Unbroken, page 6
She sat back, surprised. That was the last thing she had expected out of his mouth. “Oh?”
He put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes for a moment. “Everything is so different,” he sighed, lowering his hand. “So much has happened. I’m a different person, and I can see you are too. You … you look so content. Sitting here in front of you … seeing you … it’s just … it’s …”
“… surreal,” Naomi laughed nervously as she used Evelyn’s word from the market.
He smiled. “Yes, I suppose.” He unclasped his hands and sat back, his eyes still fastened on her. “What made you decide to do this?”
“You mean me finding you and calling you?”
He nodded and gestured toward the window. “It’s not common knowledge that I work with the FBI at the Embassy. I couldn’t have been easy to find.”
She looked out the window at the Brandenburg Gate across the plaza. It was a gigantic pillared gate made of stone, topped with a baroque-looking horse-drawn chariot. Naomi didn’t know much about the gate, but she remembered seeing it in pictures when her history class had studied the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. She felt like that now, she realized, as if a wall had been torn down between her and Jesse. When she looked back at him, his eyes were filled with so much open honesty she wanted to hug him. He had lived under a mountain of lies and secrets for so long, and now it seemed the mountain had crumbled to nothing. “You can thank my parents for finding you,” she explained. “I tried, but I didn’t get very far.”
“Ah, I see.” He glanced at the ordering counter and straightened his tie. “Would you mind if I grab something really quick? I haven’t had anything to eat today. I was a little nervous about our meeting. I can’t eat when I’m nervous, but now my stomach is growling.”
Naomi smiled, glad he was feeling comfortable now. Her own anxiety was lessening as well. “Go right ahead.”
“Do you want anything? My treat.”
Naomi looked from him to the counter, her mind frozen for a moment. “Uh, sure.”
He raised an eyebrow at her hesitation. “Is that going to be too strange for you? I promise it’s just a friendly gesture, okay?”
She looked him up and down, noting the quality of his clothes and shoes and the expensive watch on his wrist. He probably made a lot more money than she did—and she wasn’t bad off. But he made honest money now, and that mattered a lot to her with everything that had happened in the past.
“Yes, it’s fine,” she answered truthfully. “A caffe misto, please.”
He smiled. “Going with the Italian name, I see. So you must be speaking the language fluently if you’re living and working there.”
She nodded. “I’m trying. And you? I know you’re at the American Embassy and all, but you must know German.”
He nodded. “I learned it in prison, of all places, and I kept studying it after I got out. I love it here.”
Naomi liked that he didn’t seem at all embarrassed mentioning prison. “That’s great, Jesse.”
It was the first time she had said his name, and for some reason it made her lightheaded. He smiled as he stood. “I’ll be right back.”
Naomi watched him as he waited in line, his hands pushed into his pants pockets. He looked so casual and content, not worried or nervous at all. Leaning all the way back in her chair, Naomi sucked in a deep breath of coffee-scented air and closed her eyes.
This was a milestone day.
IX
When Naomi heard Jesse did surveillance for the FBI, she had immediately thought of dangerous spy missions. But Jesse was not a field agent. He explained to her that most of what he did was in a cubicle in front of a computer, or meeting with more important people than himself.
“I suppose dry intelligence gathering is the closest I can get to explaining what I do,” he said as they walked down the street with their coffees in hand. “I can’t really tell you more than that without getting myself in trouble.”
They had decided to walk across the Pariser Platz where they could get a good look at the Brandenburg Gate and see the outside of the Embassy. Going inside would be too complicated. Naomi sipped at her coffee as her breath made little white clouds in the air. It was around thirty-five degrees. She was glad she had brought her warm coat.
“Intelligence gathering,” she repeated Jesse’s words teasingly. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with that, although I thought only the CIA did work like that outside of the US.”
Jesse shook his head. “The government has to be everywhere these days, in all divisions,” he said vaguely. “You don’t think the DEA stays inside US borders, do you?”
“I have no idea,” she laughed. “I know food and business, remember? I’ve never thought much about government agencies.”
“Speaking of food,” Jesse said, glancing at her as he switched his coffee cup from one hand to the other, “tell me how you started working in Italy. I’m curious.” He stopped abruptly and turned to her. They were in the middle of the plaza. People milled around them, some posing for pictures with the gate in the background. “And maybe this is too forward and out of the blue,” he said, his cool demeanor thinning as a burst of apprehension peeked through, “but whatever happened with Finn? Did you two …?”
