“I think my publicist wanted somewhere a little splashier,” I say. “Wanted an accidental sighting.”
“Oh fuck your publicist,” he says, laughing again. “Lily filled me in: I know exactly what she wanted. But I tried to think about what you might have wanted instead.”
We are seated in our own booth with a hot grill on the table. He hesitates before sliding in—sitting next to me or across—and rightly, gives me some space.
“Ever done this?” He rubs his hands together. “It’s my favorite thing. Literally, my favorite thing in the world.” He articulates all the syllables inliterally, and it makes me grin.
“I’m a pretty terrible cook,” I say. “You’ll probably have to do mine for me.”
“No,” he says. “If you want to eat tonight, you have to do it on your own.”
I push out my bottom lip and pretend to pout.
“That doesn’t work on me either.” He grins. “I have a ten-year-old daughter. Do you think I’m that easily manipulated?”
“You have a daughter?”
He nods. “Her mom lives in San Francisco. I have custody.” He shakes his head. “It was very complicated for a while, and then, I guess, it wasn’t.” He reads me. “You seem surprised.”
“I ... I guess I am. Lily didn’t mention it.”
“I’m not as easy to google as you are,” he says with a smile.
“You are,” I say. “I just didn’t.”
“Figured this was going to be a bust before we even got started?”
My cheeks redden. “No, I mean ...” I wave a hand, fiddle with the skewers on the table. “I’m just not very good at dating.”
“I think if you’re very good at dating, you probably do it forever,” he says.
“Like tennis? Like, if you’re very good at tennis, you play it until you’re eighty?” I laugh now too.
“Golf,” he says, just as the waitress approaches with a plate stuffed with beef. “Golf is what you play until you’re eighty.”
“Well, I don’t play golf,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “I don’t either.”
He drives me home at a respectable hour, after we walked from the Korean BBQ place to a bar next door for a drink. A few heads turned in my direction, and he saw me squirm, and we agreed, regrettably, to rush up I-10 back to reality. I find that I don’t want to, though, that I’d like to draw out this safe bubble for as long as I can until it’s punctured for real. Which it will be inevitably because that’s my life.Pop.We listen to a classical station he has the radio tuned to and settle into a comfortable silence until he veers off the freeway and onto the back roads toward my enclave.
“It’s difficult dating me,” I offer eventually, because I like him enough to want him to know the truth.
He says nothing.
“I’m not saying that I don’t want to ...”
“You have a lot of walls,” he says, making the sharp turn up the hill to my house. “I get that.”
“That’s not what I meant. There are just always people watching.”
I don’t say,And I’m still married,though the divide in our lives is likely large enough to remain permanent—and after seeing Ben with Amanda last month, it’s clear I need to be done with us. I need to get it: that he has moved on, that I’d misread his hesitation with moving forward with the divorce. I need to absorb this so deeply that it shifts my DNA.
I tell myself that I will call Ben tomorrow and tell him that we need to sign the papers; that this has been going on long enough—I saw them together over a month ago at the beach. How long can I put myself through this, hoping he’ll come back to me? I thought that if I found the nerve to findmyway back to him that he’d want me, be ready with open arms. But she was there that day, and now, that’s that.
The car slows to a stop outside my security gate.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask.
