She was very nearly perfect, polite, generous, and brilliant. Simone found it much easier to admire all these qualities with Ryan sitting next to another woman at the back of the theater.
When intermission arrived, Simone stopped at the concession stand for a glass of white wine and a small picnic box of bread, cheese, and a handful of grapes. She took her simple meal around the corner of the theater and down the small plank jetty protruding a few feet into Turtle Pond. Cattails and reeds rose to shoulder height on either side of the jetty; fish, ducks, and even a couple small turtles gathered at the edge, clearly accustomed to getting morsels of picnic lunches and bread from small children. Simone set her plastic cup of wine on the railing and opened the box holding her dinner. High on the rock outcropping, the spotlight illuminated the flag flying over Belvedere Castle.
“Time to go, Zoe,” a mother said. A fat-faced little girl with sweaty ringlets tumbling around her shoulders flung the last of her bread into the water and then toddled back down the jetty, leaving Simone in the quiet. She tore off a section of the French bread, added a small hunk of cheese, saving the grapes for the dessert at the end of the meal.
“Hello, Simone.”
She’d purposefully not searched for Ryan during intermission. He’d just as purposefully sought her out. She looked back down the jetty, but they were alone. She relaxed slightly, and focused on him. Up close he looked worse than she’d thought. Lines bracketed either side of his mouth, and the shoulder seams of his shirt sagged a little lower than they should, whereas before they’d been perfectly tailored to his frame. The bone weariness visible on his face should have made him less attractive. Instead it added an entirely new layer of desirability to his already considerable charisma. She wanted to feed him, take him home with her, strip him out of the suit that looked like it weighed more than a medieval suit of armor, and make love to him with her hands and her mouth until the expression on his face relaxed into satisfaction.
Playboy Ryan was an amusing diversion. Wounded Ryan was dangerous.
“Where’s your date?” he not-quite-casually asked her.
“I came alone.”
His gaze sharpened. “The secret admirer strikes again?”
“It’s not as much of a secret as he’d like to think it is,” she said of Stéphane, with his on-again, off-again approach to relationships, his profligate generosity, and his complete inability to commit. “Perhaps he didn’t want to come with me.”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to go with anyone else.”
She contemplated him while she finished her mouthful. “Where’s your date?”
“She ran into a couple women she knew from her agency. I bought them all a glass of wine and left them talking about who had been booked for which show in the fall fashion weeks.”
“And then you came to say hello to the ducks?” she said lightly, giving him a chance to pretend they weren’t glowing like the moon on Turtle Pond.
“No, I came looking for you.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she said.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry grin. He nodded down at the cluster of waterfowl waiting very patiently at her feet. “I think they’re waiting for your crumbs.”
“We’ll have to see if I have anything left for them,” she said. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Why don’t you mind going places by yourself?” he countered.
“No company is better than bad company.”
Air huffed from his nostrils. “Too true,” he said, then leaned back against the railing. “I can’t remember the last time I was alone. When I was a kid, I’d do all-day hikes on the Appalachian Trail, and when I was a teenager, I’d do weekend trips by myself. I’d pack up a sleeping bag, some food, a flashlight, and a book to read, and I’d just take off by myself. I never felt lonely.”
She rather liked this iteration of Ryan, the one who wore cheap running shoes and hiked remote trails by himself. “Do you miss it?” she asked, meaning Do you miss the boy you used to be?
“Yeah. But I didn’t know that until I met you.”
She offered him her bread and cheese. After a quick glance at her, he took it and bit off a tiny section, not even enough to feed a duck, let alone an adult human male, then chewed tentatively, almost as if he had a toothache. “I’ve spent the last decade surrounded by people. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more lonely in my life, and I didn’t know that until I met you.”
“I’m not sorry,” she said, and held up her hand when he tried to give it back. He needed it more than she did.
“Are you enjoying the show?” he said.
“Very much. Are you?”
“I should have thought more carefully about the company,” he said.
Her temper fired up again. “No one makes you date women like that,” she said. “Or fuck them, or whatever it is you’re doing with them. It’s your choice. If you don’t like it, stop.”
“They’re a good reason to come see you.”