“No,” she answered, laughing a little. “No, it didn’t work out. We tried, and maybe it could have, but we both wanted other things more.” Her eyes grew distant. “Sometimes I wonder if I should have tried harder to make it work, but that’s all over now.” She shrugged.
Jesse’s smile cradled a hint of sadness. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Things haven’t exactly worked out for me in that department, either.”
Naomi glanced at his left hand again and then cleared her throat as she looked over at a group of teenagers posing for a picture. Everyone seemed small in the gate’s immense presence. The sun beat down on Naomi’s head. It had already melted the half-inch of snow that had fallen the night before. “As for Italy,” she said, turning back to Jesse with a teasing smile, “that’s a long story. Have you got an hour?”
“Oh, right. The time …,” Jesse said, glancing at his watch. He looked over at a low, cream-colored building. An American flag hung over the entrance, and several security officers stood behind a row of pillars only a few feet high. “I should have planned this better,” he said, visibly sagging. “I’ve only got a few minutes.”
Naomi’s heart sank. “Oh.”
Jesse turned to her, his cheeks pink from the cold. He had buttoned his long coat all the way up to his chin, and his breath floated in little wisps toward her face as he looked at her with a sad expression. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he said, “but I should have planned to meet you when I had more time. I’d like to continue talking later, if we can.” He looked down at his polished shoes and chewed on his bottom lip. “I’ll admit,” he said as he met her eyes again, “I didn’t think I’d want to be around you longer than a few minutes. I thought it would be too painful. I thought we’d say hello and have a short conversation and move on, like you said you did with Steve and Evelyn, but this is turning out differently, isn’t it? You’re different.”
Naomi kept her eyes on his. She wasn’t sure what he meant by “different,” but the admiring way he said it almost made her blush. “You’re different too,” she replied. “In a good way. What happened, Jesse? After you left me at the airport all those years ago? Why did you go back and turn yourself in?”
His eyes grew distant and he lifted his coffee and took a long sip. “I traveled around for a year,” he said. “I got more tangled up in the network you caught a glimpse of before you left. They wanted more and more out of me—so much that I woke up one morning and realized where the rest of my life was going, and I didn’t like it. I kept thinking about what you said, how you told me never to give up, how you said sometimes the only way out is to take a stand and fight.”
The admiration in Jesse’s eyes wasn’t lost on Naomi. She could hardly remember saying those words to him, but they had apparently made a huge impact. They must have made an impact on her too. That idea to stand and fight had, after all, been the reason she had left him.
“So I decided to fight what I’d become,” Jesse went on. “I flew back to the US, turned myself in, and decided I’d serve my time. The feds came to me after a few years, asking me for information about the network I’d been a part of. I told them everything and helped as much as I could. Then they came to me again about other related cases, and then again after that. I built up a relationship with them, and I’ll tell you what.” He raised his coffee cup and tilted it toward the Embassy. “They’ve protected and cared about me more than anyone else ever has. I found a type of work I feel good about, something that makes a real difference, and I decided a long time ago that I’d never go back to crime.”
Naomi felt a huge rush of satisfaction listening to Jesse’s story. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him how happy she was that he’d had the courage to change. But there was enough awkwardness simply looking into his eyes that she couldn’t imagine hugging him.
He looked at his watch again and said, “I have to go,” and then looked at her eagerly. “Would you want to meet again in a few hours? Dinner, maybe?”
Naomi sensed the nervousness in his voice, and it sent a rush of confusing feelings through her. She had slept with this man countless times. She had run away with him, borne her deepest desires to him, feared him, hated him, learned to forget him as the years without him had slipped by. But now that he was in front of her, everything she had ever felt for him resurfaced.
She remembered the naive, adolescent love she had felt for him during her captivity. It had eventually taken root and grown into something much deeper and more dangerous—something her counselors had insisted was nothing more than psychological trauma. She had thought so too. Until now. What she felt now was not a stubborn leftover from Stockholm syndrome. It was not forgotten shrapnel from an old wound. It was real and strong and clean, and she finally understood that her regard for Jesse had lain dormant for so long that she had shoved it under the rug and labeled it unimportant and wrong. Now, however, it came rushing back, breaking through the barriers so many people had tried to put up for her. Now her heart was tied into knots for him, confused and unsure how to proceed.
