“The hotel I told you about, I can book us a table, we'll have the best time—”
“Okay.”
The word's out before my brain catches up to it, and I'm not sure who's more surprised: Elliot, myself, or any of our shameless eavesdroppers. Mr. Bell at the bench freezes mid-polish. Alan, three feet away, drops a pen.
“Okay,” I say again, quieter this time, mostly to myself.
I don't know why I'm saying yes to a date. All I know is that I did...and that ten hours later, I'm internally freaking out because I finally realized I was too impulsive this morning.
I was hoping he'd be late because that would give me an excuse to bail out. But instead he's ten minutes early.
I was hoping some kind of emergency would take place at work, but nope. That didn't happen either, and so here I am, half-zipped into the green silk dress in front of my closet, trying to find something, anything, else to wear.
There isn't anything else.
Not really. Nothing nice enough for the kind of restaurant Elliot would book. Nothing that saysI am tryingwithout sayingI am trying too hard.Just the green silk, and a black cardigan that's seen better decades, and the navy thing from my cousin's wedding three years ago that has a stain on the hem I've never quite gotten out.
So.
The green silk.
It's a pretty dress. That's the only reason I'm wearing it. Because it'spretty,and tonight is the kind of night where a woman ought to wear something pretty, and it has nothing,nothing,to do with who bought it for me eighteen years ago in the window of a boutique on Michigan Avenue when I'd stopped on the sidewalk and looked at it three seconds longer than I'd meant to.
That's not why.
I'm not petty.
I just look good in green.
I zip myself the rest of the way in, lock the door behind me, two turns of the key, and accept the tulips Elliot hands me at the curb.
I feel guiltier than ever because...
Tulips.
In the summer.
In Chicago.
That's not an accident. That's effort someone like me doesn't deserve, and so I take a deep breath and promise myself that I won't waste another second of Elliot's time. I just need to bide my timing, and then I'll tell him the truth.
That was the plan, but...we've already made it to the restaurant, he's handed his keys to the valet, and I still haven't found the perfect moment to tell him the truth.
Aargh!
The host walks us to a table near the window, and the bread comes out before we ask for it, and the waiter calls memisseven though I'm forty-two and we both know it. We sit in front of each other, and I feel like I'm fourteen again rather than forty-two. Not because he makes me feel shy and embarrassed or giddy, but I just feel so, so bad and awkward. Elliot Wheeler's the nicest man, and—
“So...” Elliot says, leaning his elbows on the table.
He smiles at me, and for one moment I actually wait, and I'm even begging myself—
Please, please, please.
But there's just nothing. Or it's like my heart's permanently dysfunctional, with how it only races for the wrong person.
“The ground rules.”
What ground rules?