#chapter Twenty-Three
Daniel pushed the bottle of wine closer to Maura across the top of the kitchen island. “Connex is the devil.”
“Hey. You found me through Connex.” She laughed and filled both their glasses.
“See what I mean?” Daniel leaned back in his chair, swiveling it a little. “So then what happened?”
“We kept talking. We became friends.” Maura shrugged and went to the stove to stir the shrimp in garlic butter she was planning to toss with some linguine. “Isn’t that what you do there? Send cyber pinches and look at pictures of each other’s cats?”
“Does he have a cat?”
She shook her head. “No. Ian has very bad dog named Rowdy who eats stuff he's not supposed to.”
Daniel looked around her kitchen. “You should get a dog.”
“I don’t want a dog. Hey, can you grab the garlic bread out of the oven?” Lots and lots of garlic, she thought. It could make kissing him later interesting. If they kissed at all. Never mind the night on his couch, they hadn’t yet established what was going to happen going forward.
At the table, they drank more wine while Daniel was properly appreciative of her cooking prowess. There was something eminently satisfying about making someone happy with good food, Maura thought, watching him dig in like he wasn’t going to eat again for a month. She blushed at the sight of his mouth glistening with butter, the swipe of his tongue across his lips. He caught her looking and smiled.
“To good friends.” Daniel raised his glass.
She clinked it with hers. “To good food.”
“Health and happiness,” Daniel added, then looked briefly sad. He shook it off, focusing on her again. “So you met him in a dance club and became friends on a social network. What happened after that?”
Maura hesitated, feigning a sudden interest in her plate. She twirled her pasta on her fork, though she’d eaten too much already and felt like Violet Beauregard after she ate the Thanksgiving dinner pill. She shrugged and tried to spear a shrimp.
“I met my wife during an online board meeting with the group that had hired me to come in and do some basic city planning work for a small village in Guatemala. She was the accountant for this really small non-profit group. Mostly volunteers. It was one of the few non-denominational ones I worked with, which I liked. It meant there was no religion pushing on the people, not trading souls for clean water.” Daniel sounded a little venomous about it, but then shrugged. “Anyway, the connection was bad and we were both really frustrated because the picture kept cutting out. I gave her a really hard time about the budget. She accused me of being greedy. I told her she was cheap. A week later she was sitting across a table from me, and I fell in love with her instantly. It was her smile.”
Maura smiled at that. “You believe in love at first sight?”
“I believe in recognizing something in someone else right away, yeah.” Daniel sipped some wine and studied her. “Sometimes, people just…fit. No matter what you do or don’t do. That person just fits you like a piece of your puzzle, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Maura drew a hitching breath at that. “Yeah.That’s exactly it. It’s like…I had this empty space that I didn’t know about until I met him, and when I did, I realized it had been Ian-shaped all along. And maybe, if I’d met him just a few months later…”
“What would’ve been different?” Daniel ran a piece of garlic bread through the butter on his plate and bit into it with a sigh bordering on orgasmic. “This is so, so good.”
Her own meal had grown cold without her eating very much of it. “Well. If I’d met him when I wasn’t married, I mean.”
“Would you have left your husband if you hadn’t met Ian?”
The question was honest, if a little blunt, but she had a truthful answer for it. “Yes. Things weren’t great already. I mean…happy people don’t cheat.”
Daniel held up his hands. “No judgment from me. I’m sorry you weren’t happy.”
“Things happen. I mean, we had plenty of money. No kids. A great house. We took vacations every year. We both loved our work. But we didn’t fit together anymore, if we ever had. I’m not trying to revise history,” Maura added. “I’m not saying I never loved him or anything like that. But things changed. I did, and he didn’t. Or maybe it was the other way around, who knows. But I never set out to be unfaithful. I resisted for a long time.”
“No judgment,” Daniel repeated quietly. “I promise you, Maura. I don’t think you’re a terrible person for falling in love.”
She gave him a sad smile. “Ian does.”
At that, Daniel got up from the table and came around to kiss her on the mouth. Sweet pressure. No tongue. He looked into her eyes. “Want me to beat him up for you? I know a guy. A couple guys, actually. Tough ones.”
She burst into laughter. Daniel sat back in his chair with a satisfied nod and refilled both their glasses of wine. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”
“No problem. It’s good to see your smile.” Daniel smiled, too, then glanced at the clock. “Shoot. We’re not going to make the movie.”
Maura shrugged. “We could just watch something here?”
“You sure?”
She nodded, studying him. Thinking about the night on his couch. About puzzles with missing pieces. “Yes. I’m sure.”