"Okay then." Kate left. Charlotte sat at her desk and stared at Oliver's latest dragon drawing tacked to the bulletin board. This one was breathing bubbles instead of fire. Oliver had explained that it was a peaceful dragon, one that resolved conflicts through communication.
She could use a peaceful dragon right about now.
On Friday, she wore jeans and a casual blouse, wearing only a little makeup. She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror.
She'd wanted Dominic. That was the problem, the rot at the center of everything. She'd wanted him with a ferocity that had rearranged her entire life, and the wanting had been so total, so consuming, that it had burned a groove into her nervous system. A channel that other wanting couldn't flow through. Eric was kind, Eric was funny, Eric was present. Her body responded to him with the mild, pleasant warmth of standing near a space heater. Comfortable. Adequate. Fine.
Dominic was a bonfire. Dominic was standing too close to the sun and knowing it would burn you and leaning in anyway.
She turned off the bathroom light. Grabbed her keys. She was going to dinner with Eric, she was going to have a nice time, and she was going to stop comparing every man she met to someone who'd proven, publicly and catastrophically, that she wasn't the one he chose.
The restaurant had warm lighting, exposed brick, Thai pop playing from a speaker near the kitchen. Eric was already there, at a corner table, wearing a button-down she'd never seen before. He stood when she walked in.
"You look great," he said.
"Thanks. You too. Is that a new shirt?"
"I panicked at Target. This was the least terrible option." He pulled out her chair. She sat.
They ordered. Pad see ew for her, green curry for him, spring rolls to share. He poured her water from a carafe and told her about Mason's latest chess club coup — a devastating Sicilian Defense that had made his opponent, a sixth-grader twice Mason's size, put his head on the board in defeat.
She laughed. Eric was a wonderful storyteller. Animated, self-deprecating, generous with the punchlines. He didn't hoard the funny parts the way some people did, saving them for his own setup. He let the kids be the heroes of every story, and she liked that about him. She liked a lot of things about him.
She wanted to like more.
"So," he said, after the spring rolls arrived and they'd established that the peanut sauce was transcendent. "Can I ask you something?"
"Depends on the question."
"The donor meetings. The Weston Group guy." Eric dipped a spring roll, took a bite, chewed. The casualness was studied. He was nervous. "Is there a story there?"
Charlotte should've expected this. She'd been stupid not to expect it. Eric was observant — you didn't coach ten-year-olds through competitive chess without learning to read people — and she hadn't been subtle. The way she disappeared every Thursday afternoon. The way she came back from those meetings flushed and distracted. The way she'd stiffened last week when Linda mentioned Dominic's name in the faculty lounge.
"There's a history," she said carefully. "A personal one. It's over."
"Over-over? Or over-but-still-complicated?"
She was silent. Unable to respond.
"Charlie." Eric's voice was gentle. Just opening a door she could walk through or not. "You don't have to tell me anything. But I like you. I think that's obvious — Kate told me it wasobvious, and then she told me that if I hurt you she'd key my car, so, you know, the stakes are clear." He smiled. "I just want to know if I'm — if this is?—"
"He's my ex," Charlotte said. "We were engaged. It ended badly."
Eric went still. The spring roll paused midway to his mouth. She watched him put the pieces together: the billionaire family, the donor meetings.
"And now he's funding your school," Eric said.
"It's more complicated than that."
"It usually is." He set the spring roll down. Looked at her across the table with an expression that was neither jealous nor angry. It was understanding. "Are you here because you want to be here, or because you're trying to prove you're over him?"
The question was so direct, so well aimed, that it knocked the air out of her. She opened her mouth to sayof course I want to be here, and the lie wouldn't come. It stuck in her throat like a bone.
Eric watched her struggle. Then he nodded, slowly. She saw the disappointment move through him.
"It's okay," he said. "You don't have to answer. That was the answer."
"Eric—"
