An Evening of Their Own

Clara found him in the garage on Friday, staring at a car he hadn't driven in years.

"Your mother says you owe her a favor."

Bennett turned. Clara wore jeans beneath an open coat, her hair loose over a dark sweater. Without the uniform, she looked younger and somehow less familiar.

"Which favor?"

"She's decided the cake you bought was wasted on her. She wants you to take me somewhere that serves it properly."

He leaned against the car.

"Did she tell you to say that?"

"She told me to be subtle. I decided against it."

He straightened, his attention settling on her.

"And what do you want?"

Clara tucked her hands into her coat pockets.

"Dinner would be nice. Somewhere I won't spend the evening worrying about the price of the chairs."

"I know a place."

"Do you own it?"

"No."

"Do the people who own it owe you anything?"

He considered lying, then shook his head.

"I'll find another place."

She laughed, and the sound followed him all the way to the driver's door.

They went to a small restaurant near the lake. Marcus followed in a separate car and took a table by the entrance. Clara noticed, but after one glance, she let it go.

Bennett wore a sweater. The hostess did not recognize him.

He discovered he liked being asked whether he had a reservation.

Over dinner, Clara told him about the library she had practically lived in as a teenager and the elderly woman who had pretended not to notice when she fell asleep over her books.

"I used to think I'd work in one," she said.

"A library?"

"Somewhere quiet, with a chair nobody could charge me rent for. It seemed ambitious at the time."

"It still can be."

"Maybe. I'm trying to make one decision at a time."

He nodded and did not offer to buy a building.

She noticed that, too.

"What did you want to be?" she asked.

"At sixteen? A man my father would trust."

"And before that?"

He had to think.

"I liked taking things apart. Radios. A broken clock. My mother once found the toaster in twelve pieces."

"Did you put it back together?"

"Most of it."

Clara laughed into her glass.

He watched her, forgetting his food.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I was trying to remember the last time I enjoyed dinner this much," he admitted.

Her expression softened.

Afterward, they walked beside the lake. The wind pushed her hair across her mouth, and she pulled it free, laughing at herself.

Bennett wanted to touch her so badly that he put his hands in his pockets.

"You keep looking at me," she said.

"I know."

"Are you going to tell me why?"

He stopped beneath a streetlamp.

"Because I look for you when I come home. Because you tell me when I'm being an ass, and then ask whether I've eaten. Because tonight I wanted to hear about you without waiting for my mother to fall asleep first."

Clara stood very still.

"I don't always know what to do with you," she said.

"That makes two of us."

She smiled, but it faded quickly.

"I won't be something that happened because you were frightened."

He looked out across the dark water, then back at her.

"I can't promise I'm not frightened. I am. Most days. But I wanted you here tonight even when she was comfortable and laughing at both of us."

Clara stepped closer.

"You still sign my paycheck."

"I know. We need to sort that out before this goes further."

She touched the sleeve of his coat.

"We do."

For a moment, he thought she would step back.

Instead, she lifted her face.

He bent slowly enough for her to change her mind. Her hand slid to his jaw, and then he was kissing her beneath the streetlamp, with cold air against his neck and her fingers warm beneath his ear.

It was gentler than he had expected and harder to stop.

When he drew back, Clara kept hold of his coat.

"That was a terrible place to stop," she whispered.

He rested his forehead against hers.

"I've been told I'm difficult."

"Your mother was understating it."

At home, they went upstairs together. Eleanor was asleep, the bedside lamp dimmed.

Clara stood beside him in the doorway, her shoulder touching his arm.

He stayed there for a minute longer than necessary, unwilling to end the evening.