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Ro was sending me exasperated looks the whole drive home.

“What?” I asked, all cheeky innocence. “I’m charming, I can’t help it. What should we make for Ethel, Agnes, Ella, Prudence, and Rose when they come to the house for dinner this week?” I gave her a grin that showed all of my teeth. “See, I even remembered their names.”

“You’re impossible,” she told me, and there was affection in it.

I soaked it up.

“Look who’s talking,” I told her. “And are you saying you don’t want to have dinner with those sweet old ladies?”

“No, I’m saying you don’t really want to. This is some sort of a plot, isn’t it?”

“Just you watch, cupcake.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

STEP TWO: SINCERITY

Another week passed.

We had the delightful old ladies over for dinner, and I charmed them all into a mess Ro had to scrape off the floor.

I went to a church dance with her and turned every lady over sixty around the room twice.

I buttered her up shamelessly before I finally cornered her in her office to have it out.

“I’d like you to consider a reconciliation between us,” I began, my tone almost professional. “I haven’t been with anyone else since the second day after I met you. And I don’t miss it. Well, I do miss sex. Of course I do. But I don’t miss the other women. I only miss you. Doesn’t that count for something?

“It counts for something. I’m just not sure it’s enough for what you’re asking of me.

What do you think I’m asking of you?”

“To get wrapped up in you again. When I’m wrapped up in you, you’re all I can think about.”

I was smiling without realizing it at first. I really liked the sound of that. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked, an honest question.

“It’s not the sort of thing someone should go through alone. That’s no good.”

“Who says you’re alone? That you ever were with me? You want me to tell you I’m wrapped up too? I’m fucking wrapped. What else do you need from me? I’ve got more than that.”

As a start to my profession of love, it was lacking, but in my defense, she wasn’t being at all cooperative.

“Give me something, then,” she told me stiffly, like she thought I wouldn’t have a real response, like she thought that one sentence was checkmate.

I’d show her checkmate. I had so many responses to that I didn’t even know where to start.

What I said, though, was, “Like what? You want some jewelry? . . . how about a ring?”

She rolled her eyes, the termagant.

“I mean it. I’m not joking. I’ll really do it. I would like to get married. To you.”

She stared, finally, at last, realizing that I was being sincere.

I was painfully formal and as serious as I’d ever been as I began my practiced speech, “I take full responsibility for not communicating correctly, for not telling you how I felt, and what I thought we were, in a timely or appropriate manner.

“We both know I have commitment issues, but what I don’t think you seem to realize is that you have some issues yourself. I’d have loved to know how you felt, but you weren’t telling me. Not even close.

“You’ve put me through the fucking ringer because I didn’t tell you how I felt when it was time, when it was right, but you know you didn’t either. And that’s not fair. You can’t tell me you developed feelings only after you got over them.”