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Ruby shakes her head. Thirteen years suddenly seems like a lot, except that Dexter has the professional and life experience of someone much older, which gives him a world-weary look that only adds to his appeal.
"Yes, I had two young girls and a husband who was already looking ahead to a run for the Oval Office," Ruby says, then bites her tongue; she wants this to be about Dexter, not about her. "But go on."
"So the summer I was sixteen I had been working for three years at my uncle's auto parts store, and I bought a 1957 Ford Fairlane that needed a ton of work."
Ruby gives a low whistle. "Nice choice. A classic."
"Absolutely. I worked on it every waking second, and I had it running and sounding good, but it needed a fresh coat of paint. I wanted it to be white and cherry red."
Ruby picks up her flute and drinks a bit of bubbly as Dexter goes on with a faraway look in his eyes.
"I needed about eight hundred dollars more to paint that car, and my uncle had promised me as much overtime as he could give me without getting flagged for some sort of infraction for overworking a minor." Dexter laughs at the memory. "But I was still short. So the girl I was dating at the time--"
"Ah, there's always a girl, isn't there?"
Dexter swallows his salmon and washes it down with champagne. "I can tell you from experience that, yes, in most cases, there's always a girl at the heart of every good story."
Ruby laces her hands together and props her chin on them, listening with curiosity. "Okay, so you're sixteen, you have the car of your dreams, and you're madly in love."
"Oh, madly," Dexter says, smiling as he shakes his head. "I think at that point I'd proposed marriage, burned her any number of mixed CDs full of Radiohead and Linkin Park songs, and imagined us with three kids and a dog."
"Sounds about right for sixteen. I had a boyfriend at that age who I was sure I'd still be with at fifty, and yet here I am..."
"There was someone before Jack?" Dexter frowns. "I thought all First Ladies had to be pure and virginal."
"I think you're mixing up First Ladies and future queens. The expectations are slightly lower for First Ladies--but only slightly."
"I would imagine. I'm sure your past was deconstructed with a fine-tooth comb before you and Jack could proceed with even a first date."
Ruby laughs and her fork clinks against her plate. "Actually, I was working at an art gallery opening the night of our first date. A friend I knew hired young actors to pass around hors d'oeuvres and drinks, and Jack basically took the tray out of my hand and passed it off to another server. He wanted to leave right then and there and take me with him."
"So you went?" Dexter is watching her through his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes burning with intensity.
"I hate to sound like the kind of woman who would abandon her post at a job in favor of a man, but...yeah, I did." Ruby sighs and her shoulders slump. She's thought of this night often, but not recently. Jack had been full of charm and sex appeal--what she's heard her daughters call "rizz" of late--and Ruby had been powerless to resist him. She'd barely put up a fight. She shakes her head now though, realizing what Dexter has done. "Hey! This is supposed to be aboutyou. Let's get back to the magical sixteen-year-old girlfriend."
Dexter chuckles and surrenders. "Okay, I've been caught. I'll tell you more, since this lunch topic was supposed to be your choice. I was just letting the conversation go wherever it took us." He clears his throat. "Okay," he says, leaning forward in his chair like he's about to tell a huge tale. "I should first clarify that I was the one who was sixteen, and Amanda was actually nineteen." Ruby lifts both eyebrows but says nothing. "She and my older sister met at college and she'd come home with Nisha for the summer so they could work at the Jersey Shore together and save up for their own apartment that fall. They got jobs on the boardwalk and I tried to tag along as much as humanly possible, because as you can imagine, having a hot college girl living in my sister's bedroom all summer was a temptation that any sixteen-year-old boy would be hard-pressed to ignore."
"I am on the edge of my seat." Ruby holds her champagne flute in one hand as she listens with amusement.
"So Amanda...what can I say about Amanda. She was on the volleyball team at Rutgers with my sister."
"This just keeps getting better and better."
"It does, so pay attention." Dexter has relaxed into his story and looks like he's having as much fun telling it as Ruby is hearing it. "I'll skip to the obvious part, which is that one afternoon while my sister was working a shift and Amanda was off, she came into my room and--yep, you guessed it--took my virginity, which I was only too happy to give. Truly. It was like a million teenage boy dreams had come to fruition, and I floated on a cloud for the next forty-eight hours, convinced that we were on the road to a happy life together."
"But..."
"Oh, you sensed thatbutin there?" Dexter glances around as the couple next to them signs their check and gets up to leave. "There is most definitely abutin there." The restaurant's speakers are playing a jazzy number that filters out onto the sidewalk. "So, I was ready to sell that Ford Fairlane and buy Amanda a promise ring."
"You were not."
"I was. You have no idea how hard a boy can fall for his first love. Anyhow, I'd picked out a very cute little heart-shaped emerald on a gold band that was going to cost me more than I'd earned all summer,plusthe eight hundred dollars I'd nearly saved up for the paint job, when I went down to the boardwalk to surprise Amanda and, you know, maybe take her for a walk along the water on her break from work and tell her that I loved her."
Ruby's face contorts in sympathetic pain. "Oh, Dexter."
"Yeah..." He nods and lets his head hang for a second as he remembers it. "You know how this story is going to end. So I showed up right before her break was ending--bad luck on my part--and I was standing there at the milkshake shack waiting for her to get back when I spotted her holding hands with some guy."
"Noooooo!" Ruby's hands fly to her cheeks; she's completely invested in the heartbreak of what she imagines is a floppy-haired, smooth-cheeked, gangly version of grown-up Dexter. "She didn't!"
