He ran a finger over the tablecloth and then turned and ran the same finger down the buttons on the front of my shirt. The light touch made my breath hitch and my pulse skip.
“You dressed up your place and yourself. Must be something pretty special we’re celebrating.” I cleared my throat and actually did the gentlemanly thing and pulled his chair out for him. I don’t think I’d ever pulled a chair out for anyone before.
“Very special.” I walked around the table and sat down across from him. I asked him if he wanted a glass of the red wine Mom had brought to go with dinner and I could see humor dancing in his eyes as he nodded. Luckily my mom was a smart woman because I didn’t have anything close to a wine opener in my place and the bottle she left had a cap that screwed off. After sloshing the deep red liquid into a couple of glasses, I sat back and we stared at each other for a long moment. Eventually, Lando lifted the glass to his lips and took a swig. When he put it back down on the table he leaned forward a little and asked,
“You went to your physician today, didn’t you?”
I balked a little and reached up to tug at the collar of my shirt. “I did. How did you know that?”
He waved a hand over the table and all the trappings. “This is all a pretty big hint. He cleared you to go back to work, didn’t he?” I wanted there to be some kind of excitement, some kind of enthusiasm in his tone but there wasn’t. He sounded resigned and fatalistic instead.
“He did. But it’s not like I just get to walk back in and ask for my gun and my shield and demand to be put back on a beat. I have to get cleared by the department shrink, and then I have to pass the department PT test and get requalified with my weapon. None of that is a cakewalk or a guaranteed pass. But this is a big step in the right direction. It’s what we’ve been working towards from the start.”
He picked up the wine and swirled it around in the glass. I could see him struggling to be as happy with my news as I was and it stabbed at somewhere soft and unguarded in the center of my chest. I put my hands on the table and leaned a little bit forward. “You’re not excited for me.” I held up a hand when he opened his mouth to reply. “That wasn’t a question, Lando, it was an observation. I can see that you’re not.”
He swore under his breath and then leaned forward and copied my pose. “I’m happy for you, Dom. It’s me I’m not happy for.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and fought to keep my irritation in check. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means this is the one time in my career I kind of resent that I’m so good at my job. I knew we would eventually get here, but I guess I thought we would have more time.”
More time? It had been three months. Three months of hard work, uncertainty and endless amounts of doubt. For me, it felt like forever to reach this point.
“More time for what, Lando? More time to decide if I was worth the effort or not?” It burned and the image of the pretty boy hanging on his wall and apparently on to his heart taunted me from a really dark place I didn’t even know I had.