Page 117

It was a small word, but apparently enough to frighten every butter curl in the room.

Paul looked at me then. Only me. There was no speech after that. No declaration, no public apology, no reaching for my hand so everyone could witness his sacrifice and admire how noble he was being. He simply sat back down, picked up his napkin, and placed it on his lap as if refusing your father in front of twenty-six people were a normal thing to do between the soup and fish courses.

Someone coughed. Aunt June took a large sip of champagne. Paul’s grandmother said, quite clearly, “Well. Good.”

Patricia closed her eyes.

I looked down because if I looked at Paul one second longer, I was going to cry into the asparagus, and my mother had suffered enough.

The rest of dinner continued. The fish arrived under lemon sauce. The salad course followed. People spoke too loudly, then too softly, then settled into the brittle cheer of a room trying to pretend no one had just stepped off a moving train.

Alan didn’t speak to his son again. My father spoke to him instead. Not about the brokerage, bt about the Brewers, which was the safest subject available other than the weather.

By dessert, people had pretended to forget what was said as the champagne flowed. There was cake, though not engagement cake.

My mother had insisted on that much, and I loved her for it. It was lemon with white frosting and no inscription.

Dean was still near the bar when I slipped out of the room after dessert. He turned as soon as he saw me, as if he’d been watching the doorway the entire time.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

The hallway outside the dining room was dimmer, quieter, with framed photographs of golf champions on the wall and the smell of cigar smoke drifting from somewhere down the corridor. Beyond the windows, evening had settled over the lake, and the sky had gone that deep summer blue that made everything look like a scene out of a movie.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

“No. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

He simply nodded. He was so beautiful to me in that moment it hurt. Not polished or easy. His jacket didn’t quite belong, his hair needed cutting, and one cuff was frayed, but he was Dean. The man who smelled like coffee and records. The man who had seen me at Side A and believed that version of me mattered.

“I’m leaving for Minneapolis on Monday,” he said.

“I know.”

“It’s just a meeting.”

“Dean.” I rolled my eyes.

He looked away, then back. “Okay, it might be more than a meeting.”

He nodded once.

From the dining room came a burst of laughter too loud to be real.

Dean glanced toward it. “He did the right thing in there.” He frowned. “I hate that.”

That made me laugh, and then I had to press my fingers beneath my eyes because laughter had become dangerously close to crying.

Dean reached toward me, then stopped.

I stepped forward and took his hand as his fingers closed around mine. Warm. Familiar, though they shouldn’t have been. I thought of his apartment upstairs over Side A, the little bedroom, his sister’s photograph, the way he’d tucked my hair behind my ear. And the kisses. I thought of a life together. I could see it. Not perfectly, but enough.

“I love you,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I love you too.”

He smiled then, small and sad, and squeezed my hand once before letting go.

“You need to choose without me standing in the hallway like a sad Springsteen song.”