The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [134]
He considered her. “We’re here, aren’t we? I mean, you and me—at this moment, at this table, talking?”
“I guess we are,” she acknowledged, and though it was a vague answer, she understood what he meant, that this bizarre coincidence or twist of fate—whatever they wanted to call it—was the reason she could consider him with such empathy; more than anyone she had ever met, he understood that part of her life—and vice versa—without having to be told.
He stared through her and smiled. “I think my destiny—at least for now—is to get another drink. Want one?”
“Please.” She nodded, and was relieved to be left alone for a few minutes. She watched him lean against the bar in the self-assured posture of one who was very much at home there, and felt a glimmer of something else—clearly not grief—and was amazed at how her mind could occupy two such disparate spaces at once. Although he wasn’t exactly her type—for one thing, he was too tall, and for another, she distrusted lawyers of all stripes—she felt more intrigued than threatened by their shared past. If it would have been an exaggeration to say she had given up on men in the past few years—though more than once she had claimed to have had her fill—she could not help but wonder if, despite her avowals to the contrary, she had just been struck by the fabled arrow of love, here at Linda’s wedding. It seemed too perfect, pure storybook, to fall in love with Jay’s best friend—a boy she had last seen at the company where their fathers worked—but she felt certain that if he were to ask her to marry him, she would say yes, why not?
Back at the table, he handed her a new glass. “To death,” he toasted.
Maria was relieved to find no trace of irony in either his tone or his expression. “To death,” she repeated but barely sipped her wine before she set it down on the table. “You probably can’t tell, but I’m drunk.”
“That makes two of us,” he replied. “In case you couldn’t tell.”
She laughed and decided her attraction to him was a bit sacrilegious, but then decided she didn’t care. “Do you want to dance?” she asked and nodded at the dance floor, where a bunch of people were doing the twist.
“Not at all.” He shook his head. “Do you?”
“Not at all,” she admitted. “But I don’t want to sit here anymore, either.”
“We could go for a little walk,” Martin proposed. “I could use a break.”
Maria followed him out of the ballroom and into a long hallway, the quiet reverberation of which made her melancholy, and she paused.
Martin wrapped one of her arms around his shoulder as she steadied herself against the wall. “I thought you said nobody could tell when you were drunk.”
“I’m just really fucking tired,” she murmured, but already the touch of her hand on his and her arm around his back electrified her, even as she felt her eyes start to tear. “And thanks to you I’m really fucking sad, too, even though I just found out about the biggest break of my career.”
She had already told him about her acceptance into the young artist program and everything that implied. “Don’t blame me,” he said with a smile. “I don’t trust anyone who thinks happiness is ever more than fleeting.”
It was a gesture of resignation that she never failed to find charming in men who attracted her, so that, when he turned to face her, she could not resist placing her hands on his shoulders, only a few inches from a real hug, and then, when he showed no resistance, closing the gap. Nor did she object when, in return, his hand on her back went from a gesture of reassurance to something more, which led her to grip him a little tighter, which he reciprocated, so that she felt inclined to nuzzle a little at his neck, where his beard gave way to an afternoon stubble, which left her no choice but to kiss him.
“I wish we had somewhere