with it.
“So,” I say, once the plates are cleared. “That whole thing with Carmen tonight.”
“Don’t.” She holds up a hand, but she’s almost smiling. “I’m not letting her have any more of my evening than she already stole.”
“Fair. For what it’s worth, you were terrifying. I came over to rescue you and you’d already finished her off. I just got to do the security part.”
“You did the security part very well.”
“I’ve been practicing my cold voice. Glad it landed.” I refill her water. “She really booked a job at your gala just to get in your face?”
“Booked it under her own name and everything. Didn’t even try to hide it.” Emily rolls her eyes so hard I worry for her. “Honestly, the audacity is almost impressive. Almost.”
“Almost.” I watch her shake her head and reach for her wine, lighter than she was an hour ago, and I think about how a few weeks ago that woman could have ruined her whole night, and tonight she’s a story Emily’s already half laughing about.
That’s the thing I can’t stop noticing. She keeps getting bigger. Every week there’s more of her.
“Can I ask you something dumb,” she says, somewhere between courses, chin on her hand. “Back in high school. Did you even know who I was? Like, really? Or was I just the junior who ran the meetings and kept the snacks stocked?”
The question catches me off guard. “You’re serious.”
“I had the biggest crush on you,” she says, easy, like it costs her nothing now. “Everyone did, you were the quarterback. I figured you barely registered me. I’ve honestly wondered if you remembered me at all before the reunion.”
My throat goes tight. She has no idea. Ten years and she genuinely thinks she was background to me, and I want to tell her everything right now, the whole truth, that I was halfway in love with her by October of that year.
But that’s a heavier thing than this table can hold tonight, so I give her the part I can.
“Em. I remembered you fine.” I set my fork down. “I liked you. A lot. More than I knew what to do with, honestly.”
She blinks at me. “You did not.”
“I did.”
“You never said anything. You never... you were a senior, you could’ve...” She stops. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I was a coward.” It comes out flat and true.
“I’d never liked anyone that much, and it scared the hell out of me.
I figured I’d graduate, go off to college, we’d fall apart by Christmas, and I’d have to live with it.
So I just... didn’t. Kept you as a friend and never found out.
” I make myself hold her eyes. “That’s the whole sad story.
I was a scared eighteen-year-old and I let you walk off thinking you barely registered.
When you were the only thing I thought about. ”
She’s gone very still.
“So in high school,” she says slowly, “we just... missed each other.”
“Yeah.” My chest aches with it. “We did.”
Neither of us says anything else. Then she lets out a breath and looks down at her plate, and I make myself say the rest of it, the part I’ve been carrying since the lake.
“I’m not going to be a coward about it twice,” I tell her. “I want a real shot. Not the arrangement, not the no-strings thing. You and me, for real. I’m asking.”
I watch it land. I watch her want it and get scared of it in the same second, and I brace, because I know her well enough now to see the hesitation coming.
“Richard.” She presses her lips together.
“I want to. God, I want to. But I walked out of a marriage three weeks ago. I don’t even have my own apartment yet, I’m living in your guest room, I work for you.
What if this is just... the first warm thing after a cold two years and I can’t tell the difference?
What if I throw myself into this too fast and we wreck something that could’ve been good if I’d just waited?
” Her eyes come up. “I’ve never felt like this with anyone.
That’s exactly why I’m scared of it. I need some time. Is that okay? Can you give me time?”
“Emily.” I turn her hand over and press my mouth to her palm. “I waited ten years. I think I can manage a little longer. Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”
She lets out a shaky laugh, and her fingers curl around mine, and she holds on.
She needs time before she’ll call this what it is. I get that, and I meant it when I said I’d wait. But time and tonight aren’t the same thing, and she makes that real clear the second we’re through the front door.
She doesn’t make it to the stairs. She’s got me backed against the wall of the entryway, both hands fisted in my shirt, kissing me like she’s been holding it in all through dinner, and maybe she has, because I sure as hell have.
I get a hand in her hair and the other low on her back and pull her in flush, and she makes this small sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
Her hands are already working my buttons loose, fast, impatient, nothing careful about it.
“Upstairs,” I manage, against her jaw. “Unless you want Charles to find us like this.”
“God.” She laughs, breathless, forehead dropping to my chest for a second. “Okay. Upstairs.”
***
It’s her room she leads me to, not mine. She says it on the stairs, almost shy about it. “Mine tonight.” Like it matters which bed. Maybe it does. Maybe it’s her planting a flag, choosing the ground. I follow her in either way.