He gave me A Look, and I let the matter go. Besides, the place was so beautiful that I had plenty of distraction. The colors were all done in shades of navy and gray, and the furniture was plush and expensive. I especially liked the fact that the walls were decorated with huge reproductions of pre-Raphaelite work. Nowadays, abstract art was the trendy way to go, and it was nice to see something a little different.

“Wait’ll you see the rest,” said Seth, beckoning me out to the balcony.

Or, well, “balcony” was the closest word I could come up with. It was practically half the size of my apartment and faced west, showing part of downtown’s glittering array of lights and all of Puget Sound. I stared in wonder, watching a ferry move across the dark expanse of water.

“Wow.” That about summed it up.

We stood there for a few moments, and Seth’s arm slipped around me. This high up, the unseasonable warmth had turned to seasonable gusts and coldness. I shivered, and Seth draped me in a blanket that had been neatly folded on a wrought-iron chair.

“Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll be back with dinner.”

I grinned at the gallantry and sat at an ornate, candlelit glass table that still allowed me to take in the view. Waiting for Seth, I felt all sorts of strange feelings stir to life within me. This was it, I realized. I didn’t know how I knew, but this was the end of whatever it was that we had right now. Maybe something new would take its place. Maybe we’d never have anything again. Regardless, this moment was crystallized in time for me. Nothing like it would ever come again.

Dinner turned out to be an array of tapenade and bread, as well as—to my shock—a bottle of wine. “Is that whole thing for me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’ll have a glass.”

“What? Starbucks, now this?” I peered at the bottle to make sure it wasn’t some kind of weird alcohol-free kind. Nope.

“It’s a special occasion,” he said with a smile, and I knew he’d gotten the same vibe that I had, that this was the end of something. “Besides, how can I live out the Rubaiyat if I don’t have all the accoutrements?”

“Of course. Your uber-romantic date would be based on a poem.” I could already see him getting into quotation mode. He cleared his throat to speak.

“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough

A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

And Wilderness is paradise enow.”

I tsked. “You’ve got the bread, wine, and me . . . but no bough. And hardly the wilderness.”

“It’s the urban jungle,” he argued.