“Yes,” she answered in a shaky voice, “dinner sounds nice.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never contacted you. I didn’t think you’d want to see me ever again.”
She shook her head and took a tiny step forward. It was enough to close the protective personal space between them. Her fingers, wrapped around her warm coffee cup, bumped against his knuckles. That tiny bit of physical contact made her legs turn to jelly. She shifted to keep her balance. “I didn’t want to see you,” she confirmed. “I spent years learning how to forget you, to convince myself everything about you was bad. I had no idea finding out what you’ve done with your life since then would change the way I feel.”
His eyes widened as he studied her. “And how do you feel?”
Her warm feelings for him grew stronger, expanding until they threatened to break free in the form of tears or something worse. A part of her wanted to run away, but she embraced it and held her ground.
“It’s difficult to explain,” she answered. “When I last saw you in Rome, you were unhappy. You said you felt like there was no way out for you, and that ripped me apart.” She swept a strand of hair away from her eyes. “So seeing you now, seeing how strong you’ve become, it makes me so happy that you’re happy, and healthy, and safe.” She stepped back, restoring the protective space between them. “Those are the only things that really matter in life, so I’m … I feel so …” She looked down at the rim of her coffee cup, her vision blurring as she realized how relieved she was that he was happy and well. That relief spread through her like a balm, easing the old wounds she thought could never heal.
“Naomi,” Jesse said, and she looked up to see his eyes filled with understanding, “you don’t have to explain anything. I have your cell phone number. I’ll text you my direct number and you can let me know if you still want to meet tonight.”
She nodded and took another step back. “Thanks, Jesse.”
He gave her an appreciative, almost expectant look before saying goodbye and walking away. Naomi turned around to face the direction in which they’d come, her heart pounding as her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t watch him leave.
*
“Thanks for a great afternoon, Dad,” Naomi said to her father as they both stepped out of the taxi and headed into the apartment building. “It was good meeting everyone and seeing how you run things.”
Her father grinned and pushed the elevator call button. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to his side. “I knew you’d appreciate it. Your mother cares, but not the way I knew you would.”
Naomi laughed. “Like father, like daughter.”
The elevator doors opened and they both stepped inside. Naomi pushed the button to the fourth floor and tried to keep her mind on her father’s office and everything she had absorbed there instead of what had happened with Jesse that morning. Her emotions were still so poignant she wasn’t sure how to manage them. Thankfully, her father hadn’t asked her anything about it. She would tell him when she was ready.
“So, I really am hungry this time,” her father said as they stepped onto the fourth floor and walked down the hallway toward the apartment. “Since we skipped lunch, should we do a large, early dinner or a late lunch and a super-late dinner?”
Naomi almost stopped in the middle of the hall. “Actually,” she said, forcing her feet to keep going, “I might be meeting Jesse for dinner tonight.” She glanced worriedly at her father. “I know you wanted to spend time with me, but he and I didn’t get to talk for very long, and …”
She stopped as her father’s eyes widened. He paused in front of the door and pulled out his keys. “Ah, so it went well,” he stated. “I thought you said it would be quick and painful, like ripping off a Band-Aid, and then it would be over.”
Naomi shrugged and leaned against the wall as he unlocked the door. “That’s what I thought,” she said, “but we were hardly able to share anything about each other, so he suggested we talk over dinner. He’s changed so much, Dad.”
Her father opened the door and they both stepped inside. “Do whatever you like,” he said casually. He turned to her, looking as if he wanted to give her a big, comforting hug like he always did. Instead, he smiled and folded his arms. “I hope you’re not waiting for my approval. You’re a grown woman. You can make your own decisions.”
She gave him a sly look and brushed past him toward her room. “Then dinner with Jesse it is. I’m going to change into something nicer.”
*
A few hours later, she sat at a table waiting for Jesse to arrive. He had told her this particular French restaurant was a favorite of his. She looked over the menu and tried not to keep glancing at the empty chair across from her.
He was twenty minutes late.
