It had taken a month to get here — a run, her schedule, the usual friction of two people with too many obligations. I hadn’t pushed. I wasn’t going to be the reason it fell apart before it started.
We drove separately. I could have picked her up — should have, probably — but I’d decided against it. If she got there and changed her mind, she’d have her own car. Her own exit. I wasn’t going to make her work for the way out.
She picked a small Lebanese place. Corner table, candles, the menu on a chalkboard above the counter. The kind of restaurant where you could hear the person across from you. I’d looked up the menu in advance, read three years of reviews, and identifiedthe corner table as the best option before she’d even confirmed the booking. I didn’t tell her any of that.
I got there fifteen minutes early. The host took me to the corner table without asking. I noted it. When she came through the door she saw me and smiled — just for a second, small and private, like she’d expected exactly this.
“You look uncomfortable,” she said, about ten minutes in.
“I’m not.”
“You’ve checked the door twice. You asked if I was warm enough. You’ve looked at my water glass twice — don’t refill it, I’m fine.” She tilted her head. “What’s going on?”
“I want this to go well.”
“Holden.” She put her menu down. “I’ve known you for four years. I’ve watched you run security for the MC, walk into rooms that were about to go bad and make them go better. I’ve seen you handle every version of hard.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes. It is.” She looked at me steadily. “Because none of that mattered to you the way this does. I get it but I didn’t say yes to this version of you — the one who is performing the ideal first date. I said yes to Holden. The one I actually know.”
I sat with that for a second.
“You checked the reviews,” she said.
“Went back three years,” I confirmed.
She laughed — real, unguarded.
“I’m not going to apologize for it,” I said. “The corner table has sight lines to the door and backs to the wall. Objectively the best seat in the restaurant.”
“I know. That’s why I asked for it when I booked.”
I looked at her.
“Four years,” she said, perfectly even. “I know how you think.”
I hadn’t considered that.
“Tell me about your father,” she said. “Not the accident. Before.”
I hadn’t expected that. Most people either avoided it entirely or led straight for the crash. She didn’t do either. “He was a long-haul driver,” I said. “Gone three, four nights a week. But when he was home, he was all the way home — not half somewhere else. He’d come through the door and the whole house changed.”
Bea didn’t say anything. Just waited.
“He had this thing. Every time he came home — three, four nights on the road — first thing through the door was flowers. Before the bag hit the floor, before he kissed her hello.”
Bea waited.
“I bought my mother yellow roses once,” I said. “Year after he died. Trying to be like him. She cried.”
The candle between us moved. Outside, someone walked past the window. Bea was looking at me the way she sometimes did — not the professional version. “What?” I said.
“Nothing.” She looked down at her glass, then back up. “Just, you’re easier to talk to than I expected.”
“You’ve been talking to me for years.”
“Peripherally.” A small pause. “This is different.”
