Chapter 61

It was a short ride to the Aria. We took the escalator up to Carbone, the Italian restaurant, and were seated in one of the red velvet booths that ringed the main dining room. It was a romantic setting, made even more intimate by the curtains that could be drawn on each booth. Those curtains were the reason I didn't have Kat bring along her Lelo Bluetooth vibrator.

For me, the dinner at Carbone was the most normal thing Kat and I had ever done. I forgot that we weren't a real couple, just two more illicit lovers in Vegas. Of course, the more normally we behaved, the more I could sit back and pick out things that made us incompatible. I don't know if it was self-doubt or self-sabotage, but I realized just how different our values were. What we overlapped on -- that hedonism we indulged so provocatively -- was white hot and full of fun. But now I wondered how long into her marriage we could survive.

I didn't let those thoughts intrude too much at dinner