The Corner Booth, After Hours

November twenty-eighth. Simone turned thirty-six this year, and when I asked what she wanted to do she said a good dinner, which meant exactly what it sounds like: a real restaurant, a booth if possible, and no obligation to be anywhere after. We found a corner booth. We stayed past the point when most of the other tables had cleared out, and somewhere around the second hour I stopped keeping track of time, which is the whole point.

There was cake, a single-candle dessert the restaurant brought without being asked, which felt like something the evening had arranged on its own.

The laugh that means you've told a good one.

Simone named every component of it before she'd taken a bite, which is a thing she does. I have written enough about Simone naming things first that it barely surprises me anymore, but it still makes me laugh, the immediate and confident taxonomy of a dessert she has not yet tasted.

One candle. We made it count.

We got the kind of laughing-too-loud by the end that makes you glad you're in a corner booth and not in the middle of the room. Someone stacked a chair at the table beside us. We took the hint about five minutes later than we probably should have. That part felt right too.

This one has been sitting in the draft folder for a while, which is its own kind of record. Some nights you hold onto before you write about them, just to make sure you actually had them. I had it.