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The restaurant we’re headed to is in a very affluent district of the downtown area. It’s obvious that this place is usually booked out weeks in advance. Adas must know somebody who could get us in. There’s no way he just called and got a reservation with a day’s notice.
Even in my dress and pointlessly high heels, I feel underdressed with my wheelchair. I’ve never had to face the reality of my condition in public before, and I suddenly feel extremely visible in the worst ways. Everyone at the estate is so used to seeing me like this that I’ve never felt self-conscious. Part of me wants to go home already.
No. I earned this.
Fortunately, the restaurant has an elevator, and Adas was able to get us a table at the top of the building where we can look out over the park as the sun sets.
“How did you manage to get us all the way up here?” I ask, still irritated with him but allowing myself to enjoy the night.
“The owner is a friend of mine from when I first came to America. We were both immigrant kids, and his homelife was really shitty. He and I were best friends all through our twenties, and I let him crash at my place a lot. So, he lets me come here basically whenever even if it’s booked solid for a month,” he replies, scanning the wine menu diligently.
I watch him for a moment. He doesn’t seem like his normal overconfident self. In fact, he seems more reclusive than I am, and I’m the one with the giant mobile chair that signals sympathy to those without one.
“Your doctor said you can’t drink alcohol because of the medications you’re on, but I was looking to see if there was something you could get without alcohol in it, like a cocktail or something,” he says after skimming through the menu a dozen times.
“Oh, it’s really fine. I’ll just have a water or something. I don’t really feel like drinking anyway. I don’t think I like the taste,” I reply, playing with my wedding ring nervously.
Adas laughs. “You used to love a good red wine. You’d go through a bottle of Merlot on your own, and then you’d get behind a piano and try to play whatever song you were obsessed with at the time. Usually, it was by that band you hate. Damn, things are so different.”
I feel a pang of guilt at his statement. I know it’s not my fault that I don’t like the band anymore and that I can’t drink, but I’m sure that memories like those are the ones he remembers the most fondly about me.
The waiter brings out a charcuterie board for us without even having to ask. “Here, it’s on the house for you and your lovely date, Adas. Good luck!” he says with a devious smile.
As he walks away, I glance questioningly at Adas. “I’m your... date?”
His eyes widen, but he realigns himself. “Oh, he’s pretty new. He’s only seen me here when I was talking to Abel. He doesn’t know I’m married.”
I consider diving deeper, but I figure that I’ll only upset myself if I ask too many questions.Who else doesn’t know you’re married?I wonder to myself.
When the waiter comes back, we order our drinks and meals at the same time. I’d already known what I wanted before we even got here, and Adas almost always orders the same thing off the menu.
“So... can you tell me more about how we started dating? I kind of feel like we’re on a first date again,” I say, feeling myself warming up to Adas again as I see him overextending himself to accommodate me.
He takes a sip of his wine and sits up straighter. “It was in the park down there, actually. I knew I’d be stopping over here on the same day, so I decided to plan a date for us in the park. I got takeout for us, and we talked about our jobs, family lives, all that. I wanted to keep it simple. All the women I dated who knew I had money turned out to be using me.”
I gaze down at the park, watching all of the people living their individual lives in such a beautiful collective space. The streetlights come on, illuminating the park with ghostly shadows as the string lights in the trees turn on.
“What was that like? I mean, the women using you,” I ask, feeling particularly curious about the women he’d dated before me. I hadn’t even thought to care about something like that.
He pauses for a moment, taking another sip of his wine and thinking back to the days of his relative youth. “Well, they weren’t hard to find in the clubs I frequented. As soon as I ordered bottle service for me and my friends, whoever the fuck they were at the time, the women flocked to us.”
I feel that squeezing feeling in my guts. I regret asking.
“It was fun at first, of course, but then I’d try to date one of them, and she would use me to pay her rent and make her look more distinguished around people she was trying to impress,” he continues as he finishes his first glass of wine.
I consider just ending the conversation there. Do I really want to know what kind of person Adas was before he met me? Can I always pretend that my genuine personality and kindness led him out of the playboy life?
I’m sure I’d hate to see what any of these women looked like.
“What made you realize it? You must have liked them a lot to keep them around,” I ask.
He shrugs. “Erik told me. One of the girls I was with would post all of our dates on Instagram without actually having me in any of the pictures. She wanted the image my lifestyle could afford her, but she wanted nothing to do with me.”
In my heart, I know I’d never do something like that to him, which automatically puts me above the other girls.
At least, that’s how I’m going to get through this topic.
“How did you decide I was the one for you?” I continue, sipping my water contentedly while burying my feelings of inadequacy.
