Page 47

You’re still with him.

There hadn’t been an accusation in it, no attempt to make the complication easier by pretending it didn’t exist. At twenty-three, I might have preferred a man who kissed first and asked questions after the damage was done.

At fifty, there was something far more dangerous about a man who wanted me, let me know it, and still expected me to decide what I was doing with my own life before asking him to become part of it.

Paul broke his cookie in half. “I thought about what you said last night.”

I looked at him. “Which part?”

His mouth twitched. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that.”

That made me smile, which annoyed me because I’d been trying to stay mad at him.

“Cleveland,” he said. “Side A. The dinner. Everyone assuming.”

“That’s a lot of thinking.”

“I paced.”

“You paced?”

“In my apartment. Privately.”

“How reckless.”

He laughed, and the sound moved across the water, softer than the laugh he used in public. I liked that sound. I hated that I liked it.

“Did you talk to your father?” I asked.

His smile faded.

“Not yet,” he said.

The answer was so Paul that I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because I’d spent years listening to him put the hard things neatly on tomorrow’s desk.

“But I will,” he added.

“When?”

He looked down at the water, where his feet blurred beneath the surface. “Tomorrow.”

“Not today?”

“I thought it might be better if I knew what I was asking him before I asked it.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“It is reasonable.”

“Paul.”

He glanced over. “Yes?”

“Sometimes reasonable is where hard conversations go to take a nap.”

His brows drew together, not in anger. He was considering what I’d said, which was one of the things that had always made arguing with Paul maddening. He would think before answering, give you the courtesy of taking your words seriously, then still somehow miss whole point.

“I said I’d talk to him.”