She Joked That Everyone Forgot Her Birthday

The restaurant was not threateningly expensive; it was entirely empty.

Sophie stood inside the arched threshold of Taverna Vecchia, a quiet spot tucked away in a narrow alley two blocks off the city’s historic harbor district. The air smelled rich and comforting: roasted garlic, crushed rosemary, braised lamb, and centuries of dried oak flooring polished with mineral beeswax. Red-and-white checkered tablecloths sat beneath small amber candles, and the windows were draped with heavy, dark green velvet curtains that shut out the autumn wind.

There were twenty tables in the dining room. Only one was set.

Nicholas had already surrendered his dark cashmere overcoat to an older man with silver-threaded hair and an apron tied tight around his waist—an older man who greeted Nicholas not with the bowing terror of someone facing a mob boss, but with a familiar, respectful squeeze of the shoulder.

"You cleared the restaurant," Sophie said, stopping three paces behind him, her oversized canvas tote bag still slung over her shoulder. "You told me you knew restaurants. You omitted the fact that you buy out the operational capacity for a Tuesday evening."

Nicholas turned, pulling out the wooden chair on the far side of the table for her. "I didn't buy it out. Marco's brother-in-law is my godmother's third cousin. I asked him if we could eat without three dozen people attempting to pitch commercial construction bonds during my risotto."

"That is the most convoluted Italian justification for aggressive social insulation I have ever heard," Sophie replied, sliding into the seat.

"I value quiet," Nicholas said, sitting across from her. He folded his large, scarred hands over the linen napkin. In the warm candlelight, the sharp lines of his face softened just enough to make him look almost human, though the tailored fit of his charcoal shirt and the faint glimpse of an engraved silver signet ring on his pinky finger preserved the quiet, dangerous silhouette from the courthouse. "Especially when I'm having dinner with a woman who measures professional success by the absence of open flames."

Sophie set her terrible mystery novel face down beside the breadbasket. "The library children's program is a sacred trust. If seven-year-olds are not actively setting paper mache dinosaurs on fire, the commonwealth is safe for another week."

"An inspiring mission statement." Nicholas poured her a glass of sparkling water from a glass carafe, his fingers steady, entirely without performance. "Tell me about the books."

"The books?"

"The ones you actually read when you aren't reading that," he gestured toward the battered paperback.

Sophie leaned back, resting her chin on her hand. "History. Urban geography. Ancient trade routes. Books about how cities get put together, and how people figure out where the boundaries are supposed to be."

Nicholas's eyes sharpened slightly, an ancient, assessing glimmer passing behind his dark pupils. "Boundaries are an illusion. Most people draw them where they're told, not where the ground actually holds."

"Is that a mafia philosophical tenet?"

"It’s basic engineering," Nicholas countered, taking a piece of warm focaccia. "My grandfather built the southern piers in nineteen-forty-eight. The city told him the boundary line stopped at the low-tide marker. He poured eighty thousand tons of reinforced granite into the mud and extended the pier forty yards further out. Fifty years later, the maritime court ruled that the land was his because the granite refused to sink."

Sophie studied him. "So you come from a long line of people who treat legal maps as helpful suggestions."

"We treat reality as a negotiation between who has the concrete and who has the paper," Nicholas said, a faint, dry smirk touching his lips. "Tonight, I have neither. I just have hunger."

The dinner arrived without orders being taken: handmade pappardelle with slow-braised wild boar ragù, bitter greens tossed with lemon oil, and a bottle of Nebbiolo that had no printed label, only an inked year scrawled across the glass: 1998.

They talked for three hours.

They argued about public transit routes, the absurdity of automated customer service lines, and why suburban architects insisted on using synthetic siding when local limestone weathered three times longer. Nicholas listened—not with the casual courtesy of a wealthy man indulging a date, but with a deep, unnerving focus, cataloging her opinions as if they were critical intelligence briefings.

When the clock on the wall chimed ten, Sophie looked at her watch.

"I have to open the branch at seven-thirty tomorrow," she said, though she didn't move to stand up. "Story hour is at nine."

Nicholas motioned to Marco, who appeared instantly with her coat, holding it out with quiet deference. "I’ll drive you."

"I took the bus to the courthouse. I can take the blue line back to North Square."

Nicholas stopped by the door, turning his head to look down at her with that steady, unblinking authority. "You could. But the blue line smells like damp pennies and burnt copper brakes. My car smells like cedar. Choose efficiency, Sophie."

Sophie looked at him, then at the rain beginning to streak against the glass.