“Don’t worry about them,” he said close to my ear, nodding at the honkers. “In a few seconds they’ll all be in the rearview mirror.”
* * *
It’s ten-fifteen by the time I slip my key into the lock of my fifth-floor walk-up apartment. I’ve lived here for six years but have only had the place to myself for the past three, after my roommate moved to Boston, and I could finally (barely) cover the rent on my own. I hired a company to knock down the temporary wall in the living room that had served as my roommate’s old room, and restored the apartment to its one-bedroom glory.
Tonight, when I open the door, a blast of heat engulfs me. I throw up my hands to ward off flames. I sniff for smoke, but all I get is Vito’s garlic knots.
I step inside, and there is Ryan in my kitchen, shirtless and half-submerged in a heap of hoses and hardware, which looks like it used to be my dishwasher. At the sound of my boots, his head pops up, and he gives me the wide grin that makes my dry cleaner fan herself with her pad of receipts.
Ryan played tennis at Princeton, so if you’ve seen Nadal change shirts after a match, the comparison would not be hyperbolic. His muscles are so defined they have etymologies.
I’ve never been drawn to muscles before, but on Ryan, it’s part of the whole package. He’s solid inside and out. He’s the youngest LD on Capitol Hill, leader of his local Big Brothers program, captain of the intramural soccer team, and he happily offers to babysit his niece and nephew. He has never—not once in three years—not called me when he said he would, nor left me to wonder about his intentions. When he wants something, he gets it. In that way, we’re alike.
Ryan has presidential aspirations. Legitimate ones. When he told me this on our fifth date, laying out the path for the next twenty years of his professional life as we sat at the ceviche bar on West Fourth, it startled me, but then I figured Michelle probably wasn’t troubleshooting how to be FLOTUS on her fifth date with Barack, so I might as well enjoy my scallops and take life as it came.
“Hi, honey,” he says.
“Don’t move a muscle.” I reach for my phone to document this. “How have we never done a Christmaskuh card showcasing your abs? ‘Give me a pec under the mistletoe’ in a brushed script font. Or, if you turned around, we could do ‘Lats of love this holiday season.’ ”
“Awful.” Ryan laughs, his brown eyes crinkling, his Greek-statue triceps flexing as he twists my cheap wrench. He rises and comes to me, lifting me threshold-crossing style. We kiss. “But if it’s a holiday card, we’re supposed to be together.”
“But then I’d block your twenty-four-pack.”
“People would still know it’s there,” he says and kisses me again.
I tap his chest. “By any chance, is there something besides your bod making it so ungodly hot in here?”
Ryan sets me down, leans handsomely against the stove and tucks his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“I always want bad news first,” I say, setting down my many tote bags. I leave the house with one and somehow manage to come home every day with four. “What kind of person can absorb good news knowing bad news lurks around the corner?”
“All right,” he says. “The bad news is I broke your radiator while fixing your dishwasher. The good news is I fixed your dishwasher.” He tugs at my sleeve. “Take your coat off. Stay awhile.”
I’d love to throw off my trench, but I am fully nude beneath it, and this hot flash is not the opening salvo I’d envisioned for our passionate tryst tonight. I lean around him to survey the disaster that is my kitchen. So much for my three-act fantasy.
“Dishwasher sure looks fixed,” I joke. “While you’re lining up renovation projects, do you think you can fix my headboard tomorrow? I was hoping we could do some damage to it tonight.”
“I mean,” he says, pointing at the hoses, “the rattle’s fixed. Or it will be by the time I put it back together. But that’s the easy part.”
“Sure.” My dishwasher has rattled during the rinse cycle since before I moved in, and it’s never really bothered me. It’s one of the quirks of New York apartment living I feel one must come to love. If it’s acting up while I’m having a dinner party, two thwacks does the trick, but most of the time I run the dishwasher on my way to bed and sleep right through the cacophony.
Ryan is a light sleeper. He finds the rattle uncharming. He finds most of my apartment’s quirks uncharming, and is working his way through their solutions.
“Where’s Alice?” I glance over Ryan’s shoulder at the small dog bed where my tortoise usually hangs out. Alice is eighty-six years old and very opinionated, especially about climate. I inherited her from my neighbor across the hall, Mrs. Park, when she moved to Florida. Alice and Ryan do not get along.
Ryan lifts a shoulder. “I think she went that way about an hour ago.” He gestures toward the bathroom.
I find Alice under my sink, where the pipe drips. “Good thing he hasn’t fixed the drip yet,” I whisper.
“Tortoises like heat,” Ryan says as I carry her back into the kitchen. “They’re cold-blooded.”
“Not Alice,” I say, adding ice to her water and setting out some cold cubes of orange from the fridge. “She’s sensitive. She thinks she’s a dog.”
“Maybe our next pet could be an actual dog? My brother just got a goldendoodle and—”
“Do not talk about Alice like she’s already gone. She could outlive you!”
He laughs. “How was the Valentine’s dance?” Ryan is always ever so slightly mistaken about what’s going on at my work. But tonight, I don’t correct him. To split hairs over the fact that the party’s theme was Vows not Valentines would open the vault of Wedding Conversations.
Namely ours. Ryan doesn’t understand why I start sweating when we talk venues. In his mind, we are two exceptionally capable decision makers, and, with the help of a professional planner, should be able to pull off this event with ease. He wishes—like everyone else wishes—that we could just set a date.
I pull the bottle of prosecco from my bag. Ryan clocks the fancy label and raises an eyebrow, intrigued.
“Now do you want the bad news or the good news first?” I ask.
He’s at my mirrored bar cart, where I keep BD’s champagne flutes. “What kind of lunatic wants the bad news first when there’s prosecco losing its chill?”
“You’ve got a point, pop that bottle, but still, I have to go in order. I’ll make it quick.” I duck as Ryan sends the cork ricocheting around my tiny kitchen. He splashes some foam into my glass.