“Jared?” She shoots me an inquiring look over her menu. “What are you having?”

“Oh.” I glance at the menu I’ve been holding for the last ten minutes, but hadn’t bothered reading. “The paella looks good.”

“Oooh.” She narrows her gaze on the menu and nods. “I’ve changed my mind. That does look delicious. I think I’ll have that, too. It’s one of my favorites to make.”

“You cook much?”

It’s when I have to ask these kinds of questions that I realize how much Banner and I don’t know about each other. Despite feeling like I left irretrievable parts of myself inside her last night, and that I’ll carry the secrets of her body to the grave, we’ve missed a lot in the decade we were apart.

“I do actually.” She shrugs, the olive skin of her shoulders gleaming sun-kissed and smooth in her strapless dress. “When I have time.”

“Maybe you can cook something for me.”

We stare at one another across the table, the possibility of an actual relationship— something we’ve never had the chance to consider—silently unfolding between us.

“Yeah,” she replies. “I could make you my favorite dish.”

“Which is?”

“Chicken enchiladas with mole sauce. I make it even better than my mama.”

“You and your mom are close?”

“Yes, in the way mothers and daughters who are too much alike are close. Usually arguing after ten minutes together.” She sips the fruity drink she ordered and grimaces. “I didn’t realize this had pineapple. Blech.”

I laugh at the face she makes. “I take it you don’t approve?”

“I hate pineapple. Always have.”

She sets the glass down on the table and there’s a tiny lull in our conversation. It doesn’t feel like that awkward “so what do we talk about now,” as much as there’s so much to talk about, we aren’t sure where to start. I hesitate, unsure if I should say what I’m feeling, but then I remember her bravely sharing herself, her fears and insecurities with me yesterday, and I know there is only forward for us. I’m not sure where we’re going, but it has to be forward. I reach across the table for her hand, smiling at the wary look she offers. She’s unsure, too.

“I feel like we have a lot to learn about each other,” I tell her. “In some ways it feels like I’ve known you for years and can predict your next move before you think it, but in other ways I feel like I know nothing at all.”

She squeezes my hand, a smile blooming on her mouth and rising on her cheeks. “You’re right. I don’t even know if you watch TV, much less what your favorite show might be.”

“Billions.”

“I’m seriously not surprised.” She smiles at me across the table. “Let me guess. Your favorite character is Bobby Axelrod, right?”

“Wrong,” I come back, pleased that she mis-pegged me.

“Who, then?” she asks, eyes narrowed in speculation.

“Wendy Rhoades.”

Her mouth falls open and she leans forward, elbows on the table.

“I’m shocked you didn’t say Bobby, or at least Chuck. Why Wendy?”

Because she reminds me of you.

I don’t say it. I can’t shake every rule of negotiation. I can’t give her everything up front.

“Bobby is the billionaire and Chuck runs the city as the DA,” I say. “But Wendy runs them both. They’d do anything for her. Bend their morals, break their rules. They’d even act against their own self-interest for her, which is antithetical for them both.”

“You’re so sure?”

“If there’s one thing I know for sure,” I laugh harshly. “It’s selfish bastards, being one and all, and those two selfish bastards would do anything for Wendy. That’s what ultimately drove Bobby’s wife away. She knew she might be the wife, but Wendy was the queen.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see their divorce coming.”

“I did,” I scoff. “It’s so obvious Bobby would fuck Wendy if she ever gave him any indication he had a chance.”

I pause, capture, hold her gaze in the moonlight.

“That’s what we selfish bastards do,” I tell her. “We fuck the girl we want the first chance we get.”

Static electricity crackles in the air, drawing us to one another even though neither of us move an inch. It’s invisible and inexorable, this pull, and I hope she’s truly done resisting it.

“And how do you deal with the guilt?” she asks, her voice low and barely above a whisper. “The guilt of just taking and doing whatever you want?”

“What guilt?”

The truth lands on the table among our appetizers and silverware. Her heavy conscience and my lack thereof. Before she can probe any more, the server comes to take our order. He walks away and I shift the conversation instead of talking more about my general lack of morality.

“Favorite movie of all time?” I pick up where we left off before the interruption.

