“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just we have so many memories,” she said, sniffling.
“Yup, some kind of crazy roller coaster all right,” he said, handing her a cocktail napkin for her nose, then putting up his hand for another round of booze.
He toasted her again and they threw back the second set of Patrón shots.
“Remember coming here for the Effies?” she asked.
“Yeah, I had a great time that night, even though we didn’t win anything. At least, the agency didn’t win any awards. I won having a beautiful woman agree to come to a triathlon with me.”
Okay, now he’s trying to make me cry.“The triathlon was where Caleb told me about how you left Tish.”
“You know, she came to see me in rehab and was so horrified, I thought if tough, mouthy Tish can’t deal, there was no way you were ever going to be okay with this. Or if you were, you’d be fooling yourself.”
“I’m not fooling myself.”
“Look how happy she is now,” he said, glancing over at the general direction of the dinner tables. “Told you it wasn’t me; it’s finding the right person,” he said, referring to their early conversation denying Caleb’s aspersions on his relationship with Tish.
“You think she found the right person?”
“Tom seems like a nice guy. But I thought we were talking about us.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, like our happy memories. The club, down the shore, Paris.”
“That was great, and that was what, nine, ten months ago?”
“Yup, and we’ve made happy memories recently, too. Like tonight.”
“And then there was that whole mess in the middle of those happy memories,” she said.
“Mess, like you thinking I was dating my assistant?”
“Mess, like us not talking, and you not calling me back. And don’t forget about falling through your glass case and you thinking I’d date Caleb and all that. That mess.” Now she was laughing, kind of crying too.Ciao. Au revoir. Zai jian. Goodbye.
He looked up, and then stood to take her in his arms. Holding her tight, cheek pressed against her hair, he laughed. “No more messes, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “Six thousand miles between New York and Beijing should do the trick.”
His gaze drifted to an empty spot above them, like he was lost somewhere inside. “You tried so damned hard to get us together. You’re amazing, you know that?”
“Is amazing a euphemism for stupid?”
He trailed a finger down her arm, bare below the plaid sleeves, tracing a line of longing. “Hardly. You had faith in me. Even when I’d lost sight of that and not because of you, but because I didn’t think I could be enough.”
She searched her mind for possible interpretations of what he was saying, trying to slow her hopefulness in case it was going to be obliterated. Again.
“And then you told me the most amazing thing. That you’d fallen in love with me and hadn’t stopped.”
“Well, that was last week,” she joked.
He looked at her, measuring the meaning in her eyes. “I hope it’s not too late to tell you something. Because I’m learning from you. I’m learning to be courageous. Courageous enough to tell you how I’ve felt all along even though I’ve been scared shitless of being rejected for not being . . . enough.”
“No chance of that,” she said, memorizing the planes and contours of his face.
“You know, I thought you being sensitive, squeamish Orchid meant you’d never be able to deal.” He ignored her intake of breath as she prepared to defend this tired argument. “But actually, you being sensitive means you have more empathy than all those people who say they’d never be able to make it through what I did.”
Orchid wasn’t sure she could speak. He brushed his lips against her ear.
