“Questions?”
“Yes. Where did you grow up?”
“They won’t ask us any of this.”
“No, but I’m expected to know it about my husband.”
I shake my head. “Next question.”
The furrow between her eyebrows is back. She scrolls on the phone, passing what must be dozens of questions along the same lines. “Fine,” she says. “Where did you propose?”
“In my office. At work.”
“That’s the least romantic proposal story I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s also the truth,” I say. “My business partners will expect it.”
She chews on her bottom lip again. “You’re right. It’ll work in our favor, actually. To play on that.”
I run a hand through my hair and consider the options before me. Going to this dinner won’t be easy. It won’t be fun. But it will help soften the image I know I have. An image I’ve cultivated and never minded before. It’s also an image that, at times, makes me somewhat unapproachable.
I know. I’m a paragon of self-awareness.
Cecilia is the opposite. She makes housekeepers laugh and brandishes champagne sabers like swords.
“We got married at City Hall because we couldn’t wait,” she murmurs, looking down at her phone.
“We didn’t want a big ceremony.”
“That’s right,” she says. “We’d worked so closely before, too, in the office. We already knew each other very well.”
“That was my argument, once,” I say. “But someone said that we were strangers.”
She looks up at me, a smile flashing across her lips. “Yes. Well, we were. Still are.”
“We’re not strangers, Cecilia.”
“I don’t know where you grew up,” she counters. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough,” I say, thinking of all the little things I’d noticed in the last couple of weeks. Her running habits, her sleeping patterns. The sweet chai tea she liked to drink in the evenings, the book she’d accidentally left on the kitchen counter when I came down one morning.
The curve of her waist. The silky sheath of her hair.
I know her better than probably anyone currently in my life.
The same emotion flashes through her eyes again. It looks like hurt, but that makes no sense. Odds are I’m misreading her.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
“Okay,” she murmurs. “All right. Well, in that case, I guess we don’t need my questions. Just one more thing… rings.”
“Rings,” I repeat. “Fuck, you’re right. I’d overlooked that.”
Her small, patient smile tells me she hadn’t. “Yes. Well, not having any was fine before, but if we’re to act married in public…”
“We need them,” I say. “I’ll fix it.”
“You will?”