There it is. A small opening. Not vulnerability. Not yet. Something closer to recognition.
He takes a sip of wine.
“Yes,” he says. “In people too.”
The room moves around us. The women by the window leave. A couple takes their table. The bartender opens a new bottle for the men at the bar. Night presses against the windows, turning the glass into a dim reflection of warm light, dark wood, and the two of us sitting at a corner table as if this had been arranged long before either of us arrived.
Damien gestures toward the beans.
“You liked them.”
“I did,” I say.
“But?”
I look at him. “There’s always a but?”
“With that face, yes.”
“What face?”
“The one you make when the food is good but not finished becoming itself.”
I stare at him. He waits. The sentence is too specific.
“It needed more salt at the end,” I say.
Damien nods once. “Yes.”
“That wasn’t a question either.”
“No,” Damien says. “It was a test.”
“I don’t like tests.”
“You answered anyway.”
“Because it was beneath me not to.”
His smile is slow this time, and I feel it somewhere low in my body, which is deeply inconvenient.
“Noted,” he says.
I set the wine down. “You’re very comfortable being irritating.”
“Comfortable is the wrong word,” he says.
“What is the right word?”
“Experienced,” he chimes back.
I laugh before I can stop myself. His gaze drops to my mouth, but only for a second. He looks back at my eyes as if he has not done it, but he has, and my body is very unhelpfully aware of the fact. I reach for an olive because it gives my hand something to do.
“So,” I say, “are you going to tell me what you do, or are we pretending mystery is a personality?”
Damien looks amused.
“Do you always ask strangers for employment records?”
