“It’s not a big thing,” I said defensively. “It’s really just one main dish. Don’t expect it to be amazing or anything. And we won’t be alone. Audrey will be there, of course.”
“Sabrina. Is this your version of introducing me to the parents?”
There he was again, one step ahead of me. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but now that he’d put it in those terms, yes. That’s exactly what this was.
I suddenly had to sit down.
“This is just something we do every year,” I lied, unable to admit the truth out loud. “And since you’re under the impression that I’m only interested in you for your—” I stopped.
He’d said something while I was talking, and I’d missed it.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I said I’ll be there. Just tell me the time.” He even sounded like he was looking forward to it.
“Awesome.” My stomach had flutters and I couldn’t stop grinning. Or shaking. “Seven o’clock.”
“It’s a date.”
“How did you spend your Thanksgiving, Donovan?” Audrey asked, as she filled the water goblets on the table.
I listened to the conversation from the kitchen as I pulled the food out of the oven. The evening had gone well so far, despite my anxiety about it. Donovan had shown up on time with an expensive bottle of red wine, looking more than amazing in his gray slacks and maroon sweater. I’d been an awkward hostess, too nervous to know how to handle small talk with a man who knew everything about me, who’d been inside me, who’d said I belonged to him.
So instead of trying to talk about the weather or rehash the Macy’s Day Parade, I’d hidden in the kitchen, pretending that the salad needed more tossing and the vinaigrette needed whisking. I’d only come out once to grab a glass of wine after Donovan had popped the cork. He and Audrey had moved to sit around the dining room table, and from what I could see and what I’d overheard, my sister seemed to have the conversation more than handled.
But dinner was done now. I’d have to sit at the same table with him and hope I could contain the torrent of emotions that kept me flustered and prevented me from having coherent thoughts.
“I had dinner at my parents’ apartment on the Upper East Side,” Donovan answered casually.
“Is that a good time?” A question I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to ask.
“No. It’s not. It’s thirty or so of the richest, snobbiest, cattiest people that my mother feels socially obliged to impress, crowded into a Central Park mansion to celebrate what they own, who they own, and who they fucked over to own it. It was my first Thanksgiving in the U.S. in a long time. I’d forgotten how awful it was.”
Steam rushed up to glisten my face as I opened the foil around the garlic bread. Despite it’s delicious smell, it suddenly seemed like such a simple side. Embarrassingly simple.
How different this dinner must be to Donovan, who was used to servant-prepared meals and glamorous surroundings. And here we were in a two-bedroom in Hell’s Kitchen that he owned and rented to people in much lower tax brackets, furnished almost exclusively from a Pottery Barn catalog, serving him a dinner that was heavy and rich with refined carbs.
I didn’t even think I could pronounce the wine he’d brought.
This whole idea had been ridiculous. What had I been thinking?
If he hadn’t realized by now how totally beneath him I was, he would after tonight. I might be making good money now with an executive job in his firm, but I was still the poor girl he’d met back at Harvard on scholarship.
Hell, I hadn’t even managed to keep the scholarship in the end.
But I couldn’t hide in the kitchen all night feeling sorry for myself. I quickly downed the rest of my wine then carried my empty glass and the garlic bread to the table.
“Can you grab the salad?” I asked Audrey. “We’re ready to eat.”
“Yep!”
She ran off to attend to her assigned task as I set my glass at my place and the bread in the center of the table. I avoided looking at Donovan, but when I turned to go back to the kitchen, he grabbed my wrist. Electricity shot up my arm. My skin burned under his fingers.
I looked back at him, my pulse speeding up when my eyes met his.
“Hey,” he said.
“Yeah?” My voice cracked on the simple word.
He stroked his thumb along the inside of my wrist. “I want to be here. Okay?”
A storm of butterflies took off in my stomach. He never missed anything. Even behind a wall and a stove, he saw me.
“I mean it,” he said when I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. “Okay?”
I took a deep breath in and let it out. It didn’t completely relax me, but it helped. Expecting to be any more at ease was ridiculous with Donovan so close, touching me. Looking at me. Looking at me like he wished I were the main course instead of what I’d prepared.
“Okay,” I said softly.
He didn’t let go of me, though. He held on until my sister came bustling around the corner, her arms full with the salad bowl tucked precariously under one arm and the bowl with the vinaigrette I’d made in the other hand.
“Have you heard of making trips?” I hissed as I passed her on my way back to the kitchen.
“I think I’m doing just fine,” she called back to me. “So if you weren’t in the U.S. before, Donovan, where were you?”
“Tokyo,” he answered. “Do you want to know the best thing about Japan?”
“Sure.”
“No one gives you a hard time when you decide to work through the holiday.”
Smiling, I shook my head and stuck a serving utensil on top of the lasagna dish.
Audrey giggled. “No wonder you and my sister get along. Workaholics.”
“I heard that,” I yelled, using hot pads to pick up the lasagna and carry it around the corner to the dining room. He wants to be here, I told myself. He wants to be here.
“Did she tell you that?” he asked, meeting my eyes when I returned to the room. “That we get along?”
Oh yeah, he wanted to be here. The way he looked at me sent sparks through my body. Every cell inside me was charged. Every molecule.
Jesus, how was I going to make it through this night?
Audrey pursed her lips. “Hmm. I don’t remember.”
“We don’t,” I said, teasing. “We bicker like crazy. He’s a pompous asshole, and he never acknowledges that I’m right.” Maybe it was only half teasing.
“That’s not true. You’re just so rarely right,” he taunted right on back.
I set the dish down on the table and stared at Audrey. “See? Pompous. Asshole.”
My sister thought it was funny. Donovan only shrugged as if to say, ‘you get what you get.’
It made my chest pinch. I wanted to get him, pompous asshole parts notwithstanding. For the first time, I started to believe it might actually be possible. That we might be able to work out everything between us, and we’d just get to get each other.
But that was for tomorrow.
Tonight I had to hope that my food didn’t give anyone food poisoning.
After surveying the table for anything missing, I took my seat at the round table between Donovan and my sister. The next few minutes were spent refilling wine glasses. Audrey made a toast, and we all clinked. Then we began dishing up and digging in.