The Proposal - Kitty Thomas Page 0,3

might all stand here in a death stare forever.

If they think after months of them opening doors and pulling out chairs that it's ending now, they are sadly mistaken.

Dayne stands closest to me on my right; he comes around and pulls out my chair.

“Thank you.”

I sit, and they sit. The staring contest commences again. I take a sip of my water and look down at the menu, unwilling to be the first person to speak or act as though I've done anything wrong when they knew my terms from the beginning. They don't get to turn this around on me now. How on earth do they know each other? I try to imagine how the subject even came up, and I find I'm not that imaginative.

This is one of those restaurants where only the man's menu has prices. About a year ago, there was a giant freak-out and pressure about the misogyny of the menus with hysterical demands that they put prices on all of them, presumably because empowered women want to split the bill. Empowered women are ruining life for the rest of us.

The restaurant, being very upscale and determined to preserve a certain elegant atmosphere and old traditions, held firm and waited for the shitstorm to blow over. Their popularity more than doubled after that, and it's been next to impossible to get a reservation ever since. But Griffin got one.

I wonder which of the three men sitting at the table with me has the menu with the prices, or if they all do. I wonder what the man at the reservations desk thought about a dinner in a romantic restaurant that obviously isn't a business dinner but has one woman and three men claiming a single table.

“So,” Griffin says.

But he's interrupted by a waiter who takes first my order, then theirs. I order the Penne Bolognese and Merlot. I don't notice what they order because I swear I'm about to hyperventilate. I'm left hanging onto a thin thread of hope that they won't make a scene. Surely if they planned to say or do anything dramatic they would have met me some place else.

The waiter takes their menus then has to pry mine from my unconsciously tight-fisted grip. Then he departs.

“So,” Griffin begins again. “I've had some interesting conversations recently.”

“Oh?” I say, taking another sip of water. The water has two lime slices in it, exactly the way I like it, and I wonder which one of them put in that request.

“Did you know we knew each other?” he asks, not betraying any emotion about any of this.

“Of course not.”

And I didn't. What are the odds? I admit that as I leveled up the quality of the men on my roster, I had the concern in the back of my mind that they might run in the same social circles. Once you reach the top echelon in a city, everybody seems to know each other. But it's a big city, I was discreet and thought that was enough. Obviously not.

“Well, we do,” he says as if this clarification were necessary and will somehow spark off some deep tearful confession on my part—which it does not.

So far Griffin is the only one who has spoken. The other two have been watching me shrewdly, observing all my reactions as if they are human polygraphs determined to spot the lie.

“And?” I ask.

I'd like to get this witch burning over with so I can start my lonely cat lady future. There was a grey male cat with only one eye at the clinic last week. He's up for adoption. I could call him Mr. Wednesday.

Griffin continues, oblivious to my insane pet acquisition fantasies. “Imagine our surprise when we found out we all just happened to be dating a wonderful girl named Livia. Did you think we wouldn't find out you'd been playing us? Did you really think we wouldn't know each other?”

“I'm not playing you,” I say, leveling a hard glare at him. I can't believe he has the nerve to act as though I've been doing something dirty this whole time.

“Hmmm,” is his only response. He takes a sip of his own water. “Are you saying you have actual feelings?”

He says this as though I'm some sort of sociopathic robot who has stalked them all like prey. I want to point out that every single one of them approached me.

But instead I just say, “Yes.” Though my actual feelings in this moment are running more to terror coupled with anger