A SACRIFIES BEYOND LOVE

Getting To know Each other

They sat at a corner table while a waiter brought drinks. The lounge was cool and quiet, a different world from the hot driveway outside.

"I actually came to book for my parents' wedding anniversary," Judy said. "What brought you here?"

Bryan took a careful sip of his drink — a juice that arrived far colder than he'd expected, and he took a moment to compose himself before answering. "A client. I came to see a client."

"I didn't get to thank you properly that day," she said.

"It was nothing. I was rushing."

"Thirty-five years," she said, returning to her parents. "Not fifty yet, but still — that's beautiful. Marriage is one of the most beautiful things, don't you think? When you marry the right person."

Bryan turned the glass in his hands. "I agree. Finding the right person — that's the hard part."

"You think so?"

"Not really, actually." He looked up at her. "Just follow your heart. That's it."

Something in that simplicity seemed to catch her off guard. She looked at him differently — not as a man she'd met twice by accident, but as someone who might be worth knowing.

"You should come to the anniversary," she said.

He laughed. "I'm not officially invited."

"I'm inviting you officially right now."

"But—"

"No buts." Her eyes were steady. "At least we get to meet again."

Later, Bryan would struggle to explain exactly how the afternoon disappeared. They talked. That was the whole of it, and yet it was everything — the kind of conversation that moves between small things and large ones without ceremony, that makes you forget what time it is. When his client finally messaged to say he had arrived, Bryan looked at his phone with the mild surprise of a man remembering a previous life.

"You made me forget why I came here," he said. "But I enjoyed your company."

They exchanged numbers in the lobby, both of them smiling without quite knowing why.

* * *