THE FISHERMAN'S PIER
The restaurant is packed tonight
with couples and families too worn out from the previous night to make
any effort at cooking. The main dining area is abuzz with conversation
and laughter. Lauren
sits alone at a small table in the middle of it all,
fiddling with the corner of her menu as she tries to make her eyes scan
the selections, even though she knows the fare here quite well.
She looks up again, for what must
be the millionth time in the past five minutes. Only this time, she sees
what she is looking for.
"Hel-lo," she says, greeting
Alex melodically.
He smiles, creasing his dimples and
unknowingly giving Lauren another chance to appreciate
them. "Hey."
He sits down across the table from
her and immediately picks up his menu.
"I am so exhausted from last night,"
she says. "We weren't even up that late, but New Year's Eve always seems
to wear me out."
"It's just 'cause of all the excitement,"
Alex says, almost immediately cursing himself for
leading the conversation in that
direction.
"Yeah," she agrees. Before she can
open her mouth to say anything more, their waiter arrives and takes their
drink orders.
When he is gone, Lauren continues,
"Did you have a good time last night?"
After a short pause, one filled with
rapid thought, Alex replies, "Yeah, I did."
"Good," she grins. "I'd hate to be
known as a bad date."
"You're nothing of the sort."
They lapse into a moment of quiet.
Alex casts his eyes down, trying somehow to remove himself from this situation.
If he could just be anywhere but here ...
But he is here. He can feel Lauren's
gaze targeting him, and he can feel the pressures of what happened last
night bearing down upon them.
"About last night," he begins, giving
himself the mental kick in the butt that he knows he needs to do what he
has to do.
"Let's just get this all straightened
out," Lauren says. "At this point, I'd rather just know where we stand
rather than have it go where ... I think we both know where I want it to
go. Did that make any sense?"
"Yeah, it did. And you deserve to
have everything cleared up." He draws a deep breath and releases it slowly,
folding his hands on the table in front of him. "That's why there's ...
something I need to tell you."
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