Daniel caught it, and she caught him catching it. And for a moment, something passed between them that neither of them named. They ate. They talked, really talked. The way people talk when they've mutually decided to be honest, and the relief of that decision loosens something.
She told him about growing up in Detroit. The second daughter of a woman who cleaned offices at night and told her daughters every morning that the world would try to make them small and their job was to refuse. He told her about growing up in Atlanta, about his father who worked two jobs and coached little league on weekends and had died of a heart attack at 58. Too early, too fast, the way too many black men went. She told him about the early years of building her company, the investors who had smiled at her, and then tried to talk to her male attorney instead, the banks that had required her to have a co-signer when she had better credit than the loan officer.
He told her about the years after Maya, about learning to braid Amara's hair from YouTube tutorials at midnight, about making lunches at 5:30 in the morning, about sitting at school events as the only dad in a sea of mothers and not caring. Not one single bit because Amara smiled when she saw him walk in and that was the entire point. She laughed at things, he said. Real laughter, not the polished appropriate kind. He laughed at things, she said.
Felt strange in his face, like a muscle he hadn't used. They closed the restaurant. The family who owned it, an older man named Jeppe, who had been watching them with the frank appreciation of someone who had seen a thousand first dinners, brought them espresso they hadn't ordered, and said simply, "On the house, and disappeared before either of them could object. Outside on the sidewalk, the air was cool and clean, the earlier rain having cleared into a night that felt freshly made." "I have a question," Daniel said.
"Ask it. When you decided to come to the restaurant that night to find me. What were you thinking when you got in the car? Victoria was quiet for a moment. I was thinking I was probably making a mistake, she said.
And you came anyway and I came anyway. He nodded slowly. Why? She looked at him. Because I've spent my whole life making safe choices, she said.
And I'm running out of time to make the other kind. Daniel was still running out of time. The phrase landed differently in him than it might have. In someone who hadn't sat beside a hospital bed at 2:00 in the morning, counting the time that was left. Don't say that, he said quietly.
She looked at him slightly startled. Don't make it sound like a deadline, he said. Like you're doing this because you're running out of something. You're not, he paused. You came because you wanted to.
That's enough. That's actually enough. Victoria looked at him for a long moment. And then something shifted in her face. Something gave way.
The way things give way after they've been held rigid for too long. And she said, "Nobody's that to me in a very long time." "What? That what I want is enough. The sidewalk was empty around them.
A cab went by half a block down. Somewhere up the street, someone was laughing at something." Daniel said, "It is two words." But the way he said them, certain unhurried, the way a man says something he already knows to be true made them land like something much larger. She didn't say anything, but she nodded once, and the way she did it told him that it had reached the place she needed it to reach.