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“Terrified?” He laughs. “Of what?”
“She’s a small-town girl. I think she gets overwhelmed by everything . . . the cars, the people, the buildings, the sounds, the smells. She hates feeling disoriented and out of her element,” I say. “My sister and I flew her here for Christmas one year, thinking she’d love to see the Rockettes and how beautiful the city gets with the snow and the holiday decorations and everything.”
“And how did that pan out?”
“She had a panic attack the second we left the airport. Ma—my sister fortunately had a bottle of Xanax in her purse that she keeps for emergencies,” I say. A flash of heat burns my cheeks as I pray he didn’t notice the slipup. “Needless to say, she needed a refill after that weekend.”
“Do you go back to Ohio often?”
“A couple of times a year. Mother’s Day usually. And either Thanksgiving or Christmas.”
“You ever miss it?”
“I miss it when I’m not there. I get nostalgic for it. But every time I go home, all I can think about is wanting to be back in the city again. New York is my home now. I can’t imagine ever living anywhere else. It starts to feel like a big little city after a while—if that makes sense.”
A flash of amusement flickers in his dark irises before fading like it was never there to begin with. Per usual, it’s impossible to know what he’s thinking, though there’s no question he’s more engaged tonight than ever before.
I went into this entire thing with every intention of suffering through my time with him like some kind of martyr. Enjoying my time with Roman was the furthest thing from my mind. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities. And now here we are. And here I am. Wishing I could stop time, if only for one evening.
“You’re different, Margaux,” he says out of nowhere.
“Different?”
“Not what I was expecting at all.”
I reach for my drink, pausing to give him a sideways glance. “Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?”
Two dimples appear at the centers of his cheeks as his lips tug up at the corners. This time his handsome smile doesn’t disappear in an airtight instant. It remains. It lingers. It lights his eyes from the inside out.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve dated anyone,” he says, “but I seem to remember everyone feeling like they had to impress me all the time. They’d name-drop. Talk about their expensive vacations and their career achievements like they were interviewing for a job. But you . . . you’re not like that at all. You’re just . . .”
His voice tapers as he studies me.
And is he implying that we’re dating?
A swarm of questions circles my head, none of which I can ask without making this all the more confusing.
I thought this was simply a dinner date redo?
“I’m terrible at small talk,” I say with a shrug. Is he idealizing me, or is he truly impressed with me? Is my attempt at being boring and uninteresting having the opposite intended effect? “Plus, nobody likes a braggard.”
He takes a slow sip of his whiskey. “It’s been a long time since I had a real conversation with someone.”
Before he can expand on that, our dinner arrives, officially kicking off the final segment of our evening. While nothing can ever come of this, it doesn’t make me enjoy getting to know him any less. Plus, the way I catch him staring at me, like I’m some kind of beautiful art piece he’s laying eyes on for the first time, gives me life. I don’t even know if he knows he’s doing it, but he hasn’t stopped since he picked me up an hour ago.
What I wouldn’t give to stop the clock, if only for tonight.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ROMAN
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to roll me out of here if I take another bite.” Margaux folds her napkin and places it beside her half-eaten tiramisu. “I’m tapping out.”
“You went for the gold,” I say. “No small feat.”
“Guess I got silver then.” She points to my polished-off cup of stracciatella gelato.
Before Emma, anytime I’d get dinner with a woman, she’d order a small salad or piece of grilled fish and a sparkling water or dry wine, pick at her meal like a rabbit foraging for food, and wave her hands vehemently when the dessert tray rolled up, insisting she was stuffed. Not only that, but oftentimes she’d sit so rigid, I’d have thought her spine was a steel rod.
I take it back. There was one girl a lifetime ago. A waiflike culinary dropout with eyes bigger than saucers. She impressively threw down three-fourths of a shared appetizer, a triple cheeseburger, her fries, and most of my fries, and washed it all down with a double chocolate milk shake. Our conversation that night consisted mostly of food-oriented topics. Recipes she wanted to try. Restaurants she loved. Her favorite grocery stores and cooking magazines. Anytime I changed the subject, she’d somehow find a way to circle the topic back to food. I’m not unconvinced that the poor thing had a tapeworm. And an unhealthy fixation.
