On Halloween My Husband Bet I'd Never Leave Him So I Stopped Waiting novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Dinner

He chose a small restaurant in the West Village with eight tables and a menu on a chalkboard.

I read the chalkboard menu twice, looking for the word shellfish.

There was none.

"I called ahead," Tommaso said. "The kitchen is clean. I went and looked at it myself this afternoon."

"You inspected a kitchen for me."

"I inspected three."

I laughed, and the waiter, who had come to take our order, stopped and smiled.

We ordered pasta and a bottle of red.

For a while we talked about nothing.

The chairman's cough, the grey banker's terrible tie, the way my mother ate an entire breakfast without speaking.

Under the table, our knees touched once, and neither of us moved.

"Tell me something," I said, when the plates were cleared. "Why did you stay ten years?"

"You did not ask me to leave."

"Tommaso."

He turned his glass slowly by the stem.

"I came to your father's house at twenty-six," he said. "You were nineteen, home from school, with ink on your hands and your shoes in your hand. You walked straight past me in the hall and said, 'Don't tell my mother.'"

"I don't remember."

"I did not tell her. I have not told her anything since." He looked up. "I decided that night that I would be whatever you needed. A guard. A lawyer. A man who stands behind a chair. It never mattered which."

"It mattered."

"It mattered to me. Not to you."

"It matters to me now."

My voice had dropped, without my meaning it to.

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