Chapter 9 #4
He says something to the bartender, finally. She laughs under her breath and reaches for a glass. Damien moves to the bar and sits with the unhurried confidence of a man who has no interest in looking alone or accompanied. He is simply there.
I look down at my notebook. The line I was writing ends in the middle of a word.
Ridiculous.
I finish it because unfinished words offend me.
For twenty minutes, we do not speak. That’s the part that makes it worse.
If he had crossed the room immediately, if he had used the coincidence as an excuse, I might have filed him under handsome, arrogant, and predictable.
A common enough species, though usually less skilled with herbs.
Instead, he stays at the bar. He drinks red wine.
He speaks to the bartender in French. His voice is too low for me to hear clearly, but I catch the rhythm of it, the way the language sits differently in his mouth than English had.
Not native. Fluent. Used. He looks at the room once, then at me, then back to his glass.
He does not pretend that he hasn’t seen me. He also does not assume seeing me gives him the right to arrive. That’s more dangerous than flirtation.
The bartender comes to my table with another glass I didn’t order.
I look up. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know,” the bartender says.
I glance at the bar.
Damien is not looking at me now. He is looking at his own glass, which is very convenient and entirely unconvincing.
The bartender sets the wine down.
“From him?” I ask.
The bartender’s mouth curves.
“He said it’s not from him.”
“That is a complicated delivery.”
The bartender says, “He said you should taste it if you are serious about the beans.”
I look at the glass, then at her. “Did he?”
The bartender says, “He did.”
“Is that supposed to make sense?”
The bartender looks toward the bar, then back at me.
“With him, sometimes later.”
That’s not helpful at all. I pick up the glass. The wine is red, lighter than I expect, bright at the rim. I smell cherry, earth, pepper, something floral. I taste it. Then I understand.
The warm white beans had oil, herbs, a little lemon, enough creaminess to make the acid in my first wine feel slightly too sharp by the third bite. This red softens the dish without flattening it. It makes the herbs quieter and the olive oil rounder. It is exactly right, which is irritating.
I look at him.
He is already looking at me now.
I lift the glass by half an inch.
Not a toast.
Not thanks.
Acknowledgment.
His mouth curves.
The bartender returns to the bar and says something to him. He answers without taking his eyes off me. She laughs again and moves away. I drink the wine because I am not petty enough to refuse correctness.
Mostly.
At around 9:00, the chair across from me moves.
Not much. Just a soft scrape against the old floor.
I look up as he stands beside the table, one hand resting on the back of the chair, his glass in the other.
Up close, the room’s warm light does nothing to soften him.
It only makes the deep blue of his eyes more difficult to ignore and turns the silver at his temples into something unfair.
“You were right,” he says.
I lift my brows.
“I usually enjoy hearing that, but context would improve the experience.”
He looks at the plate of beans.
“The first wine was too sharp by the third bite.”
“So you sent me a correction?” I ask.
He says, “I sent you a better argument.”
“That is a very arrogant way to describe wine.”
“It was a very good wine,” he says.
I take another sip. “Unfortunately, yes.”
His gaze flickers with amusement.
“May I sit?”
I look at the chair, then at him. There are several versions of this moment available:
The sensible one, where I say I am working.
The polite one, where I say I am waiting for someone.
The honest one, where I admit I have been aware of him from the second he walked in and would like to know whether conversation with him is as inconvenient as standing next to him at an herb stall had been.
I choose a fourth option.
“You may sit if you can behave,” I say.
He pulls the chair back.
“I rarely can.”
“Then it’s good I said if.”
He sits. Not too close. Not leaning in. Not giving the room something to read too quickly.
He places his glass on the table and looks at me with that same direct, assessing attention from the market, only now there is wine between us, evening around us, and no bunch of tarragon pretending to be the issue.
The bartender passes our table and sets down a small plate of olives.
“I didn’t order these,” he says.
The bartender says, “I know.”
He looks at her. “Is this punishment?”
The bartender says, “This is optimism.”
I glance between them. “Do I want to know?”
The bartender looks at me. “Probably not.”
He says, “She overestimates the value of intervention.”
The bartender says, “He underestimates the value of being less difficult.”
I pick up an olive. “I like her.”
He looks at me. “Of course you do.”
The bartender points lightly at Damien.
“You should listen to her. She has better instincts than you.”
