“And what exactly is enough?”
“That he touches you like you’re there to complete the picture,” I say. “Not because he’s afraid the room will notice if he lets go.”
Her expression hardens.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”
“I’m making observations.”
She laughs once, but there’s no softness in it.
“And in your expert opinion, what should I be treated like?”
I hold her gaze.
“Like a woman men should feel lucky to stand next to,” I say. “Not like something arranged to flatter them.”
That hits. I can see it. Not because she agrees. She doesn’t want to. But because she knows there’s truth in it, and truth is always most irritating when it arrives through the mouth of someone you don’t want to validate.
“You don’t know anything about my relationship with Mark,” she says again, but this time it sounds more like she’s reminding herself than correcting me.
“No,” I concede. “Not everything.”
Her chin lifts a little higher.
“Then maybe keep your opinions to yourself.”
“I could,” I say. “But then I’d have to watch him continue to waste your attention, and I find that more annoying than silence.”
That does it. A flush touches her chest, not soft and rosy, but alive, reactive, sharpened by anger and something else underneath it she has no intention of naming.
“And what,” she asks, each word clipped and deliberate, “makes you think you’d do any better?”
I don’t hesitate.
“I don’t think, Evelyn. IknowI would.”
That stops her, not fully, just enough. I step slightly closer, not enough to crowd her, not enough to force retreat, just enough that the air changes.
“I wouldn’t look at you and see something decorative,” I say quietly. “I wouldn’t stand beside you and think about how well you completed the image. I’d stand beside you and know the room was watching because you were in it and be the one who lifts you higher for all of them to see that you were mine.”
Her breath shifts, barely, but I hear it.
“That’s very polished talk,” she says, recovering quickly, “for a man who’s already going back to New York.”
I had wondered when she would use it. I smile slowly.
“I may be going back to New York,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t see you again.”
She gives me a look that would send weaker men backward.
“What makes you think we’d have any reason to interact?”
Because I want to. Because I’ve already decided you’re not done with me. Because women like you don’t say what you just said unless they’ve imagined the possibility too.
Instead I say, “I don’t need a reason. I just need interest.”
“And what makes you think you have mine?”
