“Would you want to get dinner? Tomorrow night?” He cleared his throat. “Somewhere neutral. Not Rosetti’s.”
Rosetti’s. Where we’d had our first real date.
“I’d like that,” I said. “Where were you thinking?”
“There’s a place in the North End. Seafood. It’s called The Anchor. Do you know it?”
I didn’t. I’d have to drive. The North End wasn’t a straight shot on the T from Jamaica Plain, and I’d need the flexibility. Which meant I’d probably get lost at least twice. “I’ll find it.”
“Seven o’clock?”
“Seven works.”
Another pause, longer this time. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line, could picture him standing in his apartment with the phone cord stretched across the room, the receiver cradled between his ear and shoulder.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Looking forward to it.”
I hung up and turned to find Diane grinning at me from the doorway.
“Dinner with Jack?”
I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face. “Yep.”
Her grin widened. “You’re welcome for the push.”
“You didn’t push. You eavesdropped.”
“Same thing.” She grabbed her coat from the hook by the door, her Members Only jacket, the red one she’d saved two months to buy. “I’m going to Robbie’s. Don’t wait up. And Maggie?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t screw it up again.”
Jack
She was late.I sat in a booth at The Anchor, nursing a beer and watching the door, trying not to check my watch for the fifth time in ten minutes. The restaurant was small and unpretentious with wooden tables scarred by decades of use, fishing nets on the walls, a mounted swordfish over the bar with its paint chipping and its glass eye staring at nothing. The whole place smelled like garlic butter and the brine of a kitchen that had been cooking seafood since before I was born.
Seven-fifteen. Still no Maggie.
The jukebox was playing “The Power of Love”—the one fromBack to the Future—and a couple at the bar was singing along badly, beer bottles raised like microphones.
I was starting to think she’d stood me up when the door burst open and Maggie stumbled in, cheeks flushed from the cold, hair windswept and escaping from whatever clip she’d used to pin it back. She was wearing a green sweater that made her eyes look like sea glass and jeans that actually fit, a far cry from the electric pink thing I’d glimpsed at her office once, and she looked beautiful and frazzled and completely herself.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, sliding into the booth across from me. “I got lost. Twice. No, three times. I wrote the address down wrong, and then I ended up on the wrong side of the Expressway, and then I couldn’t find parking, and?—”
“Maggie.”
She stopped, mid-explanation. “What?”
“You’re here now. Breathe.”
She took a breath, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, a nervous gesture I remembered from a year of watching her. “I have a terrible sense of direction.”
“I know. You drove?”
“Yes, and I’m already regretting it. The T would have been smarter, but I thought—” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here.”
