"The fish was fresh," he said. "The timing was appropriate."
I looked at him across the terrace table with Isolde between us in the bouncy chair she had been investigating since we arrived and the ocean below us going dark, and felt the specific thing that happened when the person across the table was the person you would pick every morning, every day, every possible world.
"Dax," I said.
"If you tell me that's the most romantic thing I've ever done, I'm going to dispute it," he said. "I cooked fish. The bar for romance is not—"
"Shut up," I said. "Eat your fish."
He ate his fish with the expression of a man who has learned that sometimes the appropriate response to being loved is to accept it and continue with the meal.
Later.
Isolde had been asleep for two hours.
The terrace, the
