Page 140 of Say Yes to the Death

Luke unrolled his silverware. “Tell me about it.”

“Really?” She raised her eyebrows. He always had an opinion if she asked for it, but he had never just asked her to tell him about an upcoming project outright.

“Yes. I’m always interested in your work.” He took a sip of water.

“Okay,” she said slowly. Had she stumbled into some kind of alternate dimension where Luke respected her career? He really was trying to make it up to her. And maybe it would be helpful to have a male perspective during the planning phase.

Claire launched into the escape room. At Dr. Weaver’s request, they had landed on a stranded-on-a-desert-island theme for the actual escape room, and a Parisian theme for the proposal to represent their two-part honeymoon: Paris and the French Riviera.

Luke shook his head. “Fixed overhead cameras will ruin the entire illusion. You’re just going to see their backs half the time. And please tell me you’re going to swap out the overhead lighting. Fluorescent strip lights are a crime against humanity.”

She sighed. “Well, how do you propose I make a convincing escape room and have a cinematic record of it? I can’t very well throw a camera man in there with them.”

“Easy. All you have to do is?—”

The door opened behind them, and Claire screamed, turning with her butter knife clenched in her fist.

Luke put a hand on her stabbing wrist. “It’s okay, this is my friend Mario. He owns?—”

“Mario’s. The Italian place on Seventh Street. Of course. Thank you,” she said as he set a Caesar salad and a basket of bread in front of her. It smelled like heaven.

“So,” Luke said as soon as Mario closed the door behind him. “Let’s talk about the proposal later. I wanted to talk to you.”

Claire stopped buttering her bread. She put the roll down and sat up straighter. Was he still mad about the whole George thing? Damn it. She should have made an apology basket.

“Communication seems to be a problem between us. I’m a big part of that problem.” He reached underneath the table and pulled out a binder.

Her mouth froze in an O of surprise.

“What?” he asked. “It’s a good way to organize your thoughts.”

“Nothing,” she said and took a sip of wine. “Please continue.”

He flipped to the first page of the binder. “It’s not easy for me to talk about the hard stuff. You’ve met my mom. My family is painfully stoic. We barely had a family dinner once a week. Talking about feelings was not expected or encouraged, especially after the divorce.”

Claire bit her lip. Alice and Roy had all but dragged her feelings out of her on the daily after school. She wasn’t one to conceal how she was feeling anyway, but with a psychic for a mom, Claire’s emotional state was never a mystery for long.

He stared at his napkin and shuffled the silverware until they were neatly lined up. “My dad was the only one I ever really felt like I could talk to. He’d sneak me a beer while we worked on the ’76 Corvette he was restoring in the garage. He would ask me about school, life, what I wanted to be. He bought me my first camera and books on filmmaking. When he died, I closed myself off to a lot of things.” Luke flipped to a new page in the binder.

Claire leaned forward, drawn to him like a moth to a flame. This was the most information he had ever shared with her. She should have brought a notebook. Maybe he would let her photocopy his notes.

“As soon as I got out of the Navy, I jumped straight into school for film and never looked back. I threw myself into work. Work was the only thing I could talk to my mom about. It’s still the only thing she takes any real interest in.”

She reached across the table and grabbed his hand. Their mothers couldn’t have been more different.

He took a deep breath. “And finally,” he said, glancing down at the binder, “after he died, I dated the wrong women. You mentioned before you heard rumors of me being a ladies’ man. That’s not entirely untrue. I was looking for something simple, easy. Someone who wouldn’t challenge me. I found plenty of that, and even got pretty close to marrying one of those girls?—”

Claire’s eyes grew wide. Luke had almost proposed before?

“But it didn’t work out, and it didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t what I actually wanted. What I want is you. Claire. You challenge me. You drive me crazy. You make me a better, more empathetic, less frigid human being. You make me laugh. You’ve shown me there’s value in expressing feelings instead of burying them where no one will ever find them. Hell, you’ve made a whole successful business out of it.”

He closed the binder. “So, this is me, trying to work on our communication and explain where I’m coming from. It doesn’t excuse what I did to you, but I thought you had a right to know. I’m going to do better in the future. If you’ll still have me.”

He withdrew his hand and took a big sip of water. “Can you talk now? I think I hit my quota for the month.”

Claire sat up straight. She was woefully unprepared to respond to this avalanche of information.

“Of course. Uh, thank you for being so honest with me. I wish I would have prepared something to say.”

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