Convincing
1448 Words
Sunday afternoon. No event, no schedule, nowhere to be.
Gerald had suggested ….. nicely, helpfully, in the way he suggested everything that was slightly uncomfortable, that before Tuesday’s dinner it might be worth going through the basics. The story. The details. The kind of things couples knew about each other that strangers didn’t.
Derrick had agreed. Anne had agreed. They sat at the kitchen island with coffee, a notepad and the collective energy of two people about to do something mildly humiliating.
“Okay,” Derrick said. “How we met.”
“Gerald introduced us at the networking event.”
“Right. Then I asked you to dinner the following….”
“You said coffee last time.”
He stopped. “What?”
“Two days ago you told that story to someone at your office and you said coffee. Right now you said dinner. Which is it?”
He looked at her. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, Derrick, it matters. If you say dinner and I say coffee we look like we’ve never had a conversation about our own relationship.”
“Fine. Coffee.”
“Thank you.” She wrote it down. “When?”
“A week after the event.”
“Two weeks. You had a board thing the week after. We’ve been over this.”
“I’ve been over a lot of things this week.”
“Then remember them.” She underlined something on the notepad. “Favourite food.”
“Pasta,” he said.
She looked up. “You actually got that one right.”
“I’ve been paying attention.”
“To what?”
“You order pasta every time we get food in. You’ve done it five times this week.”
Anne looked back at the notepad. “Fine. Yours is steak.”
“Correct.”
“Boring, but correct.”
“You say that every time I mention steak.”
“Because it’s true every time.” She flipped the page. “Favourite book.”
“Not telling you that.”
She looked up. “Excuse me?”
“It’s personal.”
She stared at him. “I literally just told you mine last Sunday.”
“You didn’t tell me yours. You refused to tell me yours.”
“I told you it was embarrassing. That counts.”
“It really doesn’t.”
“Derrick.”
“Anne.”
She put the pen down. “We are supposed to know each other’s favourite books. That is the kind of thing married people know.”
“Then tell me yours first.”
“I told you it’s embarrassing.”
“And now I’m telling you mine is personal. We’re even.”
She picked the pen back up and wrote *books …TBD* on the notepad with slightly more force than necessary. He watched her do it and said nothing.
“Okay,” she said. “Childhood. Where did you grow up?”
“Dallas. River Oaks area. You?”
“Moved around a bit. Settled here when I was twelve.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You do now.” She kept writing. “Siblings?”
“None. You?”
“None.” She paused. “We’re both only children.”
“Is that relevant?”
“It explains a lot about both of us actually.”
He looked at her. “What does it explain about you?”
“I’m not telling you that either.”
“You are the most selectively private person I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know. I’m reclaiming it.”
He picked up his coffee and she kept writing and the afternoon moved with calmness, and somewhere between the childhood section and the question about how they handled disagreements, which produced a very long silence from both of them, it stopped feeling like homework and started feeling almost normal.
Almost.
****
They had a dinner across town at seven. Anne was ready first, coat on, standing near the entrance doing something on her phone. Derrick came out of his room adjusting his jacket and she looked up and looked back down at her phone and then looked up again.
His tie was slightly off. Not badly. Just enough.
She walked over. Reached up. Started fixing it.
She got three seconds in before her brain could catch up to what her hands were doing.
She stepped back fast. He’d already moved his hand out to catch her elbow because she’d gone backwards quickly enough to be heading for the wall. He caught it. She steadied. They both let go at the same time like “elbows” was something neither of them had agreed to touch.
The tie was worse than before she’d started and neither of them said anything about it.
They walked to the elevator, rode it down, got in the car and the driver pulled out.
Four minutes of silence.
Dallas outside doing its thing, glittering, people enjoying the night life.
Anne looked at her window. Derrick looked at his. Somewhere around the third minute he fixed his own tie in the dark reflection of the glass and she watched it happen in her peripheral vision and found something very interesting to look at on her side of the car.
“We’re going to be late,” she said, just to say something.
“We’re not going to be late.”
“We left later than planned.”
“We’re five minutes away.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Another thirty seconds of silence.
“Your tie looks fine now,” she said.
“I know.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
They arrived to the venue and to their greatest surprise they weren’t late.
****
The dinner was better. Noticeably, measurably better, and Anne knew it had nothing to do with Sunday’s practice session and everything to do with two weeks of living in the same space, which was a more uncomfortable realisation but an accurate one.
They moved through the room without thinking of how to appear like real couples doing it, because they had already gotten a hang of it. She handed him something without looking and he took it. He steered them away from a conversation that was going nowhere and she went with it without needing to be told why.
Humphrey’s expression had shifted. Not convinced, but not suspicious either. Something in him still told him thing was an act and it needed time to reveal itself.
Gerald watched them from nearby and looked quietly pleased with the world.
Nora was there too, near the drinks table with a colleague from her department, and at some point during the evening the colleague said something that made Nora go very still for exactly one second before she laughed.
“What?” her colleague said.
“Nothing.” Nora smiled. “Just watching.”
“They look good together.”
“Mm.” Nora turned back to her drink. “Anne always looks good wherever she is.”
The colleague said something else. Nora responded, but her attention was focused on Anne and Derick.
****
They arrived home late and exhausted from the whole performance.
Anne headed to the kitchen to get some water, Derrick was already there at the same cabinet.
They both stopped.
“You first,” Anne said.
“You,” Derrick said.
“Derrick.”
“Anne.”
He got two glasses. Filled them both at the tap. Handed her one. She reached for it and their fingers came close enough that she was very aware of the not-touching and she said thank you and walked out of the kitchen with her water and down the hall to her room.
He stood at the counter.
Listened to her door close.
Took a sip of water.
Set the glass down.
“This is fine,” he said, very quietly, to the empty kitchen, in the tone of a man who had just observed something and noticed it was not as simple as he’d planned for.
He rinsed the glass. Put it away. Turned the kitchen light off. Walked to his room. Sat on the edge of the bed.
He was fine. Everything was fine. This was a twelve month arrangement and he was a grown man who ran a company and he was not going to be derailed by a woman who fixed ties without thinking and makes him laugh without trying.
He picked up his phone. Opened a new note. Typed one line. Read it back. Put the phone face down, stared at the ceiling and exhaled.
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