Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

“I couldn’t decide between the two,” he said. “So we got both.” He watched Adrienne take a bite of steak. “Now taste your wine.”

Adrienne bristled once again at being told what to do, especially since she knew he’d be right. The steak and wine were made for each other.

“How’s the wine?” he asked.

“Incredible.”

He picked up her glass and inhaled. “Big,” he said. “Plummy. Just as they described it.”

Adrienne offered her steak to Thatcher but he shook his head. “Go on,” she said. “There can’t be more after this.” He relented, then hand-fed her a bite of his risotto, and all Adrienne could think was that it was a good thing no one could see them. Nothing brought more sarcasm from the waitstaff than a couple feeding each other.

Adrienne drank down her wine and another glass appeared. She was officially drunk; across the table, Thatcher was blurry. He was looking at her so intently that it took the place of conversation. He’s soaking me up, Adrienne thought. Whatever that meant. The more Adrienne drank, the more it seemed like Thatcher himself was drunk. When she finished eating, Thatcher took her hand again.

“Who are you, Adrienne Dealey?” he said. “Who are you?”

She didn’t have anything resembling a good answer. She couldn’t say “I’m a dentist and a father.” Or “I’m a restaurant owner.” Or “I’m a chef.” She couldn’t even say “I’m a childhood friend of Fiona’s. I’ve been a friend of hers since kindergarten.” She had no identity. She lived in a place for a while, working a desk, skiing bumps, visiting Buddhist temples, sitting on a sugar-sand beach, making poor decisions, fudging the details of her past-and six months or a year later she was somewhere else. Someone else. New friends, new boyfriend, new job, new location. The most important thing in her life had been the money for her Future, the money saved up for… what? Some bigger plan that she had yet to identify. Her father was right. One of these days she was going to have to pick a place and stay there.

“I’m a student of human nature,” Adrienne said. She was so drunk this didn’t even sound corny. “I’m trying to absorb it all before I settle down.”

“Do you think you’ll ever settle down?” Thatcher said. “Get married?”

Adrienne pushed her plate away; she was absolutely stuffed. She reached for her wine and held the glass with two hands. “I don’t know. I’ve had a lot of boyfriends. There was a guy on the Cape who asked me to marry him and I considered it for about a day and a half. Then I freaked out and flew to Hawaii. It was very immature behavior on my part.”

“My mother bailed on us when I was nine,” Thatcher said. “My three older brothers were sixteen, fourteen, and eleven at the time. There is no doubt in my mind that we drove her away; we would have driven Mother Teresa away. So I used to have an issue with women who run, but I got over it. I forgave my mother-that’s one thing AA really helps with, forgiveness. She lives in Toronto now, but I never see her.”

“Yeah,” Adrienne said. “My mother died when I was twelve.”

“I didn’t know your mother died,” Thatcher said. “Something you said earlier made me think…”

“I’m sorry about that,” Adrienne said. “I have a hard time talking about it and sometimes it’s just easier…”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Thatcher said.

“Maybe not to you,” Adrienne said. “But I’ve lied to a lot of people about it. I pretend my mother is still alive. I want her to be alive.”

“Of course.”

Adrienne placed a fingertip at the corner of her eye. “I probably don’t need any more wine.”

Thatcher looked around the restaurant. “I was going to take you to Languedoc for the Sweet Inspirations sundae.”

“It may interest you to know,” said Adrienne, “that the key to dessert is not sugar.” She bent her head close to the table and whispered, “It’s eggs.”

Thatcher groaned. “When a woman starts quoting Mario Subiaco, I know she’s had too much to drink. No sundae for you. Let’s go for a drive.”

“I have to use the ladies’ room,” Adrienne said.

She nearly tripped on the uneven floor on the way to the bathroom and when she got inside, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were bright pink. I am drunk, she thought. Schnockered. She splashed her face and pulled out her dental floss. Who are you, Adrienne Dealey? I am a person who cares about dental hygiene.

They climbed into Thatcher’s silver pickup. His truck was impeccably clean and smelled like peppermint. Adrienne fell back into the gray leather seat while Thatch fiddled with the CD player. He put on Simon and Garfunkel.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Old. Thirty-five.” He rummaged through the console and brought out a tire gauge. “I’m going to take you up the beach,” he said. “Do you have any objections to that?”

“None,” Adrienne said. The clock in the car said ten thirty. She couldn’t help thinking about the restaurant: Had Caren and Duncan made up? Would they be sneaking in gropes and shots of espresso, giddy with their freedom like kids whose parents were away for the weekend? Would they be playing techno on the stereo (which Thatch hated) and hogging all the crackers for themselves? “Do you miss work?” she asked. She noticed his cell phone sitting in the console next to the tire gauge, his ring of Bistro keys, and a tin of Altoids, but he hadn’t so much as checked his messages.

“No,” he said, starting the engine and pulling out of town. “Not at all.”

When Adrienne next opened her eyes, she was alone in the truck. It was dark, and looking out the window she saw nothing but more dark.

“Thatcher?” she said.

She heard a hissing noise outside her window. When she opened her door, she saw Thatcher kneeling by the front tire letting out air. From the dome light she could see sand dunes covered with eelgrass.

“This is the last one,” Thatcher said. He checked the tire with the gauge and stood up, wiping his hands on his pants. He had removed his jacket and tie and his shirt was open another button at the neck.

“Where are we?”

“Dionis Beach,” he said. “Have you been here?”

Adrienne shook her head.

“Good,” he said. “Hang on.”

He drove the truck up over the dunes with abandon, bouncing Adrienne out of her seat. Thatcher whooped like a cowboy and Adrienne prayed she didn’t vomit. (She had a worrisome flashback from twenty years earlier: the Our Lady of the Assumption carnival, cotton candy, kettle corn, and the tilt-a-whirl. Her mother holding back her hair in a smelly Porta-John.) Then, thankfully, they were on the beach, and the water was before them, one stripe shining from the crescent moon. The beach was deserted. Thatcher parked the truck then opened Adrienne’s door for her. He spread a blanket on the sand.

“You came prepared,” she said.

“Lie down,” he said. “But keep your eyes open.”

“Yes, boss,” she said.

After getting gracefully to the ground in her dress, Adrienne looked at the stars. Thatcher lay on his side, staring at her. She closed her eyes. She could fall asleep right here. Happily, happily. Listening to the waves lap onto the beach. She heard Thatcher’s voice in her ear.

“I’m going to kiss you if that’s okay,” he said.

“It won’t be our first kiss,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I let one slip at the restaurant. I thought about apologizing to you for that, but I didn’t feel sorry.” And with that, he kissed her. One very soft, very sweet kiss. The kiss was fleeting but it left a big ache for more in its wake. Adrienne gasped, taking in the cool sea air, and then Thatcher kissed her again. Even softer, even shorter. The third time, he stayed. They were kissing. His mouth opened and Adrienne tasted his tongue, sweet and tangy like the lime in his drink. She felt like she was going to burst apart into eighty-two pieces of desire. Like the best lovers, Thatcher moved slowly-for right now, on the blanket, it was only about the kissing. Not since high school had kissing been this intense. It went on and on. They stopped to look at each other. Adrienne ran her fingertips over his pale eyebrows, she cupped his neck inside the collar of his shirt. He touched her ears and kissed the corners of her eyes, and Adrienne thought about how she had come right out with the truth about her mother at dinner and how unusual that was. And just as she began to worry that there was something different this time, something better, of a finer quality than the other relationships she had found herself in, she and Thatcher started kissing again, and the starting again was even sweeter.