“Shawshank Redemption. You?”

“The Godfather.”

“Figures.”

“Yeah, it does.” We laugh together.

“Favorite food?” she asks.

“Lasagna.” I sip my drink, a jalapeño margarita or some shit. I miss my Jameson. “Best lasagna I’ve ever had in my life was my mom’s.”

“I’ve never heard you talk about your mother,” Banner says. “Only your stepmother.”

There’s a pain in my chest every time I think of my mother. Some emotions are so strong, some losses so essential that the heart—not your beating heart, your feeling heart—can’t contain them, so the body absorbs the blow. That’s how I grieve my mother.

“She died.” I clear my throat and take another sip of my spicy margarita. “Breast cancer.”

Banner has this way of making you feel like you’re the only person in the room, maybe in the world. She doesn’t blink, as if she might miss some vital detail of what you’re saying if she does.

“How old were you?” she asks, her undrifting stare compassionate.

“Ten.” I cough, less about the spices in my drink and more about how foreign it feels to talk about this, about her. “It was really fast. She was already stage four and . . .”

That’s as far as I typically go, and I assume she’ll do what other people do. Murmur condolences and move on. It’s an old hurt, no place to linger, but Banner does what Banner does.

“Tell me about her,” she says softly. “What was her name?”

“Angela.” My laugh is short. Truncated. “Dad called her Angie. God, he yelled her name all the time. ‘Yo, Angie, where’s my socks? Angie, you pick up my dry cleaning? Angie, there’s no beer in the fridge.’”

I pause to offer a knowing look.

“I can hear your thoughts from here,” I tell her with a crooked grin. “And yes, he did have some chauvinist tendencies my stepmother cured him of pretty quickly.”

Her rich laughter and the warmth in her eyes ease the ache in my chest a little. I rarely talk about it because I hate feeling this way. Weak and helpless, like I can’t make it hurt less and I can’t ever bring her back, but I don’t feel those things tonight. It feels right to tell one incredible woman in my life about the other.

“Mom wasn’t a pushover, though.” I toy with the cloth napkin wrapped around my silverware. “She just loved my dad so much. Wanted to make him happy all the time. That’s how she was. She always wanted everyone to be happy.”

“Was your father still in the military then?”

I don’t even remember telling Banner my dad was military, but I nod.

“Yeah. Army, so we lived all over when I was young.” I shrug, dislodging the tightness creeping over my shoulders. “Dad got out soon after she died. Retired.”

“He wanted to be there for you? I imagine that was such a tough time with you being so young.”

I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. It never occurred to me that my father did that for me, but maybe he did. He wasn’t around as much when he was in the army and if he’d been deployed, I would have had to stay with relatives.

“Maybe.” I look down at the table but don’t see the white linen tablecloth for a minute. I see, instead, my dad crying at my mother’s grave. Feel him clutching my hand like a lifeline. “I guess that is when we started getting close.”

“You have pictures?”

The question takes me off guard, and I stare at her like she asked me if I know where they buried Jimmy Hoffa.

“Uh, yeah. I do actually.” It’s the only physical photo I carry around. Everything else is digital, but this one I like to hold every once in a while. I dig out my wallet and pull the time-worn photo from the hidden pocket.

“Wow.” Banner studies the photo I handed her. “She’s gorgeous. That skin!”

“She was Italian. Guess it’s why I’m a little darker, too. Little bit of year-round tan in the genes.”

“That’s the only difference between you and your dad.” Banner raises wide eyes. “You guys could be twins, otherwise.”

My father was a little younger in that photo than I am now, and Banner’s right. The likeness is uncanny.

“Was it hard for you?” She passes the photo back to me. “When your dad started dating your stepmother?”

“You know, it wasn’t. Me and my dad had a few years, just the two of us, before she and August came along. I was a little older and frankly ready to have a woman back in the house. My dad couldn’t cook for shit.”

We share a chuckle, a lingering glance because talking about this stuff feels so . . . close. It feels like we’re venturing into something new and deeper. The water’s at my ankles, but for Banner, talking with her this way, with her looking this way, with her being this way, I’d wade in to the knees. Higher.