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Tonight’s pieceSlow burns1 min

Three Buttons

In a candlelit restaurant, a blonde woman in a strapless blue dress with three buttons sits across the table from a man, holding his gaze over the wine glasses.
She wore the blue one.

The whole dinner could have been a fire and we wouldn’t have moved.

She wore the blue one — the one I’d told her about at the wedding eight months ago, the one she’d remembered. Three buttons. That’s all. Three buttons separating me from the rest of my life.

The wine got drunk. The plates got cleared. The waiter offered dessert with the patience of a man who knew what he was looking at and was being kind enough to pretend otherwise.

She said: “Walk me out.”

I walked her out.

The cab took fourteen minutes. I counted.

Three buttons.