Do I Know You?(11)

This time, though, I think I know how to help. “It’s not just you,” I remark.

He glances up, guarded. “What isn’t,” he says. Not a question. More like a No Trespassing sign.

I trespass. “I feel self-conscious, too,” I say simply. When Graham scoffs, I know exactly why. I’m supposed to be this confident actress—free-spirited, charismatic, full of inspiration. People reject me, too, Graham, I want to say. People judge me, too.

I don’t, though. I don’t want to open up that conversation, to show Graham how broken I feel. Ready to move on, I reach for the menu, scanning the limited bar-food options. “We should order,” I say, hating how much I feel like I’m hiding.

Graham isn’t the only one skirting shadows in his head, I recognize. Maybe I retreat too much. Maybe I need to work on fears of my own.

It means something that I want to, though, doesn’t it? Especially now, with the tantalizing echoes of the past hour ringing in my head. I’m curious. Not excited, exactly, but I feel it lingering within possibility. While I’m not sure what, we might have stumbled onto something. The truth is, the first few hours of this vacation haven’t looked like I expected. We met for dinner from separate rooms. We had a real, raw conversation, if one cloaked in performance. We bantered.

While Graham mulls over the menu, I reach out for one firm thought floating in the electric fog of the evening. Before tonight, I honestly didn’t know if banter like that was still possible for us.

Now I know it is.





6


    Graham


I SEEK SHELTER in the menu. Not from Eliza—who never ceases to stun me with how captivating she is. For once, I know exactly what she’s thinking. She thought our exchange just now was fun.

I feel exactly the same. It was.

No, I’m hiding in the list of nondescript bar-food items from the conversation she seemed to want to have. I feel self-conscious, too. Doesn’t she know it’s worse if I confess to how I’m feeling? Invite it into the room with us? Her sympathy will eventually turn into pity, which will only make me feel lesser.

So instead, I pass my eyes over the menu, once, twice, barely reading. When the bartender comes by, I order something I forget instantaneously. Evading Eliza’s gaze, I survey the space, which is crowded. It’s peak hours, the place full of people getting ready to enjoy the night. The bar is roomy, with elegant metal light fixtures and furnishings sculpted of deep red wood.

While the minutes pass, we wait in silence for our food. Well, not silence. More precisely, we wait without talking. Consequently, we’re left listening to the guy in a well-cut suit next to me hitting on the girl he’s with.

Honestly, it’s working. The woman’s wows seem genuine when he mentions the locations he flies out to for some manner of investment banking—meetings in Singapore, in Rome. She even giggles when he interjects some especially colorful commentary on his coworkers into his story of closing a Wall Street deal. His emphases feel pompous and overdone, but he sounds . . . confident.

It’s foreign to me, despite this guy’s career not being too far from the years in which I’ve devoted thousands of billable hours to the CEOs and conglomerates my firm represents. I feel skillful, sure, but not exactly fascinating. It’s probably just insecurity whispering in my ear, but it’s easy to fear Eliza sees in me something of a cliché. One more gray suit, one more cog in a machine irrelevant to her pursuits. It’s a reason I stopped bringing up my work in conversations with her. Like lawyers, finance dudes don’t exactly have the greatest reputation in the dating scene, but—the subject of our eavesdropping makes me wonder if maybe it’s possible for my kind of profession to seem interesting instead of just irritating.

Finally, our food comes. I dig in, feeling the increasing weight of the pressure to recapture our banter from moments ago. It wasn’t easy to keep up with Eliza’s wit then. Now, it’s even harder. I wish David were still here, his comfortably third-wheeling presence relieving some of the expectation.

“How’s your room?” she asks.

I put down my half-finished slider, feeling my hunger subside. The casualness of her question is head-spinning. Your room? Like we’re colleagues reaching for small talk in between sales presentations. Truthfully, I’m still not very sure of my feelings on our unique lodgings—I’m one part not thrilled to bring our issues out into the open, one part willing to walk into the sun if Eliza wanted me to.

So instead, I reach for pleasantry to match hers. “You could have had the suite, you know. If you wanted.”

“I know,” Eliza replies. “I was just asking to make conversation.”

I blink. More inexplicable nonchalance. But then, we did just have a very weird make-believe session where we got “introduced” to each other. I guess we can pretend chatting about our rooms, plural, is normal, too. “The suite is fantastic. Unbelievable,” I say, omitting the fact I didn’t want to spend one second more than I had to there. “How’s your room?”

“Very pleasant,” Eliza answers.

I finish off my first slider.

“Are we going to talk about how you told that man you didn’t have a wife?” she asks calmly.

I choke on my miniature hamburger. Regaining control of my windpipe, I face her. Eliza watches me with emotionless curiosity, the reflected light fixtures twinkling in her gray eyes. I decide not to give her the defensive reply she’s no doubt expecting. I’ve cut apart more complex issues in court. I can certainly find the nuances when I’m litigating for myself. “I didn’t tell him that,” I say evenly. “I told him my wife wasn’t with me. He reasonably drew his own conclusions.”