Mr. Park Lane (The Mister)

“I won’t visit you out there, you know. No one will.”

“That’s okay. I’ll have my cats. And my knitting. You’ll be rid of me.”

“Finally,” he said. “This babysitting gig is over.”

I’d miss Park Lane. Not because of the hotel or the fancy security. Not because of the plush carpet or the windows that overlooked the park. But because of my neighbor. He’d started off as my first love and changed into something even better—a really great friend and a man who arranged picnics in the park and took me to dinner.

A man who kissed me.

A man who’d done things to my body that should be illegal.

“So you have one date left.” He set his plate back on the table and shifted so he was cross- legged and facing me.

“Yes, the doctor. Who is going to be very impressed with my kissing skills, thanks to you.”

“You don’t have me to thank for your kissing skills.”

“You’re right. You don’t deserve thanks. I’m ruined after that kiss.”

“Ruined? How do you work that out?”

“Isn’t it obvious? No man is ever going to be able to kiss me like you did—right out of my shoes. I’m ruined. Every kiss I have from now on is going to be compared to yours and it will come out wanting—I’m sure of that.” Just the thought of that kiss had my skin tingling and shivers snaking up my spine.

The corners of his mouth turned to the sky and he gave me one of his trademark smiles. “Out of your shoes, huh?”

Was he genuinely being coy for the first time in his life?

“You know.”

He took my plate from me and set it on the table and then kneeled up, took my hands in his, and kissed me again. Out of my shoes.

He pulled me onto his lap and cupped my face in his hands as his tongue worked its magic against mine.

This didn’t feel like a practice lunch date or a lesson in kissing. My brain was filled with a faint buzzing I recognized as the sound of my forcefield officially giving up. I wanted this man whose arms I was in. And I wanted to know if he wanted me too.

“I’m sitting on your lap,” I said.

He circled his arms around me and nodded. “It’s nice.”

“Ruining me so I can never kiss another man without comparing him to you wasn’t enough? You had to bring me here, with all this”—I indicated our picnic set up—“so the bar will be set impossibly high for future romantic dates. Now you’re going to hold me while we watch the clouds pass overhead. Where’s the poetry, Joshua? I mean, you’ve come this far. We should have poetry.”

“I agree.” He slid me off his lap so I was sitting beside him and then he lay back, patting the ground beside him so I would do the same.

Joshua tucked his arms behind his head and cleared his throat. “‘On the Ning Nang Nong all the cows go bong and the monkeys all say boo—'”

I started to laugh. “You can’t recite the Ning Nang Nong to me. You’re totally breaking the mood.”

“Then what?” he said, “Ah. Okay, I have the perfect poem.”

“No more Spike Milligan,” I said, mockingly serious.

“I promise.”

“Then go ahead.”

“‘The more it snows, tiddley pom . . .’”

I pushed up on my elbows. “That’s not poetry.” I tried to shoot him a stern look, but my smile gave me away.

He pushed up so we were face-to-face, nose-to-nose, then he kissed me again. I was less stunned this time and more intent on savoring the firmness of his lips and the press of his tongue.

As he pulled away, we rested our foreheads together. I pressed my fingers along his jaw, exploring what it might be like to really be with this man beside me instead of just pretending. A man who’d just confessed to being a better man with me in his life.

We parted and he took my hand in his like we were a couple who’d been together a decade.

“I beg to differ,” he went on. “‘The More it Snows’ might just be the best poem ever. Besides, it’s the only one I know by heart. There’s one by Keats I quite like but I can only remember one line.” He furrowed his brow in concentration. “‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard even sweeter.’ For some reason, I don’t seem to like it as much as I used to. ‘The More it Snows’ or ‘The Ning Nang Nong’ is more my style, I think.”

“You’re still seven years old in your head, aren’t you?”

“Not seven but maybe seventeen. Aren’t you?”

All I could remember about being seventeen was the accident. It had made me grow up fast. I’d slipped on a cloak of heaviness after giving up what I’d dreamed of, and I’d never been able to shrug it off. I’d been happy since then, of course, never more so than when I was busy. But when I was with Joshua, I could imagine a life that was more than that. A life where I could be happy in the silence.