Her expression shifted, something knowing settling into her features. She’d seen this coming. Maybe not tonight, but she’d seen it.
“It’s Maggie, isn’t it? The woman from Andy’s.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Rebecca was observant, it was what made her a good photographer. She noticed things other people missed.
“Yes.”
“The one before me.”
“Yes.”
She was quiet for a moment, turning the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. The restaurant noise swelled around us, other couples laughing, forks clinking against plates, Dean Martin crooning from hidden speakers about amore. We sat in our own small bubble of silence.
“I’ve never cheated,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that to you. But I can’t sit here pretending everything’s fine when it’s not. There’s unfinished... I don’t even know the right word. History. Business. Something between us that never got resolved.”
“And you need to resolve it.”
“I think I do. Yeah.”
Rebecca nodded slowly. She didn’t cry. Didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t ask me to explain myself or beg me to reconsider. She just sat there, processing, with the calm dignity that had drawn me to her in the first place.
“I appreciate you telling me,” she said finally. “Most men would have just... let it drag on. Pretended.”
“That’s not who I want to be.”
“I know.” She gave me a small smile, tinged with sadness but not bitterness. “That’s one of the things I liked about you.”
She gathered her things. The clutch, the wrap she’d draped over her chair, the dignity I’d just handed back to her and stood. I started to stand too, but she waved me off.
“Stay. Finish your dinner.” She paused, looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“I hope she’s worth it. I hope whatever’s unfinished becomes something real. Because we could have had something lasting, you and me. It might not have been fireworks, but it would have been good.”
She leaned down and kissed my cheek—brief, final—and then she was walking away, weaving between tables toward the door. The bell chimed as she left, and the cold air rushed in for just a moment before the door swung shut again.
I sat there alone at a table for two, surrounded by happy couples, and wondered if I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.
Rebecca was right. We could have been good together. Stable. Content. The kind of relationship that lasted because neither person asked too much of the other, where comfort replaced passion and that was supposed to be okay.
But I’d never been able to settle for okay. Even when I told myself I should. Even when okay was clearly the smarter choice.
The waiter appeared, glancing at Rebecca’s empty chair with professional discretion. “Will the lady be returning?”
“No.Just the check, please.”
He nodded and disappeared. I pulled out my wallet and tried to feel something other than the hollow uncertainty that had taken up residence in my chest.
What if Maggie hadn’t changed?
What if the apology, the vulnerability, theI woke up, what if it was all just another version of the same pattern? She’d seemed different before, too. In the early days, when she’d laugh at my jokes and lean into my touch and look at me like I was everythingshe wanted. And then she’d pulled away. Every single time, she’d pulled away.
I’d just thrown away a good woman on the chance that Maggie might finally be ready to stop running.
If I was wrong, if she reverted to form, if she pushed me away again, then I’d have nothing. No Rebecca, no Maggie, just the letter in my desk drawer and the knowledge that I’d been a fool twice over.
The waiter brought the check. I paid in cash, overtipping because it felt like the least I could do, and walked out into the evening.
The street was quiet, the dinner rush winding down, a few couples hurrying past with their collars turned up against the wind. I stood on the sidewalk and breathed in the sharp, clean air until my lungs ached with it.
