Yours, by Choice

A Table for Two

Her mother wanted a head count for Friday.

"One," Leah said.

"What about Adrian?"

She lifted a dress off the machine and inspected the seam against the light.

"Not coming."

"Is he working?"

"We broke up."

Marion was quiet for long enough that Leah lowered the dress.

"What happened?"

"He was seeing someone else."

"Are you sure it wasn't a misunderstanding?"

Leah hung the dress on the rail, slipped the phone away from her ear, and looked at the ceiling.

"I'm quite sure."

"Well. Don't tell everyone that at the dinner. Clara doesn't need people making comparisons."

"Then don't invite him."

"There's no need to snap."

Leah checked that the studio's heater was off.

"I'll come on my own. I'll bring the dress I made Clara. That's the plan."

Her mother sighed into the receiver.

"Fine. We'll discuss it later."

Leah ended the call before they could start now.

For the next two days, Julian's number remained above the empty message field in her phone.

He didn't call. She didn't send anything.

On Wednesday afternoon she went to the second viewing of the corner shop with a measuring tape and a list of questions.

The agent had brought a lease form.

"If you sign this week—"

"How old is the electrical inspection?"

He blinked at her.

"It's all standard."

She wrote unanswered beside the question.

The back wall had damp beneath the fresh paint. The fitting room was narrow enough that a customer in a full skirt would need to reverse out of it.

Leah measured it twice.

"It's a charming unit," the agent said.

"How charming is the rent if the stockroom floods?"

He promised to speak to the owner.

Outside, she put the tape back in her bag and stood under the awning until the rain eased.

In the shop window, her reflection covered the space where she'd imagined putting the counter.

She took a photograph of the damp patch through the glass, then sent Mrs. Vale a message.

Not this one.

Mrs. Vale replied with an invitation to tea.

Leah should have asked who else was invited.

Instead she arrived at the small café beside the market at six and found a man standing beside Mrs. Vale's table.

"Leah, this is Owen Hale."

Mrs. Vale lifted her handbag off the spare chair.

"His grandmother lives in your building. Such a coincidence."

Owen's gaze moved from Mrs. Vale to Leah, then down to the single cup on the table.

"I think," he said, "we've both been invited under false pretenses."

Mrs. Vale had remembered an urgent delivery at home. She departed with her tea untouched.

Leah watched her cross the road at remarkable speed.

"She's seventy," she said. "I can't catch her without creating a scene."

"My grandmother's eighty-two. I've stopped trying."

He moved his coat off the other chair.

"We can leave, if you'd prefer."

Leah looked at the rain beyond the window. Her feet hurt. She hadn't eaten properly since breakfast.

"Have they got anything hot?"

"Soup. An alarming amount of quiche."

"Then I'll stay for the quiche."

Owen smiled and handed her the menu.

He was thirty-one, with dark blond hair, square glasses, and a small white scar beside his thumb. When the waiter came, he ordered soup and asked whether the table was too close to the open door for her.

Leah said it was fine. He accepted that and didn't ask again.

"Mrs. Vale told me you're a doctor," she said.

"Surgery. The acute-care team at Bellhaven General."

Her fork paused above the salad.

Owen noticed.

"Bad experience?"

"A long night. A little over a week ago."

"I hope everything's all right."

"It is. The patient isn't my problem anymore."

He didn't ask who the patient had been.

Leah took a bite of quiche.

"And you make clothes," he said.

"Unless Mrs. Vale has offered you a different version."

"She said you could run the whole market if anyone would get out of your way."

Leah looked up.

"She usually tells me I'm doing it wrong."

"I expect she considers the two compatible."

When her phone lit up, Owen looked away until she'd checked it.

Elise had sent a photograph from the work dinner. The blue dress fitted cleanly across her shoulders. Beside her stood two colleagues, one pointing at the pockets.

Leah enlarged it.

"Good news?" Owen asked.

She turned the screen toward him.

"She looks pleased."

"She wanted to be able to raise both arms without the whole dress coming with her."

"An ambitious request."

Leah laughed.

The waiter refilled their water. Somewhere between the soup bowls being cleared and the café turning down its overhead lights, Leah stopped checking the time.

Owen talked about his grandmother's refusal to use her new oven, his failed attempt to keep a balcony herb garden, the fact that his sister only called when something in her house was making a noise.

He asked about Leah's designs and listened when she answered.

When he mentioned the hospital again, she found herself adjusting her scarf.

"Do you know Julian Ward?" she asked.

"A little. He works in reconstructive surgery. He consults with us."

Owen set down his spoon.

"You know him?"

"School."

"That sounds like a complete answer to an incomplete question."

She smiled. "It's all you're getting."

"Fair enough."

At the counter, they divided the bill. Owen didn't argue when she took out her purse.

Outside, the rain had stopped.

He offered her a lift. She declined because her scooter was at the studio, and he accepted that too.

They stood beneath the café sign while she wound her scarf around her neck.

"I'd like to see you again," he said.

Leah tucked the loose end into her coat.

"I enjoyed this."

He waited.

She looked at him properly.

"I'm not sure I'm in a place to start anything."

"All right."

"That isn't code for try harder."

"I didn't take it that way."

He pulled his coat on.

"If we run into each other at the bakery, do I have to pretend I don't know you?"

"Only if I've got my third pastry."

"I'll keep a respectful distance."

They exchanged numbers for the photographs Owen had promised to show her of his grandmother's badly dressed dog.

At home, Leah saved his contact beneath a picture of a terrier in an ill-fitting raincoat.

Then she opened Julian's contact.

No photograph. No messages.

She locked the phone and put it in the drawer beside her bed.

In the morning, when she reached for a clean pair of socks, the piece of hotel stationery slipped out of her coat and landed facedown on the floor.

She picked it up.

Beneath the number, where the fold had hidden it, Julian had written three more words.

I'd like to.

Leah unfolded the paper completely and read it again.