“Would you care for some wine while you wait?” the server asked her in heavily accented English as he visited her table for the third time. He was tall and thin with a headful of brown corkscrew curls.
Naomi shook her head. “No, thank you.”
The server bowed politely and left. Naomi waited ten more minutes and then pulled out her phone. Her finger hovered over the call button for Jesse’s number. Was she being too impatient? Berlin was a busy city. Perhaps he was caught up in traffic. But he should have at least texted her that he would be late.
She pressed the button and the call went directly to voicemail.
“Ma’am?”
Naomi looked up at the server, who had returned once again.
“Yes?” she asked, tucking her phone back into her purse.
“I am to relay a message from your party,” he explained. “He says he cannot make it this evening and to please accept his apologies. He has paid for your meal, and you may order whatever you like.”
Naomi’s mouth dropped open. “Did he say why he can’t make it?” she asked, already guessing the answer.
The server shook his head. “No, Ma’am.”
“Oh.” Secrets. It was always about secrets with Jesse. She gave her order and then sat back in her chair and watched the server walk away. Whatever it was that kept Jesse from coming, it must be important if he wasn’t answering his phone.
The first course of her meal arrived, and as she sipped at her wine and picked at the duck à l’orange and mushroom risotto, she wondered if she would see Jesse again in the near future. Her flight left early the next morning, and the holidays were coming up. It seemed unlikely.
Her heart sank lower with each new dish brought out to her. She ate only half of each one and found herself battling between the elation she had felt that morning and the disappointment she felt now. Perhaps it was meant to be that Jesse couldn’t meet with her again. She had wanted closure, and seeing him had undoubtedly given that to her.
The only problem, she realized, was that somewhere along the line she had allowed herself to believe another door had opened.
*
Naomi woke to the sound of a text message alert on her phone. She groaned and slid the phone off the end table. It was five-thirty in the morning, half an hour before her alarm would sound to wake her in time to get ready for her flight home.
The text was from Jesse: I’m so sorry about last night. I had a work-related emergency and that’s all I can tell you. I feel horrible. I’d like to fly down to Italy to meet with you, but I won’t be able to get down there until mid-February. Let me know if that would work for you. Again, it was good to see you and I hope we can keep in touch. Have a safe flight home.
He put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes for a moment. “Everything is so different,” he sighed, lowering his hand. “So much has happened. I’m a different person, and I can see you are too. You … you look so content. Sitting here in front of you … seeing you … it’s just … it’s …”
“… surreal,” Naomi laughed nervously as she used Evelyn’s word from the market.
He smiled. “Yes, I suppose.” He unclasped his hands and sat back, his eyes still fastened on her. “What made you decide to do this?”
“You mean me finding you and calling you?”
He nodded and gestured toward the window. “It’s not common knowledge that I work with the FBI at the Embassy. I couldn’t have been easy to find.”
She looked out the window at the Brandenburg Gate across the plaza. It was a gigantic pillared gate made of stone, topped with a baroque-looking horse-drawn chariot. Naomi didn’t know much about the gate, but she remembered seeing it in pictures when her history class had studied the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. She felt like that now, she realized, as if a wall had been torn down between her and Jesse. When she looked back at him, his eyes were filled with so much open honesty she wanted to hug him. He had lived under a mountain of lies and secrets for so long, and now it seemed the mountain had crumbled to nothing. “You can thank my parents for finding you,” she explained. “I tried, but I didn’t get very far.”
“Ah, I see.” He glanced at the ordering counter and straightened his tie. “Would you mind if I grab something really quick? I haven’t had anything to eat today. I was a little nervous about our meeting. I can’t eat when I’m nervous, but now my stomach is growling.”
Naomi smiled, glad he was feeling comfortable now. Her own anxiety was lessening as well. “Go right ahead.”
“Do you want anything? My treat.”
Naomi looked from him to the counter, her mind frozen for a moment. “Uh, sure.”
He raised an eyebrow at her hesitation. “Is that going to be too strange for you? I promise it’s just a friendly gesture, okay?”
She looked him up and down, noting the quality of his clothes and shoes and the expensive watch on his wrist. He probably made a lot more money than she did—and she wasn’t bad off. But he made honest money now, and that mattered a lot to her with everything that had happened in the past.
“Yes, it’s fine,” she answered truthfully. “A caffe misto, please.”
