–Laura–
I had never expected Damon to go to such lengths. The restaurant where we'd had our first date — the one I'd assumed would have been swallowed by time or bulldozed into memory after more than a decade — sat before us as if frozen in a gilded frame: lacquered wood, a tinkling fountain, a shallow pond where koi circled like lazy moons. The scent of warmed soy and toasted sesame lifted from the entrance and made my chest contract in a way I pretended not to feel.
The food, when it arrived, was exactly as I remembered and more: the salmon sashimi glimmering with a careful brush of soy, the uni melting like dusk on the tongue. They had refined their menu, added small, brilliant inventions that tasted like someone had rewritten an old love letter and made every word truer.
"Can we take this out?" I asked.
"Babe, the chef said it's not safe to eat the salmon raw right now," Damien said, half apologetic, half amused.
