She pulled her mind back.“I’m sorry, yeah. A few times. Peter wants to marry me, I know that.”
“He’s proposed?”
“Well, no. He’s just talked about it. About what kind of apartment he wants to buy. About where he thinks our kids should go to school. About the kind of life he wants and the life he can give me.”
“Wow.” Donna hesitated. “How … romantic.”
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Joanna explained smiling a little. “He’s just very matter of fact about things, and I like that. There’s no guessing with him. I know exactly the kind of man he is and what he wants. And we want the same things. That’s important, don’t you think?”
“So I assume he’s finally mentioned the L word then?”
Joanna sighed inwardly and thought about lying, but this was Donna she was talking to. She’d known her since she was a freshman at NYU. This was the girl who went and bought her a pack of cigarettes and a 6-pack a couple of years back when her mother died so she could cry all week and properly curse the heavens.
She couldn’t lie to her.
“No, but I know he does love me. He’s just not good at that kind of—”
“Do me a favor, Jo. Get him to say it before you agree to move in with him. If after ayear, the guy can’t tell you he loves you, he doesn’t deserve you.”
Joanna was silent.
“How do you get a man to tell you he loves you?” she asked.
“You don’t. A real man knows how to say it - and when.”
Joanna saw the Brooklyn Bridge for a brief moment before her cab turned right onto 23rd.
I guess it’s time to cross that bridge,she thought, feeling more nervous than she expected.
“I told him,”Peter was saying amidst a mouthful of steak as he and Joanna sat in the trendy Brooklyn restaurant, “I told him he’s got to come down ten, maybe even twenty percent if he wants to sell, but I don’t think he’s listening. Guy has it in his mind he’s going to make three or four million dollars off of it, but he’s not going to come anywhere close. Not in this market. The poor have gotten poorer, and the rich are hoarding everything they have in Panama. They’re not investing in overpriced apartments— even ones that overlook Central Park.”
Joanna managed a smile to indicate to her boyfriend that she was listening, but she was still thinking about her conversation with Donna.
“So what is he hoping to sell it for?” she asked, pushing her hair over her shoulder and crossing her legs.
Peter shook his head and chuckled. “He thinks he’s going to get twelve million, which is a joke. His only hope is finding a Chinese investor, but they’re not known for overpaying. They like deals. I mean, who doesn’t?”
Joanna sipped her wine and looked closely at her boyfriend.
At 29 his hair was already thinning. She had never really noticed until he started cropping it shorter, which he started doing recently. At least he wasn’t being weird and trying to comb it over.
As her mother, Ruth used to say: “Embrace what you have. There isn’t just one way to be sexy.”
But Peter’s looks weren’t what attracted Joanna to him. Thin and wiry body, he had the build and look of a long distance runner who spent his evenings looking down microscopes.
So why was she attracted to him?
Well, he was direct. He was confident. When they first met he was able to look Joanna directly in the eye and have a conversation with her without ogling over her breasts. It sent the message that he was disciplined, and that if he was talking to her it was because he wanted to.
Sex wasn’t the only thing on his mind, and to Joanna this was a refreshing first.
Was the sex interstellar? No. And that was the other thing about Peter. Nothing about him went off the charts, but he was above average in every category that mattered. A steady, unwavering horizontal line.
If Joanna was asked to come up with something about him that really bothered her, she wouldn’t be able to find a single thing.
He was pleasant.
He was safe.