He smiled. “Going with the Italian name, I see. So you must be speaking the language fluently if you’re living and working there.”
She nodded. “I’m trying. And you? I know you’re at the American Embassy and all, but you must know German.”
He nodded. “I learned it in prison, of all places, and I kept studying it after I got out. I love it here.”
Naomi liked that he didn’t seem at all embarrassed mentioning prison. “That’s great, Jesse.”
It was the first time she had said his name, and for some reason it made her lightheaded. He smiled as he stood. “I’ll be right back.”
Naomi watched him as he waited in line, his hands pushed into his pants pockets. He looked so casual and content, not worried or nervous at all. Leaning all the way back in her chair, Naomi sucked in a deep breath of coffee-scented air and closed her eyes.
This was a milestone day.
IX
When Naomi heard Jesse did surveillance for the FBI, she had immediately thought of dangerous spy missions. But Jesse was not a field agent. He explained to her that most of what he did was in a cubicle in front of a computer, or meeting with more important people than himself.
“I suppose dry intelligence gathering is the closest I can get to explaining what I do,” he said as they walked down the street with their coffees in hand. “I can’t really tell you more than that without getting myself in trouble.”
They had decided to walk across the Pariser Platz where they could get a good look at the Brandenburg Gate and see the outside of the Embassy. Going inside would be too complicated. Naomi sipped at her coffee as her breath made little white clouds in the air. It was around thirty-five degrees. She was glad she had brought her warm coat.
“Intelligence gathering,” she repeated Jesse’s words teasingly. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with that, although I thought only the CIA did work like that outside of the US.”
Jesse shook his head. “The government has to be everywhere these days, in all divisions,” he said vaguely. “You don’t think the DEA stays inside US borders, do you?”
“I have no idea,” she laughed. “I know food and business, remember? I’ve never thought much about government agencies.”
“Speaking of food,” Jesse said, glancing at her as he switched his coffee cup from one hand to the other, “tell me how you started working in Italy. I’m curious.” He stopped abruptly and turned to her. They were in the middle of the plaza. People milled around them, some posing for pictures with the gate in the background. “And maybe this is too forward and out of the blue,” he said, his cool demeanor thinning as a burst of apprehension peeked through, “but whatever happened with Finn? Did you two …?”
“No,” she answered, laughing a little. “No, it didn’t work out. We tried, and maybe it could have, but we both wanted other things more.” Her eyes grew distant. “Sometimes I wonder if I should have tried harder to make it work, but that’s all over now.” She shrugged.
Jesse’s smile cradled a hint of sadness. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Things haven’t exactly worked out for me in that department, either.”
Naomi glanced at his left hand again and then cleared her throat as she looked over at a group of teenagers posing for a picture. Everyone seemed small in the gate’s immense presence. The sun beat down on Naomi’s head. It had already melted the half-inch of snow that had fallen the night before. “As for Italy,” she said, turning back to Jesse with a teasing smile, “that’s a long story. Have you got an hour?”
“Oh, right. The time …,” Jesse said, glancing at his watch. He looked over at a low, cream-colored building. An American flag hung over the entrance, and several security officers stood behind a row of pillars only a few feet high. “I should have planned this better,” he said, visibly sagging. “I’ve only got a few minutes.”
Naomi’s heart sank. “Oh.”
Jesse turned to her, his cheeks pink from the cold. He had buttoned his long coat all the way up to his chin, and his breath floated in little wisps toward her face as he looked at her with a sad expression. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he said, “but I should have planned to meet you when I had more time. I’d like to continue talking later, if we can.” He looked down at his polished shoes and chewed on his bottom lip. “I’ll admit,” he said as he met her eyes again, “I didn’t think I’d want to be around you longer than a few minutes. I thought it would be too painful. I thought we’d say hello and have a short conversation and move on, like you said you did with Steve and Evelyn, but this is turning out differently, isn’t it? You’re different.”
Naomi kept her eyes on his. She wasn’t sure what he meant by “different,” but the admiring way he said it almost made her blush. “You’re different too,” she replied. “In a good way. What happened, Jesse? After you left me at the airport all those years ago? Why did you go back and turn yourself in?”
