Page 27 of Just My Ex

“I’m seriously fine to do this on my own,” I venture.

“I knowyouare. It’s the bad guys that I don’t trust.”

“You sound just like a parent talking about why they don’t want their teen driving around at night. ‘We trust you, just not all the other cars on the road.’”

He laughs. It’s a barely-there chuckle, but for some reason, and I’m not prepared for this, it’s a slice of Wonder Bread to my hungry soul.

We run the next mile in silence and when we start in on mile number two, Henry pipes up. “Remember that time we were running on the Santa Monica pier and the street performer—”

A giggle escapes me. “—Gets mistaken for a giant bird by a passing flock of seagulls because he’s dressed like a seagull himself. And they won’t leave him alone!”

Now he’s giggling, too. “It was like they were all in love with him. And he was trying to stay in character …” Henry’s shoulders start to shake and now he’s laughing in earnest. Reminds me of our giddy daughter a little bit ago.

Despite myself, I’m laughing now, too, which, let me tell you, is painful in mile two.

“Okay, okay. You won, Henry.” I slow my pace into a brisk walk to catch my breath in between laughs. “Now we’re walking just like you planned, you big schemer.”

“You think I brought up that memory so we’d start walking?”

I toss him a glance. “Anything but to actually say the words, ‘Slow down, Quinn, I’m getting tired.’”

“I would have said those words if I needed them!” But Henry’s breathing is ragged. He’s trying to make it not be, but it is. I know the man like no one else.

I roll my eyes. “You and your competitive nature.”

He grunts. “My competitive nature? Seriously? What about yours? Driving on the freeway with you risks life and limb on a regular basis.”

“Whatever. That’s not about competition, Henry.”

Part of me, a very tiny part, wanted to call him his nickname instead of Henry, the one only I use. “King Henry” is a codeword to a world I’ll never live in again.

“You told me once you had to be in first place,” he says. “That the only way you could stomach driving on the freeway as a teen was to pretend it’s a race and you have to win. And that’s not competitive?”

“It’s called a coping mechanism. You try driving on the 405 at age sixteen and not going batty over your life flashing before your eyes multiple times a day.”

He grunts again, but this time it’s a pleasant grunt—a bygone sound I’d forgotten existed.

X-nay on the emories M-ay, I tell myself.

Maybe Pig Latin self-talk will help me out here?

He motions to a rise in the beach, a dune that’s speckled with rocks and poked with reeds and thick tufts of tall, bending grass. We navigate further away from the water, but somehow it smells even more like the water here. The scent is pungent, salty, a shock to the system. I instantly like it. Nothing about my life in California smells this way.

“Let me show you something,” he says, picking up the pace as he navigates the steeper terrain.

The sea grass rises higher on either side of us, so I maneuver behind him. Not a bad view. Even as I chastise myself for that thought, I engage in self-justification. Let’s see if I can objectify him in a non-ex-wife way. I should be able to do that. Reason tells me that I can. Just because we’re no longer together, doesn’t mean I’m going to automatically think he’s ugly. I can acknowledge, in a wholly mature and detached manner, that Henry Tate is a handsome man.

There.

I said it.

Not aloud, of course.

I follow him up the rise and before it flattens out, my hammies are protesting.

But am I going to stop? Or ask him to slow down?

I am not.

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