“Oh…” He pulls it out, holding it up in the light. The apron contains a bunch of mathematical symbols, including the square root of negative i, two to the third power, a summation symbol, and pi. I would never know this, but the website assured me that this reads… “I ate some pie?”

“Right.” I beam at him. “Cool, right? For all the… you know, cooking you do.”

Not that I want to encourage him in his cooking or anything. But since I can’t discourage him, I may as well buy him an apron so he doesn’t have stains on every last piece of clothing in his closet.

“Yeah, this is great,” he says, although it’s hard to tell if he means it. “I’ll be like Euclid meets Martha Stewart.”

“You hate it.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“You obviously do.”

“No, I don’t. I love it.”

“You definitely don’t love it.”

“I do!”

“Liar.”

“I love it so much,” he says, “I’m going to put it on right now, because I can’t wait to wear it.”

“Okay, okay…”

“No, watch…” And then he stands up, and in front of the whole restaurant, puts the strings of the apron over his head. He makes a big thing of tying it, until I’m laughing into my palm. People are starting to stare at us, but I don’t care. “How do I look?”

“Sexy as hell.”

“Well, that goes without saying.” He grins at me. “Okay, now you open yours.”

I pull the lid off the box of what is clearly jewelry. Sam doesn’t buy me jewelry much, but when he does, he’s actually decent at picking it out. For a guy.

But this isn’t jewelry. It’s a long silver object with diamonds on the handle and the name “ABBY” engraved on the blade.

“It’s a letter opener,” he says. “I got sick of listening to you complain about all your papercuts.”

I do complain about papercuts a lot. “It’s beautiful,” I say, and I mean it. The handle is absolutely exquisite. I can’t say I wouldn’t have liked a necklace, but this is thoughtful. It’s something I don’t have and that I need, and whenever I use it at work, I’ll think of Sam. He always gets me really thoughtful presents.

“I’m really glad you like it,” he says. “You’re not going to impress the Cuddles people if you’ve cuts all over your hands, right?”

I pull it out of the box, admiring the design. It really is beautiful. The blade catches the overhead light and I notice how sharp it is. Well, I shouldn’t have any problem opening letters anymore.