Free Whole Latte Life by Joanne DeMaio Page B

try her again.” A few seconds later, she sets it on the table with an apologetic shrug. The damp weather brings a wave to Michael’s short, dark hair. His eyes that look tired at the end of a day, at the end of the week, soften now. “And I’m just waiting for my friend?”
    “This isn’t about Sara Beth. Last night was, bowling. The Metropolitan Room was about her too. And later we’ll bring her back into the fold. But now?” He shakes his head. “Sara Beth’s doing her own thing and so are you. This here,” he motions between Rachel and himself, “this is about us. This feels more like a date, I think, and I’d like to know you better.”
    The waitress sets down two glasses of sparkling wine. Even though Rachel considers last night’s bowling a date, sort of, he is right. This feels more like the real thing, with the dinner and music. This feels nice.
    “If this is a date, then you’re the first guy I’ve dated in twenty years,” she finally says.
    “How am I doing?” Michael asks seriously.
    The thought that comes to her is that she never expected someone like this to supplant her thoughts of Carl.
    “Rachel.” He leans closer. “How are you with this?”
    “I’m okay.”
    “Okay.” He leans back, turning a little so his shoulder rests on the booth back. “So I’m your first date. Now tell me your story.”
    “The condensed version or Chapter One, which means we might not get out of here tonight.”
    “Chapter One, by all means.”
    Yesterday afternoon she had been so impatient with his slow, roundabout way of making a point when she wanted answers about her wayward friend. Now she’s seeing that he never rushes anything. In fact, he has a way of savoring every fast moving moment in this city. Of catching each one and saying Whoa! Slow down now. Of carefully listening to and seeing every frame on the reel.
    “Chapter One,” she muses, filling in the background with her parents’ divorce when she was thirteen, describing how it tore her childhood neatly in half. She adds detail with Sara Beth, safe and enviable at the time, coming into her life in the eighth grade courtyard. And then there’s her marriage to Carl during her last year at college. With Carl she had the chance to finally heal, with her own marriage, that gaping wound left by her parents’ divorce. She’d never had the Norman Rockwell stuff and she craved an old-fashioned family life like a chocoholic craves her drug of choice.
    Carl was ten years older and their relationship satiated her. She started her new family right away, having Ashley within a year. “And now she’s finishing her first year of college, in upstate New York.”
    “You miss her.”
    “We’re very close, even when we’re apart.” Rachel tells him about the book Ashley had the front desk send up on her breakfast tray. “We’re really mushy that way. Always thinking of each other.” She waits for his eyes to meet hers; he’s studying people at a table beyond them. “But I’m boring you. I’m sorry.”
    “What? Boring me? Far from it.” He pulls his chair closer. “Ashley.”
    “Yes. I miss her a lot, but I’ve got my gardening and night courses and my walking club. That whole part of my life… marriage, raising a child, family…” She snaps her fingers. “It flew by.”
    “You were happy then.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “That’s when time flies. When you’re happy.”
    “True. Feeling connected and at home, well you know. Like you feel about Joe and Lena. It gives you a provenance. I’ve been in my home for twenty years and hadn’t planned on ever leaving before Carl died.”
    “Where would you go?” Michael asks.
    “I don’t know. With Ashley away at school now, maybe a condominium.”
    He looks her dead on. “You? The woman who managed to snag a reservation in The Plaza? You are definitely not the condominium type.”
    “What type am I then?” She’s curious as to how he sees her, curious about why he’s