Feeling: literary
Listening to: Chicago sdtrk. - Cellblock Tango
Reading/Watching: nothing. bought HP:OotP, whee!

It was her thirtieth birthday today.

Jenna tried to hold her chin that fraction higher, let her hair catch the sunlight, flex her knee gracefully over the curb as she stepped into the street to hail a cab. She had to do something, be something different today, make it more than the other twenty-nine June seventeenths that passed before it.

I am a confident, driven career woman, and every eye is drawn to me, she thought, trying to broadcast that with the straightness of her shoulders, to convince herself that being thirty was more than being that much closer to forty, and fifty, and so on.

A yellow taxi pulled quietly up next to her, the driver looking at her with his bottom lip hanging a fraction of an inch away from his teeth. It made him look like a befuddled fish, and she suddenly was embarrassed by the racy line of her pantyhose as he studied it intently from his driver's seat, watching her tumble less-than-adroitly into the back.

Once inside, she couldn't help adjusting them once more, trying to hitch them up her thighs while simultaneously pulling them down at the waist so they would stop riding into her ass like some kind of Control Top thong. Perhaps not every eye *should* be drawn to me, she thought sheepishly, giving up on the battle with grace. She slid forward and down on the slick vinyl seat, worn smooth from years of restless bottoms, and planted her feet on the carpet... as wide apart as she wanted, and screw pigeon-toed propriety. Looking sleek and effortless was way too damn hard.

"Where to?" the cabbie asked, watching her wriggle in the rearview mirror.

She made one final twitch to the sheer black lycra, and humped her pelvis upward to jerk it into place beneath her. "Uh... Madison. And 16th. A restaurant called Harrold's."

He pulled into traffic without another word, one grime-lined thumbnail flicking the switch on the meter. Jenna gripped the handle on the door hard, trying not to slide all over the backseat like a hockey puck in her short skirt and slippery stockings.

When the cab pulled up at the curb in front of Harrold's, she careened across the cheap vinyl, her grip on the door pulling her almost sideways. The driver recited her fare as she righted herself, feeling foolish, and counted out a modest tip.

Exiting the taxi was also an ordeal: her four-inch heels drastically altered both balance and height perception, so she managed to bang her head and right shoulder against the door frame as she clambered out, unfolding awkwardly until she stood on the pavement, shakily handed him the cash, and snatched back her hand when he drove away fast enough to take her arm with him.

Then she turned, and realized Greg was standing at the door, watching her with a smile, and by the amused glint in his eyes, she knew he'd seen the whole thing, and had enjoyed every moment. Damn him. Would it have been such a chore for him to wait inside, and let her fake a graceful entrance, pretending she had changed eversomuch since her gawky, gangly college years?

She smoothed her skirt, smiling closemouthed, and arranged her limbs well enough to walk toward him.

Greg was still smiling, but had the sense not to say anything. Instead he opened the door for her, guiding her past him with a hand at the small of her back, following her through into the intimate little place.

He'd called weeks ago, after nearly five years without a word, and asked to take her out to dinner for her thirtieth birthday. "I'll be in town to court some new clients, and we can catch up on things. I have something I wanted to talk to you about," were his words, and looking up at him as he spoke with the maitre d', standing still with his fingers still on her back, she remembered freshman year in college, and how desperately she'd loved him then.

He hadn't changed much; the hints of lines around his mouth were slightly stronger, although she remembered exactly how the smile looked, and wouldn't have needed the blueprint of wrinkles to trace exactly where the skin folded, exactly how deep his dimple was. He wore a cologne of some sort, although she couldn't identify it, and fought the urge to lean closer to investigate. His hair was longer than it used to be, oddly enough, and the shaggy poet's look suited him better at thirty than it would have at eighteen or twenty-two, seeming careless and aesthetic instead of sloppy or affected. His hands were still narrow and long-fingered, his eyes still a little squinty, his jaw and lips still too beautiful for words--unfairly beautiful, considering she'd never gotten to kiss them. He still stood with his feet together, like a soldier at attention, but with one foot turned out, heel to his instep, a strange masculine version of First Position from Jenna's childhood ballet classes. His posture was the same, left hip thrown slightly out, talking and gesturing with the opposite hand.

He looked so neat, so calm and composed, without the slightest air of trying too hard. She suddenly wished her own blonde hair was down and tousled, like his brown choppy waves, instead of swept up into a hopefully-elegant chignon which now made her feel like a schoolmarm next to his crisp-yet-casual style. Jenna surreptitiously reached up and plucked a few wisps from the sides and back, letting them straggle against her ears and neck as the hostess guided them to a candlelit table on the central dais of the restaurant, one of six tables gathered around the gleaming black grand piano.

