With the precisely inconvenient timing waiters around the world have perfected, a trio of young men grouped around our table, a small cake in hand, candles burning, and began singing “Happy Birthday” to Joe. Just as I had planned.
The song was picked up by other diners, and a lot of eyes turned on us. Joe smiled, blew out the candles.
Then he looked at me, love written all over his face. He said, “Don’t beg, Blondie. I’m not going to say what I wished for.”
Did I feel the fool for blighting our evening?
I did.
Did I know what to do about Joe’s wish and that diamond ring in its black velvet box?
I did not.
But I was pretty sure my indecision had nothing to do with Joe.
Chapter 11
WE WOKE UP before dawn and made urgent love without speaking. Hair was pulled, lips were bitten, pillows were thrown on the floor.
The fierce lovemaking was true, heartfelt acknowledgment that we were stuck. That there was nothing either one of us could say that the other didn’t already know.
Our skin glistening in the afterglow, we lay together side by side, our hands gripped tightly together. The high-tech clock on the nightstand projected the time and outside temperature on the ceiling in large red digits.
Five fifteen a.m.
Fifty-two degrees.
Joe said, “I had a good dream. Everything is going to be okay.”
Was he assuring me? Or reassuring himself?
“What was the dream?”
“We were swimming together, naked, under a waterfall. Water. That’s sex, right?”
He released my hand. The mattress shifted. He shook out the blanket and covered my body.
I heard the shower running as I lay in the dark, feeling pent-up and tearful and unresolved. I dozed, waking to Joe’s hand touching my hair.
“I’m going now, Lindsay.”
I reached up and put my arms around his neck, and we kissed in the dark.