Do I Know You?(46)
Her eyes find mine, close enough I can discern their flecks shining like diamonds. “Always, Graham,” she says.
Suddenly I want nothing more than to finish this date, to live up to the me I am in Eliza’s eyes. “Let’s prove Lindsey wrong,” I say, reaching for the door.
Her fingers clasping my wrist, Eliza stills my hand. “Or we could wait fifteen minutes,” she suggests. “Or twenty.”
Temptation licks the edges of my mind like fire. I raise a leading eyebrow. “Here? Now?” I get out, then shift my voice just slightly. Similar to how Eliza does, if less pronounced. “But we hardly know each other.”
Eliza shoves me lightly, her wry smile urging my pulse on even faster. Leaning in, I lower my lips to within inches of hers. She smells incredible. Like her. I decide it’s reductive to say she smells like flowers or sunshine or whatever. She smells indefinable, her own heavenly fingerprint left on my senses.
I lower my chin just a little, like I’m going to kiss her, enjoying dragging this out. We never get to tease this way anymore. I don’t want it to end now. Not yet.
“Let’s have our date first,” I say to her lips. “Then we’ll see what comes next.”
While my words roll over Eliza, I slide open the stall’s latch.
Eliza doesn’t move for several moments, her perfect mouth upturned like she wants me to want to kiss her. Which, fuck, I do. Then, snapping the electric tether holding us, she swings the stall door open.
“I’m going to make you regret that,” she says before stepping out.
I grin. “I look forward to it.”
She walks to the bathroom exit. But when I follow, she stops me with her hand on my chest.
The flash of my fantasy from the bathroom stall stills me in place. It’s riveting, the charge of remembering everything I wanted. Everything I was perilously close to doing. The place I envisioned my hands on her hips. How I could practically hear the rattle of the latch when I imagined pressing her up to the door to kiss her.
“We can’t go out there together unless you want them to think we were doing something we weren’t,” she says. Her whisper is low enough I dare to wonder whether she’s envisioning hints of what I was. “Wait two minutes.”
I nod, my mouth dry.
She takes her hand off my chest and walks out. I watch her—or, “watch” isn’t the right word. It implies this is voluntary. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the way her jeans and T-shirt hug her shape if someone offered me the world.
She glances ever so slightly over her shoulder. Her small smile just for me hits like a jolt to my heart right before the door swings closed between us.
25
Eliza
I RETURN FROM the restroom newly confident. I’m going to enjoy my second first date with my husband.
Even by the time our entrees get here, my heartbeat hasn’t fully reset from the hurried pace it hit when pressed up to Graham in our wonderfully cramped stall. Graham’s glances—his quick smiles, the undercurrent of promise in them—say he feels the same.
It carries me with new ease into the conversation with David and Lindsey, who we get to know. Lindsey, who works for one of Oregon’s many environmental nonprofits, is impressed when David explains the unique difficulties of corralling five-year-olds into essentially everything. David is visibly delighted when he recognizes the names of several of the national parks Lindsey mentions, complete with details he can levy into informed questions.
When it’s my husband’s turn to share Investment Banker Graham’s interests and goings-on, Graham makes his first move.
His favorite hobby is reading, he notes, which draws Lindsey’s interest. What has he read lately?
Graham probably could’ve gotten into my college theater program on the strength of the way he levels his gaze at Lindsey, full of enthusiasm. “Have you ever heard of Notes on Tuscany?”
I blink. When Graham was in law school and I was pursuing stage acting, we didn’t have much spending money. Sometimes we went out—the Grove Farmers’ Market, the Nuart Theatre, coffee in Culver City—but especially once we moved in together, we spent lots of our companionable time going on long walks in our neighborhood. With the sun setting over the power lines of Los Angeles, we’d share the details of our days, including, naturally, what we were reading, if it was interesting.
“Interesting” would describe ungenerously my feelings on Notes on Tuscany and its sequels Notes on Milan and Notes on Florence. They’re my favorite books, which Graham knows from how I rapturously recounted to him every single detail of each on our sunset walks.
I grin over the table. He’s using our unfair advantage.
Picking up the invitation perfectly, I pretend I’m flabbergasted by this happy coincidence. He’s just named Vacation Planner Eliza’s favorite book. I get to gush, entirely genuinely, over plot points Graham remembers perfectly, because of course he does. While David switches Graham’s plate—they’re adorably sharing the superfood salad and the fried chicken—I move the conversation gently to TV series, then to Graham’s favorite legal drama. I see you, Husband, I’m trying to say.
While we compare favorite seasons, Lindsey looks openly surprised, like she might’ve misjudged our compatibility. David seems . . . less surprised. I get the feeling he might be in the know on everything. I wouldn’t mind if Graham filled him in. Honestly, I’m glad Graham has a friend to confide in, one who’s willing to go along.