“Everyone in that dining room is going to wonder what you are trying to prove,” he said, stepping closer to me on the narrow sidewalk. “At your age, wearing something that bright. It is embarrassing.”
Two people at a small table on the fenced patio of the restaurant turned their heads toward us. I did not recognize them, but the older woman adjusted her reading glasses to get a clearer view of us standing near the low boxwood hedge.
“It is my fifty-first year starting today,” I said, keeping my hands at my sides. “I wanted to wear something that was not black or navy.”
“This is not about the color,” Damon said, his eyes scanning my face, searching for the familiar dip of my chin that usually signaled my surrender. “This is about you thinking you can just change who you are because of a number on a calendar.”
I stepped back, my heel catching slightly on the edge of a concrete planter filled with dying marigolds.
“Are you coming inside or not?” I asked.
He looked at the brass entrance, then back at me, his face hardening into the expression he used when the monthly bills were higher than he liked.
“I told you my terms,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his keys and letting them jingle in his palm. “You want to make a spectacle of yourself, you do it alone.”
He climbed back into the driver’s seat and slammed the door with a heavy thud that rattled the passenger window.
I stood on the cold pavement, the wind whipping the green silk around my knees. The headlights of our car flickered on, cutting through the autumn dusk and bathing my legs in yellow light.
He shifted the car into reverse, the reverse lights casting a stark white glow onto the brick wall behind the parking spaces. The tires crunched slowly on the gravel as he backed out of the slot.
