Chapter 7: The Dock

Dean did not look at our table, and that was how I knew he had seen us the second he walked in.

"We can go," Cal said, very low.

"After the pie."

"Clarissa."

"I'm going to eat the pie, Cal, and then I'm going to walk out with my head up, and I'm going to take you with me."

I leaned toward him, reached for the napkins and put my mouth at his ear.

"When we get home I'm going to take that shirt off you with my teeth," I said.

His whole body went still.

At the next table, a toddler dropped a cup, and it bounced twice.

"That is not funny," he said.

"I wasn't joking."

I ate the pie. It was apple, and I could not have told you one thing about it.

On the way out we passed Dean's table, and Haley turned her left hand over in her lap so the sapphire faced the ceiling.

I looked at her and did not blink.

"It doesn't suit you," I said pleasantly. "It's too big for the finger."

Her smile cracked, and I walked on.

Cal drove home with both hands on the wheel and said nothing the whole way.

He parked in the drive, and the porch light was off.

"Out back," I said. "Not inside yet."

The old Breuer dock ran out into the black water behind his house.

My father had built it the summer I was born, and Cal had re-planked it last spring.

Moonlight lay on the water in a long white road.

I stood where I had stood at twenty-one, barefoot in a green dress with a birthday cake in my stomach and an entire speech prepared.

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