Caroline was already there. She was sitting at a corner table, bathed in the amber glow of a small table lamp. She wore a dark emerald silk blouse that caught the light like liquid. She was looking at her phone, her brow furrowed in a way that probably caused grown men in boardrooms to sweat. Caleb walked over.
He didn't sit immediately. He just stood there for a second, feeling entirely out of his depth. Caroline looked up. The crease between her eyebrows vanished instantly. She locked her phone and dropped it into her purse, snapping the clasp shut with absolute finality.
"You didn't wear the tie," she said. I take instructions. Well, Caleb replied, sliding into the chair opposite her. I doubt that, Caroline murmured, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips. You look like a man who argues with instructions, just on principle.
Only when they're bad instructions. A waiter appeared completely silent and poured water into their glasses. There were no menus on the table. "What are we eating?" Caleb asked, looking around.
"Whatever the chef felt like making today," Caroline said, "I like this place because I don't have to make any decisions. For 2 hours, someone else is in charge. It's a profound relief." She leaned back in her chair, studying it. The intensity of her gaze hadn't dimmed since Friday night.
It was unnerving. Caleb was used to being invisible. To the people whose kitchens he built, it was just a tool belt and a pair of boots. To Caroline, he felt like a puzzle she was determined to solve. "Tell me about the cabinets," she said.
Caleb blinked. "You want to talk about woodworking? I want to hear you talk about something you understand, something you control." So, he did. At first, he was hesitant, offering short clip sentences about joints, brackets, and load-bearing walls.
But Caroline didn't feign interest. She demanded detail. She asked about the tensile strength of oak versus maple. She asked why he preferred dovetail joints over nails. Before he knew it, the appetizer had arrived.
Some sort of seared scallop that tasted like the ocean and butter. And Caleb was sketching a cabinet schematic on a paper napkin with a pen he'd found in his pocket. "The problem is the moisture," Caleb said, tapping the ink drawing. "If you don't seal the end grain properly, the wood breathes. It swells in the summer and shrinks in the winter.
Over time, it tears itself apart." Caroline watched his hand, the calluses, the faint white scar across his knuckle. "It tears itself apart because it's trying to adapt to an environment it wasn't made for," she said quietly. Caleb paused. He looked up from the napkin.
The conversation had shifted effortlessly from carpentry to something much heavier. "Yeah," Caleb said softly. "Exactly. The main course arrived. Braised short ribs that fell apart if you looked at them too hard, resting on a bed of something smooth and rich.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. It wasn't the awkward, desperate silence of a first date. It was a heavy, comfortable quiet. "Why are you a single dad?" Caroline asked.