He sighs heavily. "India, why do you need me to say yes to that? Don't you believe me when I say I want only you? I don't want Heather or Cindy or anyone Marina wants to match me with."
He pulls me against him again. "Right now, I want you. I can't promise it will be forever. Don't ask me to."
I nod, because even I know neither of us can make such a promise.
"I'm going to say goodbye to John," I say, pulling away from Jon. "I owe him that much. He was nice enough to come tonight to meet me. It would be totally rude of me to leave without saying goodbye."
Jon steps back and shakes his head slowly. He runs his hand through his hair and I know he's angry at me for not just slipping out with him. I go to the stairs, but before I go down, I turn and meet his eyes.
"You should say goodbye to your date, too. It's the adult thing to do, Jon."
He doesn't say anything, just rubs his jaw thoughtfully.
"Okay," he says and waves me on. "I'll be a grownup if I have to. You go ahead. I'll come down in a moment."
I nod and take the stairs back to the living room where Marina is standing with both John and Cindy.
"There you are," Marina says, and glances at John and Cindy. "We thought you'd left."
"Why would you think that?"
"You've been upstairs," she says and raises her eyebrows, "for about fifteen minutes. What were you doing up there?"
Jon comes down the stairs and then Marina sees him. He stops in the middle of the staircase when he sees the four of us standing together. I can sense the hesitancy in him. He doesn't want to have to face this, but he visibly steels himself and comes over, a smile pasted on his face.
"There you are," he says and puts his hand on Cindy's arm. "Care to have a little chat?"
She looks at Marina and then at me and John. Marina pushes her. "Go." Marina smiles widely and then looks back at me. "I'll leave you two alone."
She scoots off, smiling like she's happy with her accomplishments. Little does she know…
"I'm sorry," I say when I turn to John. He bends down, smiling at me, his dark eyes amused. "I didn’t mean to abandon you for so long."
"No harm done. Cindy and I had a nice chat. In fact, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. She and I have decided to leave together. She's telling Jon right now, actually."
My mouth is wide open at that.
What?
"Oh," I say, struggling for the right words. "That's great. Can I ask why?"
He smiles. "We actually met before you arrived and got to talking. We… well, we have a lot in common and since things didn’t seem like they were working out with either of you, we decided to leave and go get some coffee."
"Really?" I glance over at Jon, who appears amused by whatever it is that Cindy is telling him. He rubs his jaw. Then he glances over at me, a half-grin on his lips.
I turn back to John who adjusts his tie. "I hope you don't mind."
"No," I reply, completely flummoxed but relieved as well. "No, I think it's great that you two met and hit it off, considering that things didn’t work out for us. All's well that ends well, right?"
"My thoughts exactly. So, if you don't mind, Cindy and I are leaving."
"Nice to meet you, anyway," I say with a laugh. "Have a nice evening."
He smiles and turns away. I can feel his relief at leaving me and going to retrieve Cindy from Jon.
Marina comes right over, her expression concerned. "What's going on? Where's John going?"
I turn and watch as Jon and John shake hands like a couple of gentlemen.