Page 87 of The Husband I Left

Three years ago, a devastatingly handsome man walked into the restaurant I was working at and was seated in my section. He left me his phone number on the receipt, and less than a week later he was taking me on our first date.

Here.

I turn and look at him. He’s gripping the steering wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead, and there’s a flush creeping up from his collar.

“Oliver.”

“I know,” he says. “I know it’s—” He exhales and finally looks at me. “I’ve wished so many times that I could go back to the start of it. Us. Go back and do everything right from the very first day. And I know that’s not how anything works, you can’t actually do that, but—” He shrugs, embarrassed, “It’s silly. But this feels like the closest I could get. To getting my wish.”

“It’s not silly,” I say quietly. “It’s sweet.”

The relief on his face is almost comical. He gets out and comes around to open my door before I can do it myself, and he leads me inside.

The restaurant is exactly as I remember. Still trendy. Still expensive. Still full of beautiful, fashionable, wealthy people. The hostess seats us at a table by the window, and we order, and then the menus are taken away, and there’s nothing left between us but three years of history.

We stare at each other.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. I open mine. Close it. A man at the next table is discussing market trends. Somewhere behind me, a wine cork releases.

I’m still hunting for a sentence, any sentence, when a hand claps down on Oliver’s shoulder hard enough to make him jolt.

“Sinclair! I’ll be damned. It’s been a long time.”

The man attached to the hand is fiftyish and silver-templed. Oliver’s whole body changes; his shoulders square, his chin lifts, the polished professional smile I haven’t seen in ages appears on his face.

“It has been,” Oliver agrees.

“You dropped clean off the map. Whole town’s been wondering.” The man’s eyes flick to me, assess, dismiss, return to Oliver. “So what are you into these days? I heard some wild rumors, but I said, no, not Sinclair; he’s got something up his sleeve. What’s the play?”

“Exploring some new directions,” Oliver says politely. “Taking my time with it.”

“Sure, sure. Smart. Well.” The man squeezes his shoulder again. “Don’t be a stranger. Give your father my best.”

He glides off toward the bar. Oliver watches him go, and then the smooth stranger drains out of his face, and it’s just Oliver again, looking faintly tired.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be.”

Our food arrives then, mercifully. We both pick up our forks. We both start eating. And it’s good; technically, it’s probably brilliant. It’s certainly beautifully arranged with sauces applied in artful brushstrokes. But I catch myself pushing a piece of fish around a smear of something green, and when I look up, Oliver is doing the exact same thing to whatever is on his plate, and our eyes meet across the table.

The corner of his mouth twitches.

The corner of mine twitches back.

And then we’re both laughing, quietly at first and then not so quietly, and a woman from the table next to us glances over disapprovingly, which only makes it worse.

“Genny,” Oliver says when we’ve both managed to calm down and catch our breath a bit. “There’s a place just a couple of blocks away. They have burgers and really great milkshakes. Would you like to—”

“God, yes,” I reply before he can even finish the sentence.

He flags down the server and requests the bill. Once it’s paid, we walk out the door into the spring afternoon, laughing like a couple of teenagers who’ve just skipped class. The air is warm, and the sidewalk is crowded, and for the moment, everything is perfect.

We start walking. His arm is close to mine, close enough that our sleeves brush, and he’s telling me about the chess game he and Joe played last night, and I reach down, without letting myself think about it, and take his hand.

He stops talking mid-sentence. His fingers close carefully around mine.

Then he keeps walking, and he keeps talking, and he doesn’t let go, and neither do I.