Page 33 of Easy Reunion

“Would you like to finish that with gin or brandy, ma’am?”

“Brandy, please.”

“And for you, sir?”

“An old-fashioned. Scotch,” he adds before the waiter can ask.

“I’ll have those right out.” He disappears as quietly as he appeared, leaving us caught in the space between harsh memories and magical views. I decide to span the time between us by explaining.

“Everything I told you the other night was the truth…”

“Except your name,” Ry interjects. I tip my head in acknowledgment.

“Except my name.” Tracing my finger up and down the cold-water goblet, I admit, “With or without my journal being plastered all over the walls, it likely wasn’t hard for you to realize I’d started to…care…about you.”

His face softens. “Those kinds of feelings are difficult to hide. Even as young as we were back then.”

I lift my glass to my lips, trying to figure out what to say next, when our drinks are delivered, giving me a much-needed reprieve. “Thank you,” I murmur, as the glass is set down in front of me.

“Are you ready to order?” the waiter asks as he places Ry’s glass in front of him. I’m about to say sure to buy myself a few more minutes when Ry says, “How about giving us a few moments with our drinks?”

“Certainly, Mr. Perrault. I’ll check back with you in a while.” He disappears. I touch the long stem of the fluted glass lightly before asking, “What shall we toast to?”

Ry lifts his glass. “To reconciliation? I think we’ve been through enough rough patches to get here.”

I still, my hand falling away. “Maybe it isn’t supposed to happen. Not all stories are supposed to end well. I know for sure you were forced to readGone With the Wind.” His grin disarms me.

“True, but can you think of something better?” His eyes are steady over his still-uplifted glass.

Not without anticipation and fear, something I experience at the start of every book, I lift my glass and touch it to his. “To reconciliation,” I repeat. Holding each other’s eyes, we each take a sip before lowering our glasses.

“So, it wasn’t a lie and it wasn’t payback.” He raises a brow in question.

I promptly shake my head. “No, it wasn’t either of those things.”

“Then what was our night in Savannah supposed to be?”

I lift my glass and take another sip for courage. Staring down into its pale-yellow depth, I admit, “Maybe it was a gift to the teenage girl who still lives in a small corner inside of me. I ended her story that night. I gave her the fairytale she never had in high school to heal the pain she still harbored inside.” The swirl of the bubbles from the sparkling wine captivate my attention.

“Wouldn’t it have worked better if you admitted who you were to me?”

I shake my head. “I was afraid to take a chance. What if you weren’t the Ry I’d remembered from the hours of tutoring? What if I’d remembered that one moment wrong? What if…”

“What if I did the same thing to you that night I did to you on graduation day?” he concludes grimly.

“Yes.” Lifting my head, I meet his stricken expression. “I fell for a boy and was shattered in the end. What if the man did worse? I could get a feel for who you were as my alter ego. Suss you out as it were.”

“Jesus.” He takes a swallow of his drink. I rush to continue.

“There’s no going back to change the past—either what happened back in high school or recently,” I conclude.

“And in the meantime, we shared something so explosive, we might have left scorch marks on the sheets in Savannah,” his honeyed voice concludes.

I blush. “Well, there is that.”

“Yes, Kelsey, there is.” Together we each take a sip of our drinks without losing the other’s gaze. After he lowers his glass, he asks, “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“About what?”