Page 71 of Meant to be Mine

She stole the last piece of my toast without asking. I let her have it.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up, still chewing.

“I have to go to San Francisco in a couple of days. For a meeting.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Come with me,” I said.

She stopped. “What?”

“The meeting itself is about three hours of my life I’ll never get back,” I said. “But after that, we’ve got the rest of the trip. Good food. Good city. I haven’t been up there just to be there in years. We can play tourist.”

“What about the market event?” she asked. “And the yacht party?”

“This meeting is about the market event,” I said. “But after? Me. You. Sourdough grilled cheese. A trolley.”

She pressed her lips together, fighting a smile. “You’ve thought about this.”

“I have.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” She wiped her mouth. “San Francisco. I’m in.”

I looked at her sitting there in my robe and imagined her waiting on the sofa when I came home after a long day. Lazy Sundays with banana pancakes. Morning walks on the beach. Making love on the patio. Skinny dipping.

I pushed all of it back.

We had now. We had San Francisco.

I was going to take it.

“I’m going to shower,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll go for a dip in that pool. I didn’t bring a suit. Mind if I go naked?”

“Wait, what?”

She laughed and shoved me away. “I was kidding but don’t think I couldn’t read your mind. Go shower. We have to go to work and I need to go home and get some clothes.”

“Do we have to be adults today?” I asked.

“I think we do,” she said. “We’ll be kids in San Francisco. I have a ton of emails to get to.”

“Boo. All work and no play sucks ass.”

She stood up, kissed me, and then slapped my ass. “Hurry up. We’ve got work to do.”

I groaned, dropped my chin to my chest, let my arms hang, and shuffled out of the room like a kid that got told he couldn’t go to the sleepover.

But in a couple of days, we’d sleep in, order room service, and pretend we lived in an endless summer.

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