A Wedding in December

“We don’t know that. You want it to get back to Catherine that we repaid her hospitality by fighting?”

“We don’t fight.” She felt exhausted. It could have been the physical activity but she thought it was probably something else. Something she didn’t want to think about.

“You’re right. We don’t.” He studied her. “Why don’t we?”

“I suppose after all the years we’ve been together, we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t.” Marriage was like a dance, trying to move to the rhythm of life, searching for a pace and a path that suited both people. Some floundered, but they hadn’t. They’d simply spun away from each other.

She lifted her glass. She didn’t want to toast “us.” She didn’t want to toast the future, because right now she wasn’t sure she liked the way it looked. Toasting the past was likely to make her feel sad. The only thing left to toast was the present. “To now. This evening. May the horse not run away with us down the mountain.”

“That sounds like a metaphor for life.” He tapped his glass against hers. “To an evening of fun.”

“Fake fun.”

“The fun doesn’t have to be fake.” He closed the menu. “There was nothing fake about our snowball fight. I enjoyed it. Probably because I won.”

Maggie choked on her champagne. “I won!”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“Then you have a selective memory.”

“That last shot that went right down your front? That was a winner.”

“Next time I’m not going to spare you. Prepare to be defeated, Professor.”

“Your aim isn’t good enough to defeat me.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and the familiarity of the gesture made her heart ache.

She missed this. She missed their little exchanges across the meal table. She missed those small gestures that were part of him, and that she knew so well.

He pushed the plate of canapés closer to her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I was planning my strategy for the next snowball fight.” She put her menu down and selected a small creation of smoked salmon and fresh chive.

“It doesn’t matter what your strategy is, I’m ready for you. You’re going to lose. Have you chosen?”

“I’m having the goat’s cheese.”

“You can’t. I’m having the goat’s cheese.”

“We’re allowed to eat the same thing.”

He frowned. “We never eat the same thing in a restaurant. We always split. That way we try more than one dish.”

Splitting dishes was something they’d done when they were young and didn’t have the money to eat out often. It was a way of trying as many different things as possible on the menu. Try this. Taste this. “Not always. Remember the lobster?”

“Of course. That dinner is scarred into my soul. You refused to share. It was the one and only time.”

“It was good lobster.”

“You’re telling me that now? Have you no heart?”

She definitely had a heart. Hers was bruised and sore, as if someone had reached inside her chest and punched it. Far from being a respite, this trip was making it worse.

“If you want to share, why don’t you have the smoked fish?”

“Good plan.”

They ordered the food and she took a sip of her champagne. “It tastes like celebration, which is somewhat ironic in the circumstances. What are we celebrating?”