He let go and we stood looking at each other. “God, it’s good to see you.”

I smiled, and my stomach did cartwheels of joy, the giddiness a welcomed relief from the twisted knots. “Thanks, it’s great to see you too.” Understatement of the century. Part of me wanted to skip dinner and go straight to his room. Instead, I let the maître d’, who’d been waiting patiently, seat me and place a napkin in my lap. Josh sat and immediately reached for my hand, squeezing it.

“Nice view, huh?” I said, gazing out the window.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Sydney does pretty spectacular sunsets,” I bragged as my eyes roved the cityscape.

“I was talking about you,” he said quietly. When I looked at him, there was a shy smile on his face.

“Oh,” I replied, suddenly a little shy myself. “Thank you.”

From there, dinner seemed to happen as if it was onstage and I was an audience member. Josh and I chatted, as though we were a normal couple having dinner. We looked at the menu, we ordered food and sake—both came, both were delicious. He asked me about Lindsey and I told him all about her and Nick and how I had my own room at their place.

We talked and laughed and flirted—there was a lot of flirting—and the whole evening felt familiar, like Josh and Sarah from Greece, or from our trip to Hana—like people who met and became friends, then flirted and became lovers, like people who had discovered together that they wanted a bigger life.

But we didn’t talk about us.

Before I knew it, the bill came, and Josh tucked his credit card into the black wallet, then left it at the side of the table.

“So,” he said, turning back to me.

“So,” I replied, not wanting the night to end. His fingers found mine and laced ours together.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” he said, suddenly serious. Oh, god. I’d been waiting for him to tell me something, to give me some indication about what he wanted, but what could he possibly want to ask me? I dismissed the idea of a proposal. This wasn’t a TV movie, and we were nowhere near that kind of commitment.

Maybe he was just going to ask me back to his room. Though, I wasn’t sure how I’d respond if he did. My resolve—not to sleep with him again until I knew how he felt about me—had ebbed away over dinner. There’s only so much flirting from the man you love that you can ignore.

I nodded, prompting him to ask me his question, while my tuna carpaccio felt like it had come back to life and was swimming around my stomach.

“It’s about James.” The tuna flopped about, definitely still alive and fighting for its life. I gulped. I hadn’t expected Josh to ask me about James, and I wasn’t sure I was prepared to lie like Lindsey had told me to.