Not because I was afraid of being seen.
Because Annie usually was.
But she seemed relaxed.
No one nearby was paying attention to us.
I turned my hand beneath hers and laced our fingers together.
A few more days, she had said.
I decided not to count them yet.
Seven
Annie
By six forty-five, I had arranged the cheese board four times.
The first version looked too formal.
The second looked like I had thrown groceries onto a piece of wood during an evacuation.
The third included twelve crackers, six olives, three kinds of cheese, and a bowl of almonds positioned with such precision that Rachel would have assumed I was launching a lifestyle brand.
The fourth looked exactly like the third, but I had moved the almonds.
Progress.
I stood at the kitchen counter of my rental cottage and examined the result.
“This is normal,” I told the empty room.
The empty room declined to confirm it.
The problem was not the food.
I had enough food.
Far too much food.
The refrigerator contained two bottles of wine, three desserts, four kinds of cheese, vegetables I had purchased during a brief attempt to appear responsible, and an entire roasted chicken I had bought because the woman at the grocery store called me sweetheart and I panicked.
The problem was Ellie.
More specifically, Ellie arriving in fifteen minutes.
Ellie entering the cottage.
Ellie sitting on the sofa.
Ellie drinking wine in a private space containing a bed, several horizontal surfaces, and no dogs available to report us to management.
I had been on dates before.
Hundreds, if interviews counted, though they generally ended with someone asking me to describe my sound in three words and did not involve kissing.
I had invited women to hotel rooms. I had been invited to theirs. I knew how to flirt, how to create privacy, how to move through desire without appearing uncertain.
