"Dominic—"
"And if you let me, I'm going to earn this. Not by showing up with checkbooks or fixing things or managing the situation. By being here. In the yard, with the chalk, drawing terrible dragons. By eating ice cream on a bench with you and telling you the truth even when it's ugly. By being the man you glimpsed for just a moment at the altar — the one who cracked open when you read your vows. He's here. He's been here. He was just too afraid to stay."
She was crying. She hadn't wanted to cry. Not here, not on a street corner in front of a school with an ice cream truck jingling ten feet away. But the tears came anyway, hot and fast, spilling down her cheeks and off her jaw, and she let them because she was done pretending to be composed around him. Composure was a cage she'd built to keep herself safe from him, and she didn't want to be safe anymore. Safe was Eric Cho and pad see ew and a life that was fine. Fine was a word for people who'd given up on extraordinary.
“This isn't me saying yes. This isn't me saying we're back together or fixed or any of that. This is me saying—" She searched for the words and found them. "If you want to ask me out, maybe I won’t say no.”
“Maybe, huh?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she returned.
She looked at him. Chalk on his jaw, chocolate on his thumb, his eyes so blue in the afternoon light that they hurt to look at directly. And underneath all of it — underneath the guilt and the fear and the months of distance — she saw him. The man who'd drawn a terrible dragon told her the truth because she deserved it.
He leaned forward. They were a breath away. He studied her, silently asking for permission. She gave it by kissing him.
His mouth opened under hers, warm and tasting like chocolate. His hand came up to cover hers where it rested on his cheek, his fingers wrapping around her fingers, holding her there.
When she pulled back, he was looking at her with that vulnerable expression: the one from the altar, the one she'd seen for a fraction of a second before he sealed it over. Raw. Unarmored. Present.
He didn't seal it this time.
"So," he said. His voice was rough, and he cleared his throat. "Can I take you out? A proper date. Not a meeting. Not a grant review. Just us."
"Nothing fancy," she said. "No rooftop bars. No restaurants without prices on the menu. No cars sent to pick me up."
“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”
She thought about it. What she wanted to do on a date with a man she was terrified to love again.
"Nick's," she said. "The diner. Friday. Seven o'clock. I'll meet you there."
His mouth pulled into that half-smile, the one she'd been cataloging, the one that appeared when he heard her name. Only now it was wider. Unguarded. A full smile, rare and startling on a face built for composure.
"Nick's," he said. "Friday. I'll be there.”
CHAPTER 17
CHARLOTTE
He showed up at six-thirty.
Charlotte knew this because she'd parked across the street from Nick's at six-twenty-five, telling herself she was early because of traffic and not because she'd changed her outfit multiple times and left her apartment before she could change again. She was wearing jeans, a white blouse she'd borrowed from Kate, and the silver hoop earrings she'd bought herself the week she signed her lease in Sunnyside.
She watched Dominic walk up the sidewalk. He was wearing jeans too — she'd never seen him in jeans during their engagement, not once — and a navy henley pushed up at the sleeves. No blazer. No cufflinks.
He went inside. She could see him through the window, sliding into the same booth they'd shared the night of the soup incident. He sat on one side, left the other open. Didn't check his phone. Just sat there, waiting for her.
She sat in her car for another minute. Breathed. Then she went in.
"You're early," she said, sliding into the booth across from him.
"You're on time."
"I'm five minutes late."
"I didn't notice." He had noticed. She could tell by the way his shoulders dropped when she sat down, a release of tension she wasn't supposed to see. He'd been worried she wouldn't come.
The waitress appeared, the same woman from last time. She looked between them, registered the change in atmosphere, and grinned.
