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The restof the drive was fairly quiet and so was the first half of dinner. It didn’t bother me in the slightest—it gave me more time to quietly study her features and mannerisms as we made idle small talk and ate.
After our plates were cleared and our second glasses of wine were polished off, the silence came to a grinding halt. Because once the alcohol had cast out the last remaining bit of awkward tension—Juliet opened up.
And by opened up I mean started talking. And she didn’t fucking stop.
To anyone else, it might have been annoying. But I’d always been better at listening and I found her giddy babbling absolutely adorable.
“So after we finally got here—and the drive from Colorado is no joke, seriously—it turned out that my friend didn’t know anyone in Florida let alone Miami and we were totally out of cash because we spent it all on gas. It was rough, but that’s ultimately how I ended up working as a waitress.”
“At Edelman’s?”
“No, it was a small diner just on the outskirts of the city. We moved further in and I started working at Edelman’s when Jamie got accepted to Miami University.”
“And you? You didn’t want to go?”
Her smile dropped and I caught myself wishing I could go back in time just to stop myself from saying those words. Even though I had the inexplicable urge to know everything about her—even the rough spots—I didn’t want to sully our first date with anything that made her sad.
“Just wasn’t meant to be, you know?” she asked with a little shrug. She smiled once again, but it didn’t come close to reaching her eyes. “Maybe one day.”
I wanted to ask why it didn’t work out that way. I wanted to ask what she wanted to go to school for. I wanted to ask about her hopes and dreams and where she saw herself in two years and five years and ten years and if she could even imagine me being in the picture that far off.
Instead of any of those things, I simply asked, “You want to go for a walk?”
The smile was back and I felt like I could breathe again.
* * *
We were soclose to the beach that it seemed pointless to walk anywhere else. I found a parking spot and took her hand as I led the way through the darkness down to the sand, pausing to let her slip her heels off before we made our way toward the crashing sound of the waves.
“A moonlit walk on the beach, huh? That’s a pretty romantic move for a man who doesn’t date much.”
“Well I’m a pretty romantic guy,” I said with a shrug, grinning when I heard her soft laugh. “Among other things.”
She sucked her lower lip between her teeth to keep from either laughing or speaking. I didn’t particularly care which—my dick was happy with the sight either way. At the same time, the movement made me think of Sarah even though I desperately tried not to. She just looked so young. Before we went any further, I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with here.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” she said as she attempted to keep her hair out of her eyes when the wind picked up. “What about you?”
I was too surprised by her answer to reply to her question right away. I raised my eyebrows and asked, “Twenty-six? Seriously? You don’t look it.”
She chuckled. “How old do I look?”
“I don’t know. I guess I had you pegged as twenty-three max.”
Twenty-three just happened to be the age Sarah was when our marriage started falling apart. I really needed to stop trying to compare them. It was going to either drive me insane or push Juliet away.
“Well, thanks. I think,” she added with a confused little laugh. “And since you never answered, my guess for you would be…” she trailed off and hummed to herself as she studied my face. “Thirty-five.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You flatter me, doll. Try forty-two.”
“You don’t look it,” she parroted back with a smile.
“Thank you.”
She began walking once more and I fell in line beside her. She didn’t seem to realize that I was watching her intently while she glanced around at the beach and the stars.
