“He’s doingwhat?” she said. “He never told me about this.”
“That’s because it was supposed to be asurprise,” I said. “And now I’m ruining the surprise, so make sure you act like you’re actually shocked when you get home and see him, got it?”
“But I don’t want to come home yet,” she whined. “I’m having so much fun.”
“Becca—”
“Can you just tell him I got stuck at work. You can have dinner with him! He’s a good cook, so I’m sure whatever he’s making will be great. You two can get to know each other better, wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I’m not having dinner with your fiancé,” I said. “End of discussion. Either call him and tell him you’re not coming home or do the nice thing and actually come home and face him in person, but don’t make me go out there and lie to him. I won’t do it.”
She groaned. “Fine. I’ll be home soon. One more round and then I’ll leave.”
“Becca.”
“Alright, okay. I’m leaving now.” She hung up and I considered the matter taken care of. I didn’t have the heart to go outside and watch Paul cook for someone who didn’t even seem to want to have dinner with him, so I opted instead to lay down in bed, wasting time on my phone.
This killed nearly an hour. Which was perfect, because Becca got home twenty minutes after we hung up, and she and Paul ate dinner together. Then, just as I was starting to get bored of social media, she came knocking on my door asking if I wanted to help them finish off the bottle of red they’d opened. I came out and took a glass from Paul’s outstretched hand and then allowed him to make me a plate of leftovers. The three of us sat down and I could tell right away that they had coaxed me out of the room for a reason.
They had nothing to talk about.
They stared at each other across the table in a brutal silence for a good ten seconds before Becca finally turned to me and asked me how my day was.
“You know how my day was,” I said. “I called you, remember?”
“Oh right, right,” she said. “Oh Paul, you’re going to love this. Kat, tell him the whole story with you and Jonah. Start from the beginning, because it’s really something you need to have all the information for to really appreciate.”
“The beginning?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like, when youfirstsaw Jonah, when you were a teenager.”
When I first saw Jonah?
I thought back to when I was a kid and tried to remember the exact moment I laid eyes on that gorgeous face of his. Then—it hit me.
The first time I saw Jonah, at least, the first time I got a really good look at him, had been at the holiday Christmas party the first year he started working for my dad. I was fifteen, and he was in his late-twenties. My dad dragged my brother and me to the party, but my mom had something else that night so it was just the three of us. I hated parties back then, especially adult parties, where people would always come up and talk to me like I was a first grader. They would ask me things like, “What do you like to do for fun? Do you have a favorite subject in school?” The small talk was unbearable, and I would always run from it.
That night, I ran to the break room and sat in the corner, drinking hot chocolate and snacking on cookies. My dad had warned me not to have too many sweets, so I was reveling in my small act of disobedience. Jonah walked in and spotted me right away.
“Hello there,” he said. “You must be the boss’s daughter.”
I looked up from my cookie and felt something I’d never felt before. And had not felt since. It was a feeling of surety, the sensation of everything in my life clicking together perfectly. He just made sense and being in love with him from that moment on felt like the most logical thing I could do.
Our eyes locked and he smiled at me, and I had no words.
“I promise,” he said, looking down at the pile of cookies on the table in front of me. “I won’t rat you out.”
And then he left.
That was it. That was all it took.
Naturally, I wasn’t about to tell Becca and Paul this story. I’d had enough embarrassment for one day. Instead, I just shrugged and said, “You know, I don’t really remember the first time I saw him. It was so long ago.”
Becca frowned. “You really don’t?”
I shook my head and went back to eating, and we all three passed the rest of the evening in an awkward silence.
* * *