Halfway through dinner, she set down her fork and asked what had changed my mind about the rule. I looked at her across the little candle and decided that the least I could do was stop making her assemble the truth from hints. “You,” I said, then explained that every time she mentioned another date, I grew quieter while congratulating myself for being reasonable. Lately, I had felt like a man watching a train leave and calling the empty platform a safe place to stand.
“That’s annoyingly poetic for an engineer,” she said, but her eyes stayed serious. I admitted that Jess offering to introduce her to a cousin had bothered me more than I wanted to acknowledge. Maya shook her head and said Jess described him as having excellent emotional posture, a phrase neither of us could explain. Then she looked at her hands and told me she had planned to ask about my feelings before the engagement dinner, sober and without an audience.
