Employees.
Teachers.
Neighbors.
Usually they landed nowhere.
From Autumn, they landed differently.
Maybe because she had not forced sympathy into her voice.
She simply meant it.
He looked at her.
“What about Grant?”
Her expression closed slightly.
“You don’t have to.”
She smiled weakly.
“That’s my line.”
He waited.
Autumn traced one finger around the rim of the cup.
“We met when I was twenty-four.”
“He was charming.”
“Obviously.”
“He made everything easier.”
“Reservations.”
“Trips.”
“Bills.”
“Decisions.”
“At first it felt wonderful.”
“Then I realized he never made my life easier.”
“He made himself necessary.”
Owen understood that sentence immediately.
“He hated my friends.”
“Not openly.”
“He would point out tiny things they did wrong until I stopped wanting to see them.”
“He hated my job.”
“Said architecture consumed too much time.”
“He hated my clothes sometimes.”
“My family.”
“My coworkers.”
“Anything that existed without him.”
Owen asked:
“What made you leave?”
Autumn became quiet.
“One morning I went to work and realized I hadn’t made a decision without considering his reaction in almost two years.”
She looked toward Owen.
“I ordered lunch based on what he might say if he saw the receipt.”
“That scared me.”
“So I went home.”
“Packed.”
“Left before he returned.”
“Did he come after you?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Months.”
“Calls.”
“Emails.”
“Flowers.”
“Apologies.”
“Anger.”
“Silence.”
“Then he disappeared.”
“Until tonight.”
She looked toward the dark phone beside her.
Owen asked:
“Why would he arrange me?”
Autumn looked at him.
“That’s what scares me.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t do random things.”
Owen leaned back.
Autumn saw the message on his phone and stopped smiling.
For one suspended second, neither of them moved.
The restaurant noise seemed to blur into something distant and muffled, like snow falling against a closed window.
She lifted her eyes back to his face.
“My phone is dead,” she said quietly. “It has been dead for almost an hour.”
He looked down at the screen again.
The latest text still glowed there.
Autumn’s still stranded on I-70. Probably not making it. Sorry.
A hard chill ran through him that had nothing to do with the weather outside.
“I got that three minutes ago,” he said.
Autumn’s fingers tightened around the damp wrapping paper of the Christmas gift she had carried through the storm.
“I never sent it.”
He stood so quickly that the booth shifted against the floor.
Across the room, the manager looked over, probably assuming the awkward blind date had finally collapsed.
But the embarrassment that had been burning in him moments ago was gone.
Something else had taken its place.