“We should fix that.” He smiled, easy and certain, like he was making a note of it somewhere. “And I’d love to meet your sisters properly at some point. The ones I haven’t pissed off yet.” He laughed at his own joke.
I smiled back because it was the path of least resistance, and because I was spending considerable energy trying to stay one gentle redirect ahead of wherever the conversation kept wanting to go. Every time I steered, he course-corrected back, smooth and unhurried, like a man who was used to arriving at his destination eventually and wasn’t troubled by the scenic route. I took another bite and let him talk.
He brought up his divorce without much preamble, somewhere between the entrée and dessert menus.
“She was a city person at heart,” he said, with the measured generosity of a man who’d practiced being fair about it. “Seattle, ultimately. She always wanted that life—the restaurants, the scene, all of it. I tried it for a while, I really did, but my family is here. My parents, my brother. I’d come back for holidays and remember what it actually felt like to belong somewhere.” He paused, turning his glass. “She wasn’t interested in any of that. Roots, community. She called it small thinking.” Somethingtightened briefly at the corner of his mouth before the easy smile returned. “I’m in Portland now, which works fine for my law firm, but I can be home in about an hour when it matters. That’s what I wanted. What I always wanted, really.” He said it in a way that made it clear his ex-wife’s failure to understand this had been a significant personal shortcoming on her part.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” I said, because I was raised to say things like that.
“Don’t be.” He looked at me with the quiet confidence of a man delivering the thesis of his evening. “Being back here has reminded me of what actually matters. I want something real this time. You know what I mean? I think you’re pretty amazing, Cara.” His voice dropped low, and I looked away.
I turned my wine glass slowly by the stem and thought carefully about what to say—something true, something kind, something that didn’t leave a door open that I had no intention of walking through.
“I think Honeybrook Hollow does that to people,” I said finally. “Makes everything feel more—” I searched for the word. “Possible.”
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear from me, and we both knew it. But it was true, and it was kind, and it closed the door quietly enough that he could pretend he hadn’t noticed. He held my gaze for a beat, something shifting behind his expression, and then he picked up his fork and moved on, easy and certain, as though the answer had been close enough to what he wanted and he’d decided to take it.
“What about you?” he asked, after a moment. “Anyone on the scene?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve been single for about a year and a half. I’m not really looking for anything right now.”
“A long time.” He tilted his head, something in his expression that I couldn’t quite read. “What happened there, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“It just didn’t work out,” I said, which was true and complete and as much as I intended to give him. The gory details—the cheating, the lying, the six months I’d spent convincing myself I was imagining things before I finally stopped and accepted reality—were for my sisters to hear, not for Eric Michaelson over a steak dinner in Willowmist Falls.
He nodded slowly, like he was filing it away. “And you’re not looking,” he repeated, but his tone made it sound less like he was accepting the information and more like he was noting an obstacle.
“Not really, no.”
He smiled then, easy and warm, and picked up his wine glass. “Well,” he said, “the best things usually show up when you’re not.”
It was almost innocent. Delivered lightly, without weight, things you would say to anyone over dinner and mean nothing particular by it. I smiled back because that was what the moment called for, and reached for my water, and turned it over quietly in my head—the way he’d looked at me when he said it, the small emphasis onshow up, the fact that he’d repeatednot lookingback to me before he said it—and couldn’t quite decide if I was reading into something that wasn’t there or if I was, for once, reading it exactly right.
I looked at my plate. There was still steak left, and I was going to finish every bite of it.
The check appeared and vanished before I’d registered it.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.
“I wanted to.” He was already on his feet, lifting my coat from the back of my chair, holding it open. I slid my arms in, and he settled it onto my shoulders, his hands resting there a half-second longer than necessary. I moved toward the door and told myself it was just because we were leaving.
Outside, the air had cooled, and the street was quiet, just the glow of The Hearthstone’s sign behind us and the sound of our footsteps on the sidewalk. Eric walked with his hands in his pockets, unhurried, like a man with nowhere better to be.
“It’s a nice night,” he said.
“It is,” I agreed.
“We should do this again.” He said it not as a question, not quite as a statement, somewhere in the middle where it was harder to argue with. “There’s that place in Sweetbriar I mentioned. I really think you’d like it.”
“It was really lovely to catch up,” I said, which was but carefully vague. “But, as I said before, I’m not?—”
“Shh, it’s okay.” He smiled as if I’d agreed. We reached my car, and I got my keys out, and he stood close enough that I was aware of the distance between us in a way I didn’t want to be. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair back from my face, easy and familiar, like he’d done it before, like he had the right to. I went very still for a half-second, and then I smiled because I didn’t know what else to do with my face. “I had a really good time,” he said.
“It was really nice,” I said, which was the path of least resistance and also partially true because the steak had been excellent. “You’ve always been a good friend, Eric,” I added, hoping he’d take a freaking hint.
He pulled me into a hug before I’d quite registered it was happening—arms around me, warm and certain, his chin briefly at my temple. I put my hands on his waist and pushed back gently. He didn’t get the hint. The hug went on a beat longer than friendly. Two beats. I stepped back first.
“I’ll call you,” he said.
