Held, tightly.

“You’re like a widow.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not. That’s exactly what you’re like. Not a Catholic one, though – the Catholic ones are insatiable.”

“Why do I think you’re speaking from great experience?” I joked. “Look, I’ve never given you a reason to believe I’d succumb to your charms.”

“No, true enough.  I keep hoping you’ll change your mind, or snap out of it. You live in a fantasy. You’re a middle-aged woman waiting for your knight in shining armour to come home from the wars.” He leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his fisted hands. “Stop waiting. He’s not going to come. And I’m here.”

“I’m not waiting.”

“You can work out all that distraught grief on me.”

“I’m not distraught.”

“Whatever it is you’re feeling, then. I think you should repurpose it.” The sun left spider-legged shadows under his eyelashes.  He gave me his best boyish smile. “I really do. You’re not getting any younger. You’re going to end up alone and bitter.”

There it was – just the thinnest edge of cruelty – the sharp-finned worm that turns in men who get rebuffed.  I shook my head and smiled back at him. “Why would you even want that? To be someone’s second choice?”

“Second, ay? Second’s not bad. I thought I’d be your fourth or fifth, at least.”

“Don’t you get enough pussy in Dublin?” But I already knew the answer. He was too charming, too good with words. Beautiful in that wrecked, weathered way that draws women. Not too handsome – that put a lot of women past their twenties off – but exactly the sort of forty-something women fell for. Fit and a little worn, sexy but comfortable. I knew he got as much pussy as he wanted.

“A man needs a challenge.”

“So it’s a conquest you’re after? You’ve set your sights on storming my bastion?”

“It’s not a bad bastion. Plus, I’ve a little time on my hands.”

“I’m a project?”

He shrugged. “Everyone needs one.”

I laughed.  “It occurs to me that if I’d jumped into bed with you the first time we met, you’d have lost interest years ago.”

“But you didn’t, and I haven’t.”

“I’m not going to fuck you. I’m never going to fuck you. You get that, right?”

He shrugged again. “Well, we could get creative. Why don’t we just pretend we’ve done all that already and now we’re an old married couple who’re bored to death with each other and have had to resort to unspeakable perversions to keep the flame alive?”

“Oh, you’re good. You’re really good.”

He beamed. “I’ve got a very plush hotel room. Want to see it?”

“You don’t really think I’d give it up for a swish hotel room, do you?”

“Well, I knew a box full of diamonds and pearls wouldn’t do the trick, but I did think I might tempt you with good architecture and impressive interior design.”

“Clever. Cunning, even.”

“That’s me.”

I leveled my eyes at him. “Listen. Don’t come back. You’re a nice man. I’m not sure what you want,  but I’m sure I can’t give it to you.”

He let the impatience show in his eyes. “It’s what you want that I can’t fathom. You’re like some pitiful virgin saving herself for an imaginary lover who doesn’t exist.” There was anger there, building up steam. “Whoever he is, he’s not worth it, darlin’. He’s not real. You’ve built him out of projected desires. It’s an awful trap you’ve constructed for yourself. But I’m real and here. In the flesh.”

“Has it occurred to you that that’s exactly what I don’t want?”

He exhaled and sat back, his eyes drifted towards the stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. “You, woman, need a psychiatrist.”

“And how convenient that you happen to be one.”

“I’d never treat someone I was involved with. I’m just saying – I can see what’s going on with you. It’s not healthy.”

And corruption, right there. Ironically, it was the only thing that gave me a flutter of desire. I smiled blandly. “Thank you for your diagnosis.  Good to know that your idea of healthy entails me sleeping with you.”

For just a moment, he looked stricken, but he covered it over fast. “That’s not what I meant.”

But now he was wounded meat, and I couldn’t help myself. I leaned in, smelling his unease. “Now that you’ve dissected my psyche, it’s my turn. Ever since we met at that conference, you’ve been coming to see me, knowing I’d turn you down.  Once I’d get. Twice, even, is understandable, but four times, five times? Heal thyself, physician. You’ve constructed just as many fantasies – of you rescuing some Rapunzel from her tower of dreams. Of bringing her down to earth and leading her into the real world of the flesh. And once you’d done that, it would be over for you. The object of desire achieved, you’d dust off your palms and move on to the next one.”

He didn’t shift in his seat, but I could see from his muscles that he desperately wanted to. He had control in spades.  “Maybe. Maybe. You’re smart for a lunatic.”

I settled back in my chair. “So, let us agree that we’re each suffering from different but complementary delusions and be polite about it. You come here to drink at the well of the impossible and so do I. Okay?”

The muscles by his jawline twitched. He was chewing at the inside of his cheek. “Okay,” he said, thoughtfully. “Okay. But I’d like to know one thing.”

“Shoot.”

“If I come here with fantasies of rescuing Rapunzel, why do you come? Why do you keep agreeing to meet me?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said, catching the waitresses eye and motioning for the bill. “I come to find out if I can resist you. I come to see if I can still be faithful or if I’m simply lacking the opportunity to betray him.”

The bill arrived. I slid a twenty onto the saucer, then shouldered my purse.

“Just… wait. What is it that you think you’re being faithful to?”

I stood up, looking down at him with as much warmth as I could muster. “You disappoint me. ‘What’ is the wrong question.”