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I smile. “You think so?”
“Joe, I know so.”
“Well, that’s great news, Cyntia. From the pick of all the girls on the planet, there is only one girl who is perfect enough for me. Only one woman I want to share my life and my future with. One woman smart, sharp, and gorgeous enough to be my lover. My partner. The mother for all the children I want to have.”
I take a sip of the champagne. The cool fizz sparkles down my throat.
“Do you want children, Cyntia? You would be such a wonderful mother. Do you?”
I don’t want dinner. I don’t want drinks. All I want is her. But I see that she needs reassurance and encouragement. Maybe even some persuasion.
I will do my best to enjoy the anticipation and the chase. It’s hard, though, with so much at stake.
It’s almost a whisper as she says, “I do want children.”
“I’ve always wanted to adopt.” Her eyes light up, “But that was before I met you.”
“We could do both.”
“Cyntia! You are perfect.”
“But I don’t know anything about you.”
So, it’s time. I’m nervous for the first time in years. Now I can see how nerves are a good thing. They’re showing me what matters.
I tell her. “My father was a Viking pirate. A swashbuckling buccaneer.” I watch her as I take another sip. She’s waiting, too clever to jump straight on the bait. “That’s how he saw himself. He made fortunes in the lawless early days of the internet. In the nineteen eighties, he started up war rooms on bulletin boards. Promoted visa and green card lotteries, traded foreign exchanges.”
Looking into her eyes, it all seems far away. All I want now is here. She is everything I need. I don’t see how I can live without her.
“‘Hedges and edges,’ he called it. Anyplace you could squeeze a buck out of, usually in the gaps between territories or legislations. Surfing the surfaces of the law. He started online casinos with servers in Malta. When cryptocurrencies started out, he was there. He funded porn sites in Amsterdam and virtual-life game worlds. All of that. I don’t blame him or hold any of it against him. He started out with nothing and he built up a huge fortune. We had lost my mother already, so when his plane went down in Columbia, suspiciously near an airfield used by the cartels, there was only my name on the will.”
I love the look in her eyes while she’s listening.
“The worst thing he did was leaving me all of that money. I made awful mistakes. Did things I hate to think about.”
She looks up. I’ve started, so I go on, “The best thing that happened to me was when I lost it all. Even though it happened in the worst way. Then I had to start from scratch.”
“How did you lose it?”
“This is the part I don’t like to tell. It’s a painful memory, but I’m okay with that. It’s kind of a good pain.” I reach for her hand. She gives it to me. I know haven’t earned it yet. So it’s only a loan. That’s okay. I can get along with it.
“It wasn’t a good pain, but it is now. Meeting you opened my eyes. The story shows me up to be an idiot. And that hurt a lot until I met you. Now I know I have to accept myself, all that I am, if I’m going to give it to you. And you won’t think about accepting me, not until I’m ready to give that much.”
Her face glows.
“And,” I go on,“of course, you’re right. You shouldn’t.”
She’s thoughtful as she takes a sip from her glass. “So, what happened?”
“She was my childhood sweetheart. Well, that was what I believed at the time. Turned out her passion wasn’t for me at all. Only for my fortune. I was the thing that happened to stand between her and the money. She soon found a way around me soon enough, though, and she got to her true love.”
I take a slow drink. “Last I heard, she and the money were living together on an island in the Caribbean.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I thought so at first. She took every penny I had and left me hard and cold as a stone inside. Nothing would move me. No one could come near. I wouldn’t let them.”
She squeezes my hand.
