Page 52 of Dial F for Finance

I roll my eyes, but I soften into his chest. “My therapist would say you’re emotionally coercing me.”

“I’m not. I’m just giving you an excuse.” He draws a lazy figure eight with our hands. “You ever notice how the best moments in life don’t look planned from the outside?”

“All moments are planned,” I say, just because it’s the only defense I remember having. But even I can tell I don’t sound convinced.

He hums, not disagreeing. “I bet you were insufferable as a teenager. Yearbook committee? Student council? Spreadsheet for your crushes?”

“Crushes were beneath me,” I say because the truth is just sad.

He laughs, a low rumble vibrating through his chest and into my palms. “Why am I not surprised?”

He pulls me closer, and we dance the way we danced at the wedding, which is to say, too well. His hand rides low on my waist, sure and warm. I’m in heels and he’s still taller, which I will always love, and somewhere in the second verse I stop demonstrating indifference and just—dance. Cheek near his jaw. His thumb moving in absent little circles against my spine and every time I think to myself, I should let him go, I should walk back to the table and turn this into a joke, he does something small, like squeeze my hand or tip his head down so his mouth is closer to my hair, and I never do.

The song ends. Before I can break away, he leans in, his lips grazing the top of my ear as he whispers, “I meant it back in Tokyo—ends of the earth, Pemberton.”

Something in me cracks, a fault line I had cemented years ago and called safety. But I nod, just enough for him to feel it, and pretend it’s the negroni talking.

We sit again. Dessert comes—a miniature cake, chocolate and blood orange and not nearly big enough. He forks a piece and holds it out to me. I want to say, “I’m not doing the couple thing,” but I let him. Because I like the way his gaze waits for me to close my mouth and swallow and maybe I like dessert, maybe I like being chased. Maybe I like him.

Maybe there are worse mistakes I could make, and one of them might be not letting myself want what’s right in front of me.

He dabs at my lip with a napkin. “Chocolate,” he says, like I needed the update, and I wonder if anyone has ever looked at me the way Dominic does right now, half delighted, half starving, all in.

By the time the check comes, I’m loose and warm and a bit off my game, almost forgetting to reach for my card until Dominic already has his out.

“Nope,” he says. “Maybe I’ll let you get the next one.”

“There’s not going to be a next one.”

He studies my face for a second, long enough that I want to squirm. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.” He signs the bill, slides out of the booth, and offers me his hand. I take it.

On the drive back to my apartment, the peonies ride in the back seat like a child who fell asleep before the night was through. At the curb outside my building, he comes around and opens my door before I can decide whether tonight ends with a handshake or fucking, and then he’s passing me the peonies and we’re standing on the sidewalk, under the terrible lighting, and he’s looking down at me with the grin dialed down to something that hits harder.

“I had a horrible time,” I inform him. “The music was beautiful, the food was perfect, and the company thinks he’s far more charming than he is.”

“None of those is a complaint.”

“They’re all complaints⁠—”

He kisses me.

Slow. Unhurried. One hand at my jaw, the other nowhere at all, which is its own kind of arrogance—no pinning, no crowding, nothing to blame it on. Just his mouth and the whole evening behind it, and my fingers curling into his lapel with the peonies crushed somewhere between memory and intention. By the time he eases back, I’ve lost the thread of the argument, the argument’s genre, and most of my ZIP code.

“Good night, Jen,” he says softly.

I blink at him. The sidewalk reassembles itself. He’s not moving toward my door. He’s not angling for the lobby. He’s just standing there with the streetlight in his hair, entirely at ease, saying good night.

“You aren’t going to try and come up?” The words are out before my dignity can file an injunction.

Dominic slides his hands into his pockets. Slowly, deliberately, he shakes his head, and the look on his face is gentle and immovable at once.

“That’s something you’re going to have to ask for yourself, Pemberton.”

And then he turns and walks toward the driver’s side like a man with nowhere urgent to be, and I stand on my own sidewalk holding a paper cone of squashed flowers, outmaneuvered on home turf, wanting to ask and unable to make my mouth do it, hating him with a purity that feels suspiciously like something else.

“Dominic.” It comes out sharp and possibly a little proud. He stops, hand on the car door. “The paperwork is only valid for ninety days. You need to sign it.”

For a second he doesn’t move. When he looks back at me, the charm is gone, and what’s underneath is so quiet and so unguarded that my breath forgets its job.