I shrug. “It’s Saturday. I’m off work.”
“I don’t even know what you do for a living.”
“I write for an advertising firm downtown. Nothing impressive.”
“Nothing about you is unimpressive, Quinn.”
I ignore his compliment. “What about you?”
“Nothing impressive. I’m an accountant for a company downtown.”
“A math guy, huh?”
“My first choice was an astronaut, but the idea of leaving the earth’s atmosphere is kind of terrifying. Numbers don’t really pose a threat to my life, so I went with that.” He opens one of the bags and pulls out a biscuit. “I think we should have sex tonight.” He takes a bite of the biscuit. “All night,” he says with a mouthful.
I almost choke on the bite I just swallowed. I pull the extra coffee toward me and take a sip. “You do, huh? What’s so different about tonight than last night?”
He tears off a piece of the biscuit and pops it into his mouth. “I was being polite last night.”
“So your politeness is just a fa?ade?”
“No, I really am a decent guy. But I’m also extremely attracted to you and want to see you naked again.” He smiles at me. It’s a shy smile and it’s so cute, it makes me smile.
“Some men get cheated on and they become revengeful. You get cheated on and become brutally honest.”
He laughs, but he doesn’t bring up the potential sex again. We both eat in silence for a minute and then he says, “What’d you do with your engagement ring?”
“I mailed it to Ethan’s mother.”
“What’d you do with the one I left here?”
A reserved smile creeps across my lips. “I kept it. Sometimes I wear it. It’s pretty.”
He watches me for a moment and then he says, “You want to know what I kept?”
I nod.
“Our fortunes.”
It takes me a moment before I realize what he’s talking about. “From the Chinese food and infidelity?”
“Yep.”
“You kept those?”
“Sure did.”
“Why?”
“Because.” He looks down at his coffee and moves the cup in small circles. “If you saw what was on the back of them, you wouldn’t be questioning it.”
I lean back in my seat and eye him suspiciously. Ethan and I got those fortune cookies all the time. I know exactly what’s on the back of them because I always thought it was odd. Most fortunes have a set of numbers, but this place only puts a single number on the fortunes. “The backs of those fortune cookies just have a number on them.”
“Yep.” He has a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
I tilt my head. “What? Did they have the same number or something?”
He looks at me seriously. “The number eight.”
I hold his stare and think about that for a few seconds. Last night he asked me the date. August 8.
8/8.
The day we reconnected.
“Are you serious?”
Graham holds his resolve for a moment, but then he relaxes and lets out a laugh. “I’m kidding. Yours had a seven on the back of it and mine had like a five or something.” He stands up and takes his trash to the kitchen. “I kept them because I’m a neat freak and I didn’t like littering on the floor of the hallway. I forgot they were in my pocket until I got home that night.”
I wonder how much of that is true. “Do you really still have them, though?”
He steps on the trash can lever and the lid pops open. “Of course.” He walks back to the table and pulls me out of my chair. He slides his arms around my waist and kisses me. It’s a sweet kiss and he tastes like caramel and sugar. He moves his mouth to my cheek and kisses it, then pulls me against his chest. “You know I’m only teasing you, right? I don’t actually believe we’ll spend the rest of our lives together. Yet.”
I kind of like his teasing. A lot. I open my mouth to respond to him, but his phone rings. He holds up a finger and pulls it out of his pocket, then immediately answers it. “Hey, beautiful,” he says. He covers his phone and whispers, “It’s my mother. Don’t freak out.”
I laugh and leave him to his phone call while I walk to the table to gather all the breakfast he brought. I don’t think it’ll all fit in the fridge.
“Not much,” Graham says. “Is Dad golfing today?” I watch him chat with his mother. He does it with such ease. When I chat with my mother, I’m tense and on edge and rolling my eyes through most of the conversation. “Yeah, dinner sounds good. Can I bring a date?” He covers his phone and looks at me. “Get your scuba gear ready, Quinn.”