Damien says, “She stole my tarragon.”
“I selected the superior tarragon,” I say.
The bartender looks at me with interest.
“That was you?”
I pause. “Do I have a reputation already?”
The bartender says, “He complained about it.”
Damien says, “I described an incident.”
The bartender says, “He complained.”
I look at Damien. “You complained about me?”
His eyes stay on mine. “I mentioned you.”
“That’s worse,” I say.
He leans back slightly. “Is it?”
“Yes,” I say. “Complaining is at least straightforward. Mentioning sounds strategic.”
Damien lifts his glass. “Then I complained.”
The bartender smiles, satisfied, and leaves us.
I watch her go. “She enjoys you.”
Damien says, “She enjoys being rude to me.”
“That may be the same thing.”
“It often is,” he says.
The ease of it catches me off guard, and not because the banter is clever—clever is easy.
Men in wine bars are often clever until the bill arrives or a woman disagrees with them.
This is different. He is not trying to win the exchange.
He is meeting it. Taking the hit, returning one, watching to see if I can keep pace without asking me to slow down. I can. That is the problem.
Damien glances at the open notebook beside my glass.
“Am I interrupting work?”
“Yes,” I say.
He looks at me. “Should I leave?”
“No,” I say.
The answer comes too quickly.
His eyes hold mine.
My pulse does something foolish, then tries to recover with dignity.
I pick up my wine. “I mean, the work will survive.”
Damien’s mouth curves. “Good.”
“That wasn’t an invitation to look pleased with yourself.”
“I was looking pleased with the work’s resilience,” Damien says.
“Of course.”
“Very important quality in work.”
“And in people,” I say.
His expression shifts slightly.
There it is. A small opening. Not vulnerability. Not yet. Something closer to recognition.
He takes a sip of wine.
“Yes,” he says. “In people too.”
The room moves around us. The women by the window leave.
A couple takes their table. The bartender opens a new bottle for the men at the bar.
Night presses against the windows, turning the glass into a dim reflection of warm light, dark wood, and the two of us sitting at a corner table as if this had been arranged long before either of us arrived.
Damien gestures toward the beans.
“You liked them.”
“I did,” I say.
“But?”
I look at him. “There’s always a but?”
“With that face, yes.”
“What face?”
“The one you make when the food is good but not finished becoming itself.”
I stare at him. He waits. The sentence is too specific.
“It needed more salt at the end,” I say.
Damien nods once. “Yes.”
“That wasn’t a question either.”
“No,” Damien says. “It was a test.”
“I don’t like tests.”
“You answered anyway.”
“Because it was beneath me not to.”
His smile is slow this time, and I feel it somewhere low in my body, which is deeply inconvenient.
“Noted,” he says.
I set the wine down. “You’re very comfortable being irritating.”
“Comfortable is the wrong word,” he says.
“What is the right word?”
“Experienced,” he chimes back.
I laugh before I can stop myself. His gaze drops to my mouth, but only for a second. He looks back at my eyes as if he has not done it, but he has, and my body is very unhelpfully aware of the fact. I reach for an olive because it gives my hand something to do.
“So,” I say, “are you going to tell me what you do, or are we pretending mystery is a personality?”
Damien looks amused.
“Do you always ask strangers for employment records?”
“Only ones who interfere with my herbs and my dinner.”
“I didn’t interfere with dinner. I improved the wine.”
“Interference can be competent,” I say.
“That is true,” he says.
He considers me for a moment, and I can almost see him deciding which answer to give. Not whether to lie. That is not the feeling. More like he is choosing how much of the truth belongs at this table.
Then he says, “I work in hospitality.”
I give him a flat look. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s an accurate answer.”
“I said earlier that accuracy and fairness are not mutually exclusive. I did not say accuracy gets to be useless.”
He laughs quietly. “Fair.”
“That sounded painful for you.”
“It was.”
“Good.”
He leans his forearms lightly on the table, and the movement brings him closer without making it feel deliberate.
The linen of his shirt pulls slightly across his shoulders.
His rolled sleeves show forearms strong enough to make me briefly forget the next thing I planned to say, which is not a thing I appreciate in myself.
“Sometimes I serve food,” he says.
“I had gathered that,” I say.
“Then why ask?”
“Because people are more interesting when they explain themselves.”
“No,” he says.
“People are more interesting when they reveal themselves by accident.”