His eyes grew distant and he lifted his coffee and took a long sip. “I traveled around for a year,” he said. “I got more tangled up in the network you caught a glimpse of before you left. They wanted more and more out of me—so much that I woke up one morning and realized where the rest of my life was going, and I didn’t like it. I kept thinking about what you said, how you told me never to give up, how you said sometimes the only way out is to take a stand and fight.”
The admiration in Jesse’s eyes wasn’t lost on Naomi. She could hardly remember saying those words to him, but they had apparently made a huge impact. They must have made an impact on her too. That idea to stand and fight had, after all, been the reason she had left him.
“So I decided to fight what I’d become,” Jesse went on. “I flew back to the US, turned myself in, and decided I’d serve my time. The feds came to me after a few years, asking me for information about the network I’d been a part of. I told them everything and helped as much as I could. Then they came to me again about other related cases, and then again after that. I built up a relationship with them, and I’ll tell you what.” He raised his coffee cup and tilted it toward the Embassy. “They’ve protected and cared about me more than anyone else ever has. I found a type of work I feel good about, something that makes a real difference, and I decided a long time ago that I’d never go back to crime.”
Naomi felt a huge rush of satisfaction listening to Jesse’s story. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him how happy she was that he’d had the courage to change. But there was enough awkwardness simply looking into his eyes that she couldn’t imagine hugging him.
He looked at his watch again and said, “I have to go,” and then looked at her eagerly. “Would you want to meet again in a few hours? Dinner, maybe?”
Naomi sensed the nervousness in his voice, and it sent a rush of confusing feelings through her. She had slept with this man countless times. She had run away with him, borne her deepest desires to him, feared him, hated him, learned to forget him as the years without him had slipped by. But now that he was in front of her, everything she had ever felt for him resurfaced.
She remembered the naive, adolescent love she had felt for him during her captivity. It had eventually taken root and grown into something much deeper and more dangerous—something her counselors had insisted was nothing more than psychological trauma. She had thought so too. Until now. What she felt now was not a stubborn leftover from Stockholm syndrome. It was not forgotten shrapnel from an old wound. It was real and strong and clean, and she finally understood that her regard for Jesse had lain dormant for so long that she had shoved it under the rug and labeled it unimportant and wrong. Now, however, it came rushing back, breaking through the barriers so many people had tried to put up for her. Now her heart was tied into knots for him, confused and unsure how to proceed.
“Yes,” she answered in a shaky voice, “dinner sounds nice.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never contacted you. I didn’t think you’d want to see me ever again.”
She shook her head and took a tiny step forward. It was enough to close the protective personal space between them. Her fingers, wrapped around her warm coffee cup, bumped against his knuckles. That tiny bit of physical contact made her legs turn to jelly. She shifted to keep her balance. “I didn’t want to see you,” she confirmed. “I spent years learning how to forget you, to convince myself everything about you was bad. I had no idea finding out what you’ve done with your life since then would change the way I feel.”
His eyes widened as he studied her. “And how do you feel?”
Her warm feelings for him grew stronger, expanding until they threatened to break free in the form of tears or something worse. A part of her wanted to run away, but she embraced it and held her ground.
“It’s difficult to explain,” she answered. “When I last saw you in Rome, you were unhappy. You said you felt like there was no way out for you, and that ripped me apart.” She swept a strand of hair away from her eyes. “So seeing you now, seeing how strong you’ve become, it makes me so happy that you’re happy, and healthy, and safe.” She stepped back, restoring the protective space between them. “Those are the only things that really matter in life, so I’m … I feel so …” She looked down at the rim of her coffee cup, her vision blurring as she realized how relieved she was that he was happy and well. That relief spread through her like a balm, easing the old wounds she thought could never heal.
“Naomi,” Jesse said, and she looked up to see his eyes filled with understanding, “you don’t have to explain anything. I have your cell phone number. I’ll text you my direct number and you can let me know if you still want to meet tonight.”
She nodded and took another step back. “Thanks, Jesse.”
He gave her an appreciative, almost expectant look before saying goodbye and walking away. Naomi turned around to face the direction in which they’d come, her heart pounding as her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t watch him leave.
*
“Thanks for a great afternoon, Dad,” Naomi said to her father as they both stepped out of the taxi and headed into the apartment building. “It was good meeting everyone and seeing how you run things.”