A man in coat and tails was already seated at the piano, playing smooth, surreptitious chords as the diners clinked glasses and spoke in low voices all around him. Greg stood while a waiter pulled out Jenna's chair, then sat across from her, never taking his eyes from her face.

"How've you been, Jen?" he asked, folding his hands on the table in front of him. She knew without looking under the tablecloth that his feet would be similarly crossed at the ankles.

She nodded, as if he'd asked a different question, and wondered at the strange formality between the two of them, so odd for people who'd dated for six months, and been best friends for nearly five years after that. He used to call her late at night, and they would talk about stupid little things until one of them fell asleep first. Never, in all those conversations, did he ever utter anything as banal and smalltalk-ish as "how've you been."

Clearing her throat, she replied, "I've been well..." then marveled at the woodenness of those three words, as she continued haltingly, "the chorus has been asked to sing at the governor's inauguration ceremony next month. We're thrilled to death, and I've been scrambling to find something appropriate and audience-friendly, since it's going to be broadcast, and it's important we make a good impression. This could be a huge exposure for us."

"That's spectacular," he said, his voice warm, and like always, she knew he wasn't exaggerating. Greg just wasn't one of those people who used words like "good," "nice," "great." Everything was fantastic, wonderful, gorgeous, or dismal, inconceivable, and abhorrent.

She remembered the last time they'd talked, on his twenty-fifth birthday, the night they both got terribly drunk together in his apartment, and he blurted out that he was gay. It was the one time she could remember that he didn't use any superlatives. The halting, bleary words still hung in the back of her mind somewhere, earmarks of the night her last hopes died, the night she realized that he would never love her, not like that, but thank God, thank God it wasn't because of her.

They'd dated for six months freshmen year at NYU, and at the end of every date, when she turned her face up to him expectantly, he'd always smiled and squeezed her hands, and said goodnight. She'd checked her breath, worn different perfume, tried sexier clothing, even leaned in once with eyes closed, all to no avail. She'd spent years thinking she just hadn't been attractive enough, and the night he confessed his secret, expecting her to be shocked or shamed, all she'd felt was relieved. It was somehow so much better, that no amount of primping or hinting on her part would have made a difference, that it was beyond her control. It absolved her of self-deprecations.

Doubtless, he thought she'd lost contact with him because she felt awkward after his confession. In truth, she had just no longer felt the need to see him, hear his voice, hang on day after day waiting to see if he would ever fall in love with her. Because she finally knew he wouldn't.

All this circled in her head as she looked at him, watching him tell stories of his life in these past years, listening and laughing at the appropriate moments, but still basking in the sense of peace that she, more than any woman, had exerted a greater pull on him than any female had a right to expect. Her failure to excite him beyond that had been no failure, after all. Merely an impossibility.

But he had stopped speaking. He was licking his lips, looking down at his appetizer plate, and obviously thinking very hard about something.

Jenna reached across the table, took his hands in hers. "Greg, I know you invited me here for more than smalltalk. You said you had something important to discuss. Why not just say it now, so we can get past this... this thing, whatever it is, that you're struggling with?"

Greg cleared his throat, and looked up at her, snaring her with the same deep-brown eyes that had her following him like a puppy freshman year. Slowly, he turned his hands upward to twine fingers around hers, and a smile curled his mouth. "Same Jen," he murmured. "Cut to the chase, nevermind the weather." He looked down briefly, seeming to gather his courage, and then spoke again.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking, these past months, years. I know that I want what every man wants in life: love, family. You were always the one woman I could count on, could speak to about anything, and you would tell me the truth, whether I wanted to hear it or not." His gaze reached up to level with hers once more. "I have come to the point where I'm ready to begin my life. I'm ready to find where I belong, have children, have someone to be there with me through the tough parts of life. I have plenty of friends who are there for every party, every social event. I have very few who are there on the days in between."

His hands tightened on hers. "And there is only one friend who stayed with me through the very worst. Only one I can imagine keeping in my life through everything, through all that has and will come. Only one woman I would want to carry my children."

Jenna's eyes widened, and she instinctively tried to pull her hands back, but she could not look away, lost in those deep-set, fervent eyes.

"That woman is you, Jen. If I have to choose someone to be with me for the rest of my life, if there's one person I want to see my children grow up to be like, it's you. Will you marry me?"

Author's Note: It's only a fragment of a chapter, but the idea has been taking shape for quite some time. Comments welcome, although I doubt I'll continue to post installments of this story on here.

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