She gives me a surveying look. “All right. You must be fine if you’re making sex jokes.”
“That wasn’t a joke.”
She sniffs and sighs. “You’ve clearly recovered.”
“I was never not fine.”
“Excuse me for worrying you might be having a heart attack.”
I kiss her cheek and snuggle up. “Thank you.”
“Because that would totally blow my cover for this mystery shop,” she hisses.
I feel so loved.
Just then, someone who sounds exactly like Chandra Mobu appears, a petite, dark-haired woman with kind, sharp eyes and a grey streak through long hair pulled back in a pony tail.
“May I help you?” she asks, pointedly not looking at me. I’d warned Giuseppe not to tip Shannon off with any behavior she might detect as abnormal.
My being the color of industrial waste when she walked in doesn’t count.
Nearly forgetting the ruse, I start to respond when Shannon elbows me and says, “Yes. We have a reservation.”
“What’s the name?”
“Jacoby.”
Soon she’ll just say McCormick. A hot rush of blood pours through me.
My head dips and I can’t suppress a smile. Here we go. That’s better. This is who I am. Grounded. Calm. Focused.
Utterly sure.
“Mr. and Mrs. Jacoby? Right this way,” Chandra says with a gracious smile and a mischievous charm. There goes my jaw again, tight as a drum. Mr. Jacoby my ass.
Shannon just snickers and links her arm in mine as we enter the dining room.
Le Portmanteau is as different from The Fort as can be. There’s a reason I asked Greg to use this restaurant for this ruse: the last place anyone would ever expect to see me is here. I’m a nobody, because this place isn’t our competitor. They’re sleek Scandinavian lines, all grey and white with flashes of primary colors, like a Gubi showfloor with an incredible menu, while The Fort is Teddy Roosevelt’s Delmonico’s steak house for the twenty-first century.
We’re seated, and I pull Shannon’s chair for her. She’s always a little surprised when I do this, even though we’ve been together for a year and a half. It’s engrained in me; Mom made me take classes in comportment and manners. I can dance a waltz, find the shrimp fork, and help an old lady cross the street in ninety seconds or less.
And I speak Russian.
I’m a regular catch.
Shannon’s seated and waiting for me to sit, so I do, directly to her left. My mind feels like it’s three seconds behind my body.
“Wine? Shall I send the sommelier?” Chandra asks me.
With eyebrows raised, Shannon looks at her and says, “I’d love that. Thank you.”
Chandra leaves and just as she’s out of earshot, Shannon whispers, “Can you believe that?”
“What?”
“The sexism.”
My mind turns into slices of Swiss cheese being carved by toddlers with pinking shears.
“The huh?”
“The sexism! Asking you about the wine. It’s so mid-twentieth century.” She looks around the half-empty dining area. We’re seated right by the huge window that overlooks the ocean, the bay calm and tranquil. As dusk kicks in the waves lap at shore and it all feels very—
“Unbelievable,” Shannon chokes out.
I’m starting to agree.
“That’s going in my eval.”
Let me pause here for a moment and admit that it never occurred to me, in any of my nineteen visions for how my proposal would unfold, that Shannon would actually do the mystery shop. I used it as a convenient way to get her here and surprise her.
But for her to be here and take the evaluation seriously is not even in my mental playbook for how this all happens. In my mind we talk, we laugh, we enjoy a bottle or three of wine and a lovely meal, then dessert and Champagne are served with a ring as the coup de grace.
Instead, she’s talking about—
“And can you check the men’s bathrooms? I’ll go if you don’t want to deal with it,” she adds, reaching for her bread plate and the herbed butter. “But this isn’t a bagel shop.”
Just then, the sommelier appears. Shannon asks him a few questions about white wines while I silently turn into the Hulk inside my skin.
My rapidly graying skin.
The ring is digging into my thigh so I shift a little, nudging against Shannon’s knee. Her eyes dart round the room, take in the gorgeous view, and then rest on me.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“Thank you for coming here tonight. I know it’s the last thing on earth you want to do.” Her hand comes to rest on my thigh, dangerously close to the ring.
I shift away.
She looks hurt. “I—did I—what’s going on?” she asks in a quiet voice.
Saved by the wine steward. The sommelier starts the wine parade with me. Shannon glowers. Wine is poured and soon we have a bigger mess than perceived sexism at a luxury restaurant.
“Why don’t you want me to touch you?” she asks as I guzzle my white wine like it’s cough syrup and I have TB.
“I do,” I protest, pouring myself another glass.
“Then,” she croons as her hand goes right back where it was, “why did you flinch?”
I move away. “Because I don’t appreciate being objectified and treated like a piece of meat.”
“Since when?” she says, a little too loudly and with great incredulity.
“If you can find sexism in a restaurant I can find it in our relationship.” I reach under the table and slide the ring so it’s squeezed between my legs.