We sit at the table. I let him decide for me what to order and then he looks at me and stares. It makes me self-conscious so I look away and notice the decor and design of the restaurant. It is a kind of modern bistro with dark midnight blue/black interiors; with candles and bud vases on the intimately placed small round tables and dark linen table clothes.
“I wanted to take you out, your first night here— I thought before we think about all the details ….” he was saying
I turn my eyes back to him now
“Yes,” I say and smile “because I know we will get into it as it’s what we do, isn’t it —but I like seeing what is here—I love the atmosphere,” I was saying
“Good— because I was thinking maybe we can continue with your history research ….. and choose a different city to explore every weekend….we can drive it and ….” he stops himself and smiles at me, “how do you still look so young—?—you nonsmoking vegan,” he laughs at me, “who still has boys asking her out—it makes me want to ask you this ….” he leans over and says it in my ear
It is the sound of a young male voice calling from somewhere far away that causes Bran to suddenly let go
“Ioan,” he says simply looking regretfully down at me but letting go and stepping back anticipating the appearance of his young son Ioan. I get a glimpse of him and then he looks back at me awkwardly. I see instantly he looks more like Clare, but he stares a bit longer than I expect him to before he does a funny wave before he and his father talk.
“I should get changed,” I say as I start to walk past them to go inside
Bran calls out,
“go through the bedroom door, it’s unlocked.”
But until he said that I hadn’t realized there was a door that led out to the garden from the bedroom. From outside I had assumed it went somewhere else. There is a pebbled paved walkway through the garden, and it leads to the little patios that I now see one is by the bedroom with chairs and a table which I had noticed but glossed over.
The door is unlocked, and it is a sliding door which on the inside was covered by long draperies that go all the way across but mesh off to the sides and one side was hiding the door which going back in, I have to move aside
only once I am back in the bedroom do I realize why Bran wanted me to go this way— he managed to slip a surprise for me across the bed. There’s a note attached to a pretty white dress with eyelet and little white satin bows
I look at the note which says,
‘~Wear this for me tonight x’
Qui veux-tu à tes côtés quand ton monde s'effondre ? Avec qui vas-tu célébrer le fait d'être là pour toi ?
“But, before we go, there’s something I want you to see,” Bran says
He shows me his garden. He takes my hand.
We go through the terrace door which is just through the dining room, and it is like stepping into a sanctuary. He holds my hand and absently our fingers twist and weave….and it is so natural with him, we do this without knowing we do until when I almost trip over a garden tool, his hand grips mine tight…. It catches me.
We are in his garden ….at last and this caught off moment brings us to the immediate present….how strange to be in his garden after so much time has passed….. I think this caught in his poet’s eyes ….see the Hamilton roses
“Beth,” he says and puts his hands on me; they lay upon my shoulders and he slowly draws me to him but holds me in front of him, “I’m sorry ….for all the wasted years,” he says now
“No—“
“Yes,” he says but stops any more of my words with his mouth; without foreplay of warning his kiss possesses immediately
“That dog missing an eye or that cat missing an ear, I always felt I’d be better off giving an animal like that a home,” Bran says to me now when he finds me with ‘Wuffis’ the said dog with, while not a missing eye but a blind eye.
He has become my friend unexpectedly as he settled himself among my shoes. He is a mutt but so cute! He is brown with floppy ears; a mix of some kind of terrier and he’s playful!
“When did you get him?” I ask
“When I knew you were coming,” Bran says now and looks around the newly constructed bedroom where I have been hanging my dresses and folding sweaters in drawers. “How do you like it?”
I look up at him as I’m petting Wuffis—he is nuzzling my hand
“Him?”
Bran smiles and then shakes his head,
“I mean…. here?”
But you know, I haven’t let myself think about that. I just want to take everything in; the newness of that I’m really here with him after everything…after so much that —wow it takes so much to absorb but happy —I feel happy with him only I just got here and it is tooo soon to say
I say instead,
“To be here with you knowing that — you are the kind of man who would even say that about a dog or a cat ….the rest almost doesn’t matter,” but then my stomach growled
“Oh—that’s what I meant to tell you—I’m taking you out for dinner— dress up!”
