He went back into the kitchen and got a bottle of champagne. “Don’t rush your drink. But I think tonight is a celebration and calls for a little bubbly.” He leaned over and kissed me, tasting the sidecar on my lips. “Not half bad. But I still prefer my scotch.” He looked like he was working mightily. I wanted him to just sit down and enjoy. The perils of being a perfectionist chef …

He brought in the main course. Lamb chops, standing at attention, with the bones upright so they looked like parentheses. I wondered what the parentheses would contain if they could speak. He kissed me again as he placed the plate in front of me. “Before we eat, I would like to propose a toast.” He opened the champagne, poured some into our glasses, and said, “It is better to travel happily than not at all.” Robert Louis Stevenson, I recognized. “And I travel far happier on my life’s journey with you by my side.” We leaned toward each other and kissed again, this time a long, passionate kiss that almost rendered me dizzy. He sat down and produced a little box.

“A token of my love, my devotion, and my affection.” He reached for my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist. With moves like this, I was going to have a hard time making it through the entire dinner. “Open it.”

I completely loved and trusted Elliott. I knew where I stood with him because he always told me. I opened the box. It was a pair of beautiful earrings, round-cut diamonds with a small drop and then peridots shaped like teardrops. They were exquisite. I sat in his lap and kissed him tenderly at first, then passionately. He pulled back.

“Your favorite color. I thought about emeralds, but they seem too harsh and unfeminine for you.” I loved him even more for thinking of me as feminine.

“They’re perfect. To tell you the truth, I much prefer peridots to emeralds. How do you read my mind so easily?”

“Because I love you. Because you are my soul mate.” For the first time, I understood that term. I finally revered its meaning as something important and treasured, not some phony tagline on a Hallmark greeting card.

His eyes, his hands teasing me, and the entirety of the evening I whispered, “I don’t think I can make it to dessert.”

“Fuck dessert. Why do you think I made something that could keep in the icebox overnight?”

We awkwardly got up from the table, not wanting to disengage even for a moment. Elliott bumped into tables and ottomans he was unacquainted with. His new furniture in an unaccustomed setting presented us with a challenge. We stopped momentarily to catch an expensive sculpture that bobbed in peril at the edge of the bookshelf we had so clumsily backed into.

We were both going to be black and blue from tonight—and not from any sexcapades. Maybe this is how feng shui came about in the first place.