And that’s when I truly do swoon. He wants to meet my girl.
I run upstairs to leash her, and a minute later I return to him on the sidewalk. My seven-pound fur baby barks once at Gabriel, then decides to slather him in kisses when he bends down to say hello at her level.
“You are perfectly adorable,” he says to my dog, and that warrants another swipe of her tongue against his cheek. “I can see why her sales pitch was effective.”
We stroll through Manhattan, and as Shortcake sniffs the grass and trees on my block as if it were the first time she’d smelled them, we chat, starting to fill in the gaps of the last ten years. We talk about the restaurants he runs now, how he finally made his way to the United States a few years ago, starting in Miami where his cousin lives and opening his first restaurant there. He mentions his friendship with his business manager, who’s French, too.
When it’s my turn, I tell him how I started volunteering at a shelter, then writing grants, then eventually moved up to management. I mention Delaney and tell him that she’s my closest friend and my fiercest ally, and he says he’ll be sure to do everything in his power to never piss her off.
Then he thanks me for letting him join us on the walk.
If I hadn’t already been falling for him at dinner, it’s a done deal now. Especially when we return to the front of my building and he takes out his phone and taps out an email, speaking as he writes. “To Penny Jones at Gmail. Would you like to go out with me tomorrow night? Dinner? Rock climbing? Trapeze lesson? See a band and dance with me?” He raises his head and swipes his phone with a flourish. “Sent.”
I grab mine from my purse, click on the new envelope icon, and hit reply. “Yes. The last one, please.”
“Perfect answer,” he says, then kisses me good-bye. Until tomorrow.
I float on a cloud all the way upstairs.
Chapter Ten
Penny
My sneakered feet pound the dirt path in Central Park.
“Told you.”
The knowing comment comes from Nicole, part of my pack of running companions the next morning. By her side is Ruby, her Irish Setter mix. On her other side is Delaney, her blond hair swishing in a ponytail. Leading the pack is Shortcake, who trots ahead of us, since she’s the fastest, most fearless one in the crew.
“What did you tell her, O Oracle of Relationship Wisdom?” Delaney asks as we round the top of the reservoir and the pale pink morning sun illuminates our way.
“It’s the long-lost ring theory,” Nicole says. “The same applies to Gabriel’s thrown phone.”
I give her a quick glance, arching a brow. “How so?”
“Well, the time I lost the ring,” she begins, gripping her dog’s leash tighter as a gray-haired man with a poodle approaches. “Ruby is a poodle-ist,” she explains under her breath. “No idea why. Anyway, the time I lost my engagement ring from Greg, I freaked the hell out.”
“Understandable,” I say, as Shortcake pants and stares at the black-haired dog passing by. Shortcake is not a poodle-ist. “Losing a ring is one of the few acceptable reasons for freaking the hell out, along with finding your first gray hair and getting your period during a spin class.” Then I add, “Incidentally, I don’t have any gray hairs. But I plan to freak out when I do.”
Delaney raises her palm and smacks it to mine. “Right there with you. But then I’m marching to the salon and having my stylist color it stat.”
“There I was, freaking out,” Nicole continues, “and I was racing through excuses and things I could say to Greg.”
“Your possible options were…?”
“First, I planned to tell him I was giving a burrito to a homeless man, and the ring slipped off and fell into his cup.”
“And then you remembered you don’t eat burritos?” Delaney says, nudging Nicole.
Nicole laughs and taps her nose. “Exactly. My second choice was to tell him I lost it at the pool when I went for a swim at the gym.”
It’s my turn to chime in and debunk her. “And then you remembered you don’t believe in swimming for exercise, only for relaxation, and it has to be in an infinity pool, preferably overlooking the cliffs of Los Cabos.”
“You got it,” Nicole says. “And finally, I toyed with telling him I was robbed. That someone broke into my apartment and stole it.”
“And in the end, you didn’t do any of those, right?” I say as we slow our pace, nearing the end of this morning’s route.
“Exactly. Because the truth is it slipped down the drain. And sometimes when we try to concoct dramatic stories of what went wrong, they sound more ridiculous than the truth.”
With my breath still coming fast, and a bead of sweat dripping down inside my sports bra, I turn to my friends. “And you’re saying that means what? Because if memory serves, after the missing ring thing, didn’t you ultimately decide it was a sign you weren’t meant to marry him and called off the engagement?”
“I did,” Nicole says, as we segue into walking. “It wasn’t meant to be. And that’s why I believe fate sent the ring down the drain.”
“Does that mean fate made Gabriel break his phone?”
Nicole nods. “Exactly. The truth is messy and yet often simple. The dog doesn’t eat the homework. We forget to do our homework. Or our ring slips down the drain. Or we chuck our phone at the wall because we’re so goddamn worked up that we won’t get to go to America and see the one we fell for,” she says, giving me a knowing look.