Her father grinned and pushed the elevator call button. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to his side. “I knew you’d appreciate it. Your mother cares, but not the way I knew you would.”
Naomi laughed. “Like father, like daughter.”
The elevator doors opened and they both stepped inside. Naomi pushed the button to the fourth floor and tried to keep her mind on her father’s office and everything she had absorbed there instead of what had happened with Jesse that morning. Her emotions were still so poignant she wasn’t sure how to manage them. Thankfully, her father hadn’t asked her anything about it. She would tell him when she was ready.
“So, I really am hungry this time,” her father said as they stepped onto the fourth floor and walked down the hallway toward the apartment. “Since we skipped lunch, should we do a large, early dinner or a late lunch and a super-late dinner?”
Naomi almost stopped in the middle of the hall. “Actually,” she said, forcing her feet to keep going, “I might be meeting Jesse for dinner tonight.” She glanced worriedly at her father. “I know you wanted to spend time with me, but he and I didn’t get to talk for very long, and …”
She stopped as her father’s eyes widened. He paused in front of the door and pulled out his keys. “Ah, so it went well,” he stated. “I thought you said it would be quick and painful, like ripping off a Band-Aid, and then it would be over.”
Naomi shrugged and leaned against the wall as he unlocked the door. “That’s what I thought,” she said, “but we were hardly able to share anything about each other, so he suggested we talk over dinner. He’s changed so much, Dad.”
Her father opened the door and they both stepped inside. “Do whatever you like,” he said casually. He turned to her, looking as if he wanted to give her a big, comforting hug like he always did. Instead, he smiled and folded his arms. “I hope you’re not waiting for my approval. You’re a grown woman. You can make your own decisions.”
She gave him a sly look and brushed past him toward her room. “Then dinner with Jesse it is. I’m going to change into something nicer.”
*
A few hours later, she sat at a table waiting for Jesse to arrive. He had told her this particular French restaurant was a favorite of his. She looked over the menu and tried not to keep glancing at the empty chair across from her.
He was twenty minutes late.
“Would you care for some wine while you wait?” the server asked her in heavily accented English as he visited her table for the third time. He was tall and thin with a headful of brown corkscrew curls.
Naomi shook her head. “No, thank you.”
The server bowed politely and left. Naomi waited ten more minutes and then pulled out her phone. Her finger hovered over the call button for Jesse’s number. Was she being too impatient? Berlin was a busy city. Perhaps he was caught up in traffic. But he should have at least texted her that he would be late.
She pressed the button and the call went directly to voicemail.
“Ma’am?”
Naomi looked up at the server, who had returned once again.
“Yes?” she asked, tucking her phone back into her purse.
“I am to relay a message from your party,” he explained. “He says he cannot make it this evening and to please accept his apologies. He has paid for your meal, and you may order whatever you like.”
Naomi’s mouth dropped open. “Did he say why he can’t make it?” she asked, already guessing the answer.
The server shook his head. “No, Ma’am.”
“Oh.” Secrets. It was always about secrets with Jesse. She gave her order and then sat back in her chair and watched the server walk away. Whatever it was that kept Jesse from coming, it must be important if he wasn’t answering his phone.
The first course of her meal arrived, and as she sipped at her wine and picked at the duck à l’orange and mushroom risotto, she wondered if she would see Jesse again in the near future. Her flight left early the next morning, and the holidays were coming up. It seemed unlikely.
Her heart sank lower with each new dish brought out to her. She ate only half of each one and found herself battling between the elation she had felt that morning and the disappointment she felt now. Perhaps it was meant to be that Jesse couldn’t meet with her again. She had wanted closure, and seeing him had undoubtedly given that to her.
The only problem, she realized, was that somewhere along the line she had allowed herself to believe another door had opened.
*
Naomi woke to the sound of a text message alert on her phone. She groaned and slid the phone off the end table. It was five-thirty in the morning, half an hour before her alarm would sound to wake her in time to get ready for her flight home.
The text was from Jesse: I’m so sorry about last night. I had a work-related emergency and that’s all I can tell you. I feel horrible. I’d like to fly down to Italy to meet with you, but I won’t be able to get down there until mid-February. Let me know if that would work for you. Again, it was good to see you and I hope we can keep in touch. Have a safe flight home.
