It’s Friday night, and Mr Oliver has secured a corner table at our favorite restaurant. I rush in, iPhone clapped to my ear as I lay my purse on the table and sit down across from him.
“Hello, darling,” I mouth as I listen to my coworker ranting on the other end of my phone about her latest confrontation with the copier.
He looks up, nods briefly, and goes back to texting.
“Nadia,” I interject calmly, cutting her off mid-diatribe, “everyone knows the second-floor copier is possessed. It doesn’t need a repairman, it needs an exorcist. What? No, someone was using it all morning, and it got a little overheated.” I raise my eyebrow and glance across the table at my husband. “Rather like Mr Oliver.”
Mr Oliver receives another message alert and continues texting away, oblivious to me or my attempt at sexy banter.
“Well, I don’t have time to wait for the copier to get over its hot flash,” Nadia complains. “I had plans this evening. With Max.” Her voice begins to wobble. “And now, thanks to that stupid copier, I’ll be here all night!”
“Ask Max to come and keep you company,” I suggest. “He can pick up Chinese on the way over, and you can dine a deux at your desk. And afterwards,” I add with a sultry, meaningful look at my husband, “he can sweep everything off your desk with one hand and have his wicked way with you.”
“Ooh, that’s a fantastic idea! I’m calling him right now. Thanks, Katie. Bye.”
The waiter arrives and I shut my phone off. Mr Oliver, however, is still tap, tap, tapping away at his screen.
“Dearest,” I say with just the merest trace of annoyance, “what will you have?”
“Hmm?” He looks up, distracted.
I glare at him. “This nice man standing here by our table is called a waiter, and he’d very much like to know what you want for dinner.”
“You needn’t be sarcastic, Katie,” he retorts. He turns to the waiter. “I’ll have the stuffed flounder, and the, er… the sautéed spinach.” And then he goes right back to his texting.
So I decide to fight fire with fire, and whip my phone back out and begin checking my own email. No messages. Well, I think, I’ll just check Facebook. Surely someone’s left me a message, or something. But there are no messages, no new items in the news feed, no “likes,” no comments, no anything. It’s the same with Twitter.
I’m beginning to get a bit of a complex. Doesn’t anyone but Nadia want to talk to me tonight?
The waiter returns with our drinks. “Texting each other across the table?” he asks, eyeing us with mingled pity and amusement. “How very modern.”
By the time we’re halfway through our meal, my irritation has morphed into full-blown anger. Other couples nearby are sitting together, enjoying their meals, smiling at one another, and – gasp! – carrying on actual conversations. Some of them are even holding hands.
I remember when we used to do that.
“Do you know what today is?” I inquire through clenched teeth.
“Yes. It’s Friday.”
“But do you remember what today is? Do you recall the significance of this particular Friday?”
He lays his fork aside as another text message comes in. “Let me just answer this.” And once again, his fingers are flying over the keys of his iPhone like Gershwin playing “Rhapsody in Blue.”
There’ll be a rhapsody in blue, all right, I think darkly. Because there’ll be no anniversary action for you tonight, my dear, technologically-obsessed husband.
“Who,” I say icily, “are you texting so furiously? Your girlfriend? Should I be jealous?”
“It’s ‘whom,'” he responds, barely glancing up, “and it’s nothing you need to be concerned about.”
“Oh, good! I feel so much better now. Perhaps I should be jealous of our phone carrier instead. Or your iPhone. Because they get more of your attention than I do.” And I subsist into a wounded silence as I finish my beef medallions.
Mr Oliver does not reply. He’s too busy texting.
An hour later, we both arrive home and I follow huffily behind him up the walk to our front door. I notice several cars parked at the curb.
“That’s odd,” I say, and frown. “Why are all these cars parked in front of our house?”
“I don’t know. One of the neighbors must be having a party.”
I glance up and down the street, but none of the houses are blazing with lights or echoing with loud music. All is quiet and dark.
Mr. Oliver unlocks the door and waits on the doorstep. “Come along inside.”
I stalk up the front steps and brush past him without a word.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re not still angry, are you?” he asks, annoyed.
I don’t dignify his question with a response. After the way he’s behaved tonight, he’s lucky I didn’t shove his iPhone up his bottom. Not only did he ignore me throughout our entire dinner…
… he completely forgot that tonight was our wedding anniversary.
I’m just about to point this fact out to him and storm upstairs, when the lights suddenly flick on and twenty or so of our closest friends and neighbors shout, “Surprise!”
I blink. White balloons and streamers fill the foyer and the living room; our friends are grinning and wearing party hats and holding bottles of champagne aloft. A banner stretches across the hallway, emblazoned with the words “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, KATIE AND .”
“What happened to Mr. Oliver’s name?” I wonder, puzzled.
“We ran out of space!” one of the neighbors says.
“We figured you knew who he was without us spelling it out for you,” another neighbor adds, and guffaws.
As I stand there, stupidly gaping, my husband reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small velvet box. “Happy anniversary, Katie.”
I open the box with shaking hands, and there against the black velvet lining is a diamond eternity ring. “Oh… it’s beautiful.” I look up at him, my eyes awash with tears. “You… you didn’t forget!”
“No, of course I didn’t.”
“Is that why you were texting so furiously all evening?” I ask. “I thought you were messaging the IT guys at work, or arranging a rendezvous with your girlfriend. But you were setting all of this up, weren’t you?”
He nods. “I’m sorry I was so inattentive, darling, but everything that could go wrong did, and I had to get it all sorted before we came home.” He leans forward and kisses me. “I love you, Katie. You’re maddening, and infuriating, but I can’t imagine my life without you.”
“Ditto,” I murmur as we kiss some more. “Lucky you. I guess there’ll be no Rhapsody in Blue tonight, after all.”
He looks at me blankly. “What?” he asks, raising his brow.
“Never mind,” I say, and bid goodnight to our guests as I take his hand and lead him upstairs for a little anniversary celebration of our own.
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