Wrong Room: Sleeping With My Fiancé's Uncle novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: Room 4C

He didn't move.

He stood at the railing with the parking ticket in his fist and looked at me.

"Say that again," he said.

"I'm done waiting to be asked."

"Romy."

"You said whatever I decide is mine." I took the ticket out of his hand and put it in my coat pocket. "So I decided. Drive me to your apartment."

A gull landed on the railing between us and looked at us both.

Colm didn't look at the gull.

"You said in my kitchen you didn't trust it yet."

"That was last night."

"What changed?"

I thought about it, because he deserved a real answer and not a pretty one.

"You didn't ask me for anything," I said. "Then you washed pots for the people you used to sign checks for, and you let them call you Rugby."

"That's a list."

"I'm an inspector. I count things."

He almost smiled.

"And just now," I said, "you told me why you were in 2001. Without me asking. Before I'd decided anything."

"That's why I told you."

"I know. That's what changed."

He drove.

He drove the way he always did.

He ran one yellow on Eleventh Avenue and apologized to it out loud.

"You're a terrible driver," I said.

"I've had a driver since I was twenty-three."

"Where is he now?"

"Driving for the board. He sent me a card. It said he was sorry about the flour, too."

I laughed, and he looked over at me laughing, and nearly took the mirror off a parked van.

"Eyes on the road, Mr. Kinsella."

"Don't call me that."

"Eyes on the road, Colm."

He parked on West 51st with one tire on the curb and didn't fix it.

We climbed the four flights without touching.

I went first.

I could hear him behind me, one step back, all the way up.

On the third landing a neighbor's door opened and an old man in a cardigan looked out at us.

"Morning," Colm said.

"It's almost noon," said the old man, and shut his door.

At 4C Colm got his key out and then just stood there holding it.

"What?" I said.

"I keep thinking you'll change your mind on the stairs."

"I came up four flights. I'm not walking back down them."

He unlocked the door.

The apartment was exactly how we'd left it last night.

The ballroom plans were still spread across the little kitchen table, held down by two coffee mugs and his reading glasses.

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