Kevin and Kate didn’t tell anyone else they were dating. Office romances were frowned upon at the paper, and both of them were relatively new on the job. Kate, in fact, was just beginning the three-month probationary period, customary at many workplaces, and neither she nor Kevin wanted to muddy the waters of their employment with rumors of an affair. At work, they were cool, cordial coworkers. Nobody guessed that their friendly, though somewhat formal, demeanor with each other concealed a great fire. Kevin was a master at masking his feelings; he was so good, in fact, that early on, Kate spent many days at work wondering if she had misinterpreted his ardor that first night.
They would leave the office separately, each talking loudly about hitting the gym or doing some shopping, only to meet later at her house. At that time, Kate was renting a small cottage on a lake a few miles outside of town. When she chose the house for its old-fashioned charm and its lake view, she had no idea that its remote location would make it a very convenient place to conduct a clandestine romance. Nobody would come to her house unannounced and find them together or drive by and see his car parked in her driveway.
Those early days, the first sweet, solitary, secretive weeks, Kate felt as though she were living in a dream world. She had the job she always wanted—ever since she had discovered her love of journalism during her days writing for the high school newspaper, she had dreamed of growing up and working at the Gazette. And now it was a reality. She loved her job and soon became known as an outstanding writer, earning praise from everyone who read her work.
Only she and Kevin knew that another dream of Kate’s had come true as well, falling head over heels in love. Kate couldn’t believe her good luck. She was happier than she had ever been.
When their relationship was forbidden and taboo, sharing the secret of their affair was exciting. Kevin and Kate made a game out of seeing who could break the other’s composure at work, whispering seemingly innocent words that referenced a secret intimacy. Kevin started this game by putting a note on Kate’s desk that simply said, “Canoe.” Kate knew what he was referring to. The night before, they had canoed to a small island just across the bay from Kate’s house. They hadn’t secured the canoe well enough on shore. Kate looked up from the blanket they had laid on the ground to see her canoe floating freely in the middle of the lake. When they stopped laughing, Kevin had to swim out to retrieve it.
The first time Kevin told Kate he loved her, they were at the office. It was a month or so after their relationship had begun, and Kevin walked by Kate’s desk to drop off a stack of papers. As he bent down, he whispered into her ear, “I love you.” He ran a finger down her forearm and walked away casually, as though nothing had been said at all. It sent a jolt of electricity through Kate’s body. She’d been in love with him since their first night together at the Tavern and was relieved that he had finally gotten around to admitting he felt the same way. Later, that small act, him running his finger quickly down her forearm, came to mean “I love you” between them. It became their secret way of expressing love in a public place.
Because they didn’t go out together, except for the nights when the whole gang from work would stop by the Tavern for a drink, Kate and Kevin spent the majority of their time alone, playing house. They quickly settled into a routine like an old married couple, making dinner together at her place, talking about the happenings in the office, perhaps watching a movie or a television show before tumbling into bed together.
Sometimes on weekends Kevin would stay for the night, but most often, Kate would wake up and find him gone. The empty side of the bed always left her feeling cold and deserted, but she shrugged it off—he had to shower and change for the workday, after all.
Three months after that first night at the Tavern, Kevin proposed to Kate. They were sitting on the dock in front of her house on a lazy, sunny Saturday afternoon, dangling their feet in the cool water. He pulled the ring out of his pocket and said, nervously, “This was my mother’s. I can’t imagine anyone else but you wearing it. Will you . . . I guess what I’m saying is, will you marry me?”
Kate was stunned. It had all happened so quickly. He didn’t know her family; she didn’t know his. She knew that he had grown up with a father who was in the military, but she didn’t know he’d attended fifteen different schools before he graduated from high school. She didn’t know anything about his early years, a life that consisted of making friends and losing them, over and over again. Young Kevin had quickly learned—after watching through the back window of his father’s station wagon as countless best friends disappeared, only to reappear in the next town in the form of some other boy just his age—that people were replaceable.
During his childhood, Kevin had honed the art of making friends quickly and deeply, in a frantic effort to create some sort of intimacy in his life before it was smashed to pieces when the family had to pack up and move to his father’s next post. After many years of this, it became easy for Kevin to create relationships. Sustaining them was another matter. He never had any practice at it. He simply left people behind as he began new phases of his life, knowing that someone else would arise to take their places. But Kevin never thought consciously about these things, or how they might impact a marriage. He was not a deep thinker. So when he asked Kate to spend the rest of their lives together, he had no idea he was proposing the impossible.
Kate did not know any of these things that day on the dock as he sat next to her with a ring in his hand, but she knew there was only one response to his question. She couldn’t imagine a life without Kevin in it. Unlike his, Kate’s close relationships lasted a lifetime.
She said yes, he slipped the ring on her finger, and they sat on the dock together for hours, staring at the sun glinting off the water’s surface and talking quietly about the rest of their lives, which, to both Kevin and Kate, had suddenly come into sharper focus.
Later, they wondered how they were going to broach the subject of their engagement at the office. Interoffice dating was forbidden, after all. And here they were, getting married. They both loved their jobs. How would they explain this? What would happen when the truth came out?
“I think we should call Stan right now and invite him to meet us at the Tavern,” Kevin said, referring to Stan Corrigan, the paper’s editor in chief. “We’ll tell him what’s been going on between us, ask for his blessing, and hope for the best.”
The meeting went better than they had hoped. Stan had no idea they were dating, but he seemed delighted to hear they were planning to marry.
“Kids, that’s great news,” he said, hugging them both and buying a round of drinks for the table. “A married team will probably stay around awhile,” he said, mostly to himself, it seemed.
Kate had the peculiar sensation that her dream life with Kevin had just been given legs and stepped into the cold world of reality. Stan knew. Soon everyone would know. It was real. It was happening. They decided to break the news to the rest of the staff on Monday.
Kate was nervous when she arrived at the office that morning. She found Kevin already sitting at his desk with the same kind of cool demeanor that had helped keep their relationship secret for the past three months. They exchanged cordial smiles.