“Dinner,” I said.
“I can see that, but why is it here? Why are there hundreds of candles and fairy lights in the trees, and champagne, and picnic blankets, on a giant boulder in the middle of one of the most beautiful places on earth?”
I shrugged. “I think they’re trying to show me the kinds of unique selling points this place has to offer.”
“It’s very . . .” Ash looked around nervously. I knew her facial expressions so well.
“Very what?” I pushed.
“Romantic,” she said with such disdain in her voice that it bordered on disgust.
“I guess it is rather romantic.”
“Oh, please, Logan, anyone can see this is romantic. You don’t even need to have your eyes open to know this is romantic. Just listen to the bloody music they’re playing in the background. Where is the speaker even? No one plays background music like this if they are not trying to set a romantic mood.”
“I suppose they have gone to great lengths setting this up for us,” I said, trying to downplay the romance of it all. I could see that the last thing on earth Ash wanted was to be sitting with me on a beautiful flat boulder under the African sky surrounded by candlelight.
“Someone has painstakingly twirled thousands of fairy lights through the branches of a giant thorn tree! Not to mention the fact that the candles are placed in a heart shape.”
“Are they? I hadn’t noticed,” I said innocently, still trying, once again, to downplay the very obvious romance of it all.
“Yes, they very much are!” She put her left hand on her hip and I tried to stop a smile. She still did that. She’d always done that when she was being angry or bossy. I’d watched her do that all through high school and she was still doing it thirteen years later. Some things clearly didn’t change.
“This is all too, too . . .” She waved her arm around and I could see her searching for the words. “Too much. I’ve had a long day, a fucking bizarre day and I’m exhausted and boiling hot and I can’t get cool and you cannot be standing there with heart-shaped petals and that many candles. I’m not having it.”
“Not having what?” I asked, feeling a little lost.
“We haven’t seen each other in thirteen years and now what? We’re supposed to sit here and enjoy what is clearly an overtly romantic dinner together after everything that happened between us? It’s so bizarre. God, this might actually be the most bizarre day of my life.”
“It is bizarre,” I echoed. “But I do have really good cheese.”
“Please don’t tell me you planned this whole thing?”
“No, I didn’t, but I did ask the lodge to get some cheese for us, as per our previous conversations. If you remember what we talked about . . .” I paused and watched her face carefully before I said the next thing. I wanted to gauge if there were going to be any . . . “Possibilities.” The second the word left my mouth her entire face changed. She straightened up and when she spoke again, looked flustered.
“Well, there is now officiallyzero—zero—possibility of any possibilities. Ever.”
“So there were possibilities before?” I asked quickly.
“Before I knew it was you, maybe,” she said, shaking her head at me. “I still cannot believe you continued to flirt with me when you knew who I was and then had the audacity tostillask me on a, what did you call it, ‘semi-professional work date’?” She used air quotes on the word I do admit to using rather loosely. “You couldn’t have possibly been serious, Logan!”
I shrugged. “I mean . . .maybe.”
“Maybe?Are you serious? After everything that happened between us and all the time that’s passed, you seriously thought I would have a semi-professional cheese date with you when I found out who you were?”
“I was hoping the cheese might win you over.
She shook her head aggressively now. “I don’t get it. Thirteen years ago you clearly wanted nothing to do with me to the point of disappearing. You disappeared off the face of the planet. And now you’ve suddenly reanimated out of thin air and you want a ‘maybe’?”
“Maybe I do.”
“Stop saying maybe! You don’t get to have ‘maybes’ or ‘possibilities,’ Log—” She stopped herself and ran her hand through her short hair.
“Max. Your name is Max. And that is so fucking weird too. It’s all weird.”
“I know. But we were getting on really well while emailing—you have to at least admit that.”
“If I’d known who you were, I would never have let that conversation go the way it did.”
