a week later Sam texted her that he’d be there in a week, for a four-day weekend. They would be closed for a holiday in New York, and he was stealing an extra day, and had gotten a cheap ticket. She couldn’t wait to see him, and told Nigel how much Sam meant to her. Nigel was spending every night at her house now, since Paris, and they were both loving it. They made love as soon as they got home from work. She made breakfast for him in the morning, and they cooked dinner together, or went out. As people met Coco, invitations for both of them began flooding in. He introduced her to so many people that she was suddenly sharing in his booming social life. She had to convince him to pick and choose. They couldn’t go to everything, although he would have liked to. She realized that he liked going out more than she did, but she never had a bad time when she was with him. He was easygoing and kind, and the people he knew were wonderful to her, and thrilled for him. They all told him how lucky he was to have found her. They made a perfect couple and he agreed. He was in heaven, and so was she.
* * *
—
When Sam came, Coco picked him up at the airport. She was taking two days off from work. She wanted to spend as much time with him as she could. Whatever the excuse, even his suspicions about Nigel, she was thrilled to see him. He had taken a late flight on Wednesday and arrived on Thursday morning. He had slept on the plane, so he wasn’t tired. After she picked him up at Heathrow, they went out, had lunch at a small Indian restaurant, and walked around the neighborhood. When Nigel came home from work, Sam was eager to meet him. Nigel had brought home a bottle of good malt whiskey, and a bottle of French wine. They were going to cook dinner at the house.
Coco could see that the two men were taking each other’s measure, and she left them alone to figure each other out. She loved both of them, and she knew Nigel could hold his own. She wasn’t worried, as she busied herself in the kitchen. They had opened the bottle of whiskey by the time she served dinner, and both men looked pleased and relaxed.
She had bought steaks, which she knew they would like. They were both hearty eaters. She had made string beans and mashed potatoes, and miraculously, it had all come out just right. With the French wine at dinner, it was the perfect meal.
Nigel talked about his job in answer to Sam’s questions, and Sam admitted that it was challenging working for his father and doing everything his way. He wasn’t enjoying it, but felt it was his duty to work in the family business with him, and his father’s distrust of any kind of technology made everything more complicated. Sam was trying to modernize the business, with tremendous resistance from his father. He said they argued about it every day. Looking at him, Coco realized that he looked stressed and not very happy. And his sister had finally just gotten engaged to her Irish Catholic boyfriend, and his mother was irate, so things were tense for him on the home front. He said his parents were pushing him about Tamar.
“You’re ten years younger than I am,” Nigel commented, as they ate Coco’s delicious dinner that she had prepared with the utmost care to get it right for the two men she loved. “Why are they pushing you to get married? At twenty-three, I was still raising hell, chasing barmaids and cocktail waitresses,” he said, and Sam laughed.
“It’s Orthodox tradition to get married young and have a lot of children, like Catholics. My father is more relaxed about it, but my mother is very religious, and definite about her point of view. My sister marrying a Catholic isn’t helping, and my other sister says she won’t get married until she’s thirty, if then. Knowing her, maybe never. My brother is the family scholar, so they think he’s a saint. Which leaves me, as the standard-bearer of all their hopes. I believe in doing things slowly, so I’m in no rush to get married.” He looked pointedly at Nigel, to get his message across, even if subliminally.