After a quick shower, I felt slightly more human. I wrapped up in a thick, fluffy robe and padded down the hallway towards the kitchen. Daniel turned around when he heard one of the stools at the elegant breakfast bar scraping along the floor.
He was wearing jeans and a tee shirt that said something about a corporate fun run in 2008. So he did know how to dress like a normal person. That was encouraging.
I just wished the sight of it didn’t make my mouth water.
Well, maybe I was just hungry.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling at me. His eyes flicked up and down a few times, as if he hadn’t expected me to come to breakfast in a bathrobe. But what the hell - we were going to be married soon, right?
“Hi,” I said. His hair was falling loose over his forehead, and I couldn’t stop staring at it, wanting to push it back into its proper place. “I like your…shirt.”
I’d almost said pants. Clearly, I just needed to keep my mouth shut.
“Thank you,” he said, taking it as gracefully as anyone might be expected to. “How do you take your eggs?”
“Over medium, I guess.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten eggs that I didn’t prepare for myself. As it turned out, he made them just the way I liked - gooey but not runny, no uncooked whites. While I dipped my toast in the yolk, I watched him eat the frittata he’d made for himself. There was a veritable rainbow of chopped vegetables mixed in, almost more than there were eggs. No toast. So this was how he maintained his figure. For some reason, I’d always imagined him as one of those people who can eat absolutely anything and never gain an ounce. It was comforting to know he had a human side after all.
After breakfast, I got dressed in the surprisingly casual clothes he’d picked for me, and we settled down in the living room. Daniel pulled out a small notepad and pen.
“We need to get our story straight on certain details of our relationship,” he said. “Since we’ll be living together, and acting as a couple, we ought to be able to give genuine answers to most of the questions. But there will be questions about the beginning of our relationship, about very personal things we might not know about each other. They’ll be the sorts of questions that are difficult to fake. When it comes to the time of the interview, if they ask you a difficult question that we haven’t prepared for, simply say that you don’t know or you can’t remember the details of what they’re asking about. Never try to guess or make up an answer.”
I nodded. Just the thought of the interview was already making me nervous, even though it was likely to be months and months away.
“You’ll probably be expected to describe the features, layout, and décor of this place,” he said. “But that shouldn’t be too difficult after a while. When it comes to those sorts of questions, make sure to be accurate, but not too thorough. You don’t want to sound rehearsed.”
“Jesus,” I said, more to myself than him.
He looked up, mildly startled. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
“No, no.” I played with the hem of my new shirt. “It’s just…it’s a lot, is all.”
“You’ll do fine.” He touched my shoulder, rested his hand there for a moment, and then pulled it away abruptly. His eyes flicked back down to his notepad. “Your birthday…May 16th, 1986. Yes?”
I nodded.
“Mine is November 7th, 1982. Memorize it.” He turned the page. “What were some of the first things we talked about, when our relationship became personal? What did we have in common?”
“Are you asking me to make something up right now?”
“If we discuss these things, we’ll both be more likely to remember.”
“All right, so…Woody Allen movies?”
He blinked. “Sorry?”
“That’s what we had in common. We both liked Woody Allen movies and we started talking about it.”
His brow was just slightly furrowed.
I sighed. “Fine, what’s your idea, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you don’t like mine.”
“It just…sounds made up.”
“Those are some awfully judgmental words coming from a man with no ideas.”
“Fine.” He scribbled on the notepad. “We’ll put it down as a temporary answer and we can revise it later if I think of something better.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. If we keep changing things, we’re going to get confused. We need to pick something and stick with it. Don’t you think?”
He exhaled. “All right. We both liked Woody Allen. What about our first meeting? Can you describe it?”