Page 10

“Sweetheart?”

My pen stops. The word hangs in the air of the cluttered kitchen, soft and round and too intimate, and I can feel the capillaries in my ears dilating in a way that is categorically not blushing because I am a thirty-three-year-old neurosurgeon and I do not blush.

“Perhaps we can revisit the endearment list,” I say, with tremendous dignity.

“Schnookums?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Pookie?”

“Casey.”

“Love muffin?”

“I will end this arrangement right now.”

He grins at me, wide and bright and devastating, and I have to look down at my notebook because my chest is doing something structurally unsound. Oliver chooses this moment to sigh heavily against my leg, a warm, contented exhale that I feel through the wool of my trousers.

“Rule three,” I continue, with the grim determination of a minesweeper. “Sleeping arrangements. We will almost certainly share a suite. Possibly a shared bed, knowing my mother's tactical approach to hospitality. We will maintain appropriate physical boundaries during sleep. I will construct a dividing barrier.”

“A pillow wall.”

“If you want to call it that, yes.”

“I'm a restless sleeper,” he says, and something in his voiceshifts, becomes quieter, more careful. “Fair warning. I run hot, and I tend to... migrate.”

“Migrate.”

“In my sleep. Toward heat sources. It's a hockey player thing. We're like human furnaces, and if there's something warm nearby, I'll just sort of... drift.” He shrugs, and the casual gesture does not match the very un-casual way he is watching me. “So the pillow wall might have a structural integrity problem.”

I am picturing it. I am picturing the pillow wall, and the migration, and the warm bulk of him drifting across the bed in the dark like a slow, incoming tide, and I have to grip my pen until the plastic creaks because my body has just generated, without consultation, a vivid and unhelpful image of his arm settling across my waist.

“I will reinforce it,” I say. My voice is admirably clinical. My pulse, by contrast, has filed a formal complaint.

“Rule four,” I press on. “Our cover story. We began a private relationship approximately eight months ago. We kept it discreet because of workplace considerations and because I value my privacy. You proposed two weeks ago, over a quiet dinner. We have not yet told anyone at the hospital.”

“Where was the dinner?”

“I... what?”

“The dinner where I proposed. Where was it? Your mom's going to ask, Arjun. Your aunties are definitely going to ask. We need details.”

He's right. Of course he's right. “Fine. Suggest a venue.”

“Scaramouche.”

I look up. Scaramouche is not a casual suggestion. It is one of the most elegant restaurants in Toronto, perched on a hillside overlooking the city skyline. It is exactly the kind of place someone would choose for a proposal if they wanted it to be perfect.

“You know Scaramouche?” I ask, and I am not successful at keeping the surprise out of my voice.

Something passes across Casey's face. It's fast, barely a shadow, there and gone. “I've walked past it a few times. Looked nice. Seemed like your kind of place.”

He has walked past Scaramouche and thought of me. I file this information into a category I am resolutely not examining and move on.

“Scaramouche. Fine. You proposed at the end of the meal. I said yes. We had champagne. The ring is being resized.” I pause. “We will need a ring.”

“Already on it.”