“… you’re wearing toenail slippers.” Abby texted the picture to herself, picked up her own phone, and added the image to her “Nasty Feet” album. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Mark was a podiatrist, which meant it was at least possible that he had.
“No comment.” He patted his lips with his napkin, then sighed. “You know, sometimes I think you just love me for my photographs of medical oddities.”
Abby made a show of thinking it over. “Nah,” she finally said. “I also love you because you talk to my mother so I don’t have to.”
“I do,” said Mark.
“And you’re handy for getting things off high shelves.” Mark was only a few inches taller than she was, but it made a difference.
“I got that jar of pickles open that one time,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”
“As if I could.” Abby reached across the table and, tenderly, touched Mark’s cheek. “If it wasn’t for you, I might still be there, standing in my kitchen, trying to get that jar open.”
“You’d have had to resign yourself to a gherkin-less life.”
“And that,” Abby said, “would have been a tragedy. So you see? You have many fine qualities. And you’re paying for dinner.” Their eyes met. “You are paying for dinner, right?”
“I am indeed.” The truth was, Mark paid for most things. He made much more money than Abby did—how much more, she didn’t want to think about. They’d talked about it, early on, with Mark arguing that it made sense for him to be the one who picked up all the checks when they went out to dinner and paid for things like theater tickets and vacations. It’s my pleasure, he’d told her, so sweetly and sincerely that she’d immediately believed him. Whenever he’s around you, Mark looks like the heart-eyes emoji, Abby’s best friend Lizzie had said once. Like he can’t believe he got so lucky. And Abby felt lucky, too.
A waiter set down a bowl of baba ghanoush and a basket of pita triangles fresh from the oven. Abby picked up a wedge of warm bread. Mark picked up a spoon.
“So listen,” he said.
“I’m listening,” Abby replied, feeling warmth and affection, and the slightest twinge of anxiety. Mark was smart and handsome, hardworking and successful. He was funny, and he appreciated Abby’s sense of humor. And he loved her. Over the past two years, they’d built a life of shared routines, of puzzles and Netflix and Sunday morning walks through South Philadelphia that ended at the French bakery in the Bok Building (Abby would get a croissant or a pain au chocolat; Mark would get a glass of water). Their relationship had progressed without a single hitch or misstep. They’d slept together after their third date and had agreed to be exclusive the next morning. In the months that followed, they’d attended weddings and brises and baby namings as a couple. They agreed on most of the big things, and rarely fought over the small ones. At some point, they’d move in together, and at some point after that, Abby assumed, Mark would propose.
As Mark ate a spoonful of eggplant dip, she swallowed hard and wondered if at some point was now. Wondering, too, why she felt anything besides joy and exultation and triumph, with, perhaps, a hint of gloating: You see, Mom? Someone loves me, even though I’m fat!
“What’s up?” she asked. Mark put down his spoon and picked up his phone.
“I got my schedule for the next six weeks, and I want to talk through the calendar.”
“Sexy,” Abby murmured, and opened up their shared calendar on her phone, watching as Mark entered the weekends he’d be on call, as large chunks of the next month went from blissfully empty to shaded red.
“We’ve got Elizabeth’s wedding the first weekend in September,” she reminded him.
“I know, I know. I asked to be off. And your mom’s doing break-the-fast this year?”
“As always. Yom Kippur is her Super Bowl.” The Day of Atonement, which observant Jews spent fasting, was, of course, the holiday Eileen Stern Fenske would choose to host. Eileen would have plenty of company as she starved herself all day, and, when the sun went down, she would set out the traditional bagels and platters of smoked fish, help herself to half of a poppy seed bagel, ostentatiously scoop out its inside, and consume it in tiny bites, frowning if Abby dared to even glance in the direction of the full-fat cream cheese.
“And then it’s October.” Mark paused and gave her a meaningful look. Abby raised her eyebrows.
“You want to figure out our Halloween costume? I was thinking Machine Gun Kelly and… Kourtney Kardashian? Is that who he’s with?”
Mark refused to be distracted.
“Always happy to discuss Halloween,” he said pleasantly. “But I wanted to remind you that your lease is up in October.”
“Oh, right. Yes. Of course. Right, right right.” Abby’s mouth felt unpleasantly dry, and her heart was beating painfully hard. When she noticed that she was tapping her fingernails on the table, she made herself stop.
“I know you love your place,” Mark was saying.
“I do.”
“And I know you think my place is…” Mark paused.
“Terrifyingly neat?” Abby offered. “Slightly sterile? A Marie Kondo fantasy? Basically an operating room with a couch and a TV?”
Mark looked at her fondly. “You can redecorate.”
“We can redecorate.”
“We’ll merge.”
“And you’ll be okay with it if I leave dishes in the sink?”
“I’m not making any promises,” Mark said. “But I’ll do my best.”
Mark smiled at Abby. Abby smiled back, even though the truth was she couldn’t picture a dish reposing in Mark’s sink… or, really, anything she owned in Mark’s place. Mark lived on the nineteenth floor of a high-rise on Rittenhouse Square, a one-bedroom apartment with views of the Walt Whitman Bridge. Her comfortably worn blue velvet couch wouldn’t look right in Mark’s living room, with its glass coffee table and glass-and-metal shelves. Her brightly colored kilim rugs would look weird layered over his beige wall-to-wall carpet. Nor did Mark have any interest in the vintage Weight Watchers cookbooks that Abby had collected over the years and displayed in her kitchen.
Meals, Abby suspected, might also become an issue. Mark ate the same five dinners, in rotation: baked salmon, turkey burgers, tofu stir-fry, chicken breasts, and halibut. Food is fuel, he liked to say, and just as a car didn’t complain when you filled its tank with the same gasoline every single time, Mark didn’t mind eating the same meals over and over and over again. At least, that’s what he’d always told her, and why was Abby thinking about food right now? Why was she thinking about sofas, or rugs, or meal planning? This was big. A big step. Moving in together meant an engagement was coming, and an engagement meant marriage. A life with Mark Medoff. She should have felt happy. Ecstatic. Overjoyed. And she was! Only…
Mark was looking at her strangely. She must have missed something; a question, a statement. She opened her mouth to ask when the waitress replaced their basket of pita with another basket of fresh bread, still steaming from the oven.
“Careful, they’re hot,” she said.