We drove on. The city’s neighborhoods changed character – more lights, more people, the streets narrowing into the kind of area where restaurants had velvet ropes and valets and names you recognized from magazine lists. Caelum navigated with the ease of someone who’d driven these streets a thousand times, and eventually pulled up in front of a building whose facade glowed warm and golden under a tasteful awning.
He came around to open my door again – I was beginning to understand this was non-negotiable – and I stepped out into the evening air. The restaurant rose before us, all floor-to-ceiling windows and soft interior light and the kind of understated elegance that whispered: if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
I looked up at the sign above the entrance. Lysander’s.
“Wait.” Something clicked in a dusty corner of my memory. “Lysander’s. I know this place.”
“You do?”
“The ads! I used to see them on TV. This was like – this is one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city.” The memories were surfacing now, fragments of late-night commercial breaks and magazine spreads. “The owner – Lysander something – he used to appear in the ads himself. Dark hair, ridiculous cheekbones.” I paused. A heat crept into my face that had nothing to do with the evening air. “He was… he might have been a minor crush of mine. When I was younger.”
The silence that followed was theatrical.
“Your crush,” Caelum said, his voice flat with exaggerated devastation. He pressed a hand to his chest. “The woman I am taking on our first date just informed me that the man who owns the restaurant is her crush.”
“Was. Past tense. Very past tense.”
“This is the worst night of my life.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m being accurate. My wife has feelings for my best friend.”
I stopped walking. “Lysander is your best friend?”
“Childhood friend. Grew up together. Built pillow forts. Shared secrets. And now, apparently, he’s the competition.” He shook his head with the mournful gravity of a man at a funeral. “I should have taken you to McDonald’s.”
I laughed – a real, full-bodied laugh that echoed off the restaurant’s facade and turned the head of a valet three cars away. “Caelum. I was fourteen. I had crushes on fictional characters. I had a crush on a cartoon fox from a Disney movie. Lysander was a blip.”
“A blip.” He savored the word like it was insufficient. “And me? What am I?”
I looked at him. Standing there in his black suit and red tie, under the golden light of a restaurant he’d arranged for me, with wounded pride in his voice and hope in his eyes and a history I was only beginning to understand – this complicated, infuriating, surprisingly funny man who kept coming back no matter how many times I pushed him away.
“You’re the main character,” I said. “Obviously.”
His face broke into the widest smile I’d seen from him yet – the kind that crinkled his eyes and showed his teeth and made him look ten years younger and approximately a thousand times more human. “That’s all I needed to hear. Let’s go inside.”
We approached the entrance, and our path was blocked by two men who appeared to have been assembled from the same factory that produces bank vaults. They were enormous – wide-shouldered, thick-necked, wearing matching black suits and earpieces and the kind of sunglasses that no one needs after dark but that contribute significantly to the overall aesthetic of menace. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the door like a human firewall.
“Good evening,” the one on the left said, in a tone that conveyed no warmth and considerable authority. “Invitation, please.”
Caelum frowned. “I don’t have an invitation. I spoke with Lysander directly. He-“
“No invitation, no entry, sir.” The bouncer’s face was a cliff face: vertical, unyielding, geologically indifferent to argument.
I watched Caelum’s expression cycle through surprise, confusion, and a flicker of irritation so brief you’d miss it if you blinked. Then he reached for his phone.
Lysander picked up immediately. “Caelum! Where are you? You said six sharp, and it’s-” a pause, presumably for clock-checking – “6:10. You’re never late. I was starting to think she’d come to her senses.”
“I’m outside. Your security won’t let us in without an invitation you didn’t mention.”
“Oh!” A laugh – warm, unapologetic. “Right. The invitation thing. That’s new. Grand opening protocol. Completely slipped my mind. Hang on – I’m coming down.”
“Please hurry,” Caelum said, his voice dropping into the register he used for things that actually mattered. “I’ve got her standing outside like we’re waiting for a table at a food truck.”
“Two minutes. Don’t let her leave.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.