Page 86 of Happy After All

I can’t help it, I laugh. “I’m shocked to hear that.”

I don’t know why, but I feel a little bit validated that even the woman who married him found him difficult to access sometimes.

Sarah.

He’s writing her story, and I can’t imagine what that’s like. To immerse in your own grief like that, in the life of the person you lost.

Of course, the person I lost hadn’t even lived a life yet. It was all hope extinguished before it could ever really ignite.

“So you’re finishing the book,” I say.

“Yeah. Just ... feels a little like another death, that’s all.”

“So it was the perfect time to sleep with some random motel girl,” I say, trying to keep my tone light.

He looks at me. “You’re not a random motel girl.”

Tears fill my eyes, even though I wish they wouldn’t. I wish that my emotion weren’t so close to the surface. I wish it didn’t mean so much to me that I wasn’t random.

“We’re grief magnets,” I say. “The perfect foundation for a fling.”

This feels a little bit fake. This feels a little bit like we’re both trying to find a way to muscle out of the heaviness that’s settled between us.

There has been so much honesty between us, and now a little bit of a lie. But I allow it, because it feels easier.

Maybe I don’t really want to know all of this. Maybe I want him to go back to being a fantasy.

He’s still gorgeous to me. That’s not the issue. It’s just now that I know this, I want to know more.

“Are you still going to read one of my books?” he asks. “For the event.”

“Yes.”

“Then you have to give me one of yours.”

“Happily,” I say.

I go to my closet and pull a box of one of my books out, selecting one of my forty-eight author copies. Honestly, it was exciting at first, and now it just feels like too many. I hand him one of the slim paperbacks.

“Looks interesting,” he says.

“Spoiler alert, she doesn’t stay a virgin secretary for very long.”

He raises his eyebrows. “That makes me wonder why I haven’t been reading romance all along.”

It’s strange. Because now I have all this context for him. There’s a little more ease between us in some ways. Like we were able to just shed a layer.

I think maybe we have a chance at saving this. I don’t want to let him go. I’m not ready for that. I need him right now. I’m not going to examine how deep a thought that feels. I want him with me when Christopher shows up.

I just feel like I want him with me.

I know him now. Much better than I did. I want him still.

I move to him. He puts his hand on my hip, and his eyes are hot, and I know. He feels the same way. We didn’t break this with our grief, with our reality. I feel new because of that. I was so sure everything here would be ruined. That this perfect pink place would disappear, like the nursery I painted over before we sold the house.

But it isn’t. I want him.

I don’t have to sleep with him to forget. I remember. All the difficult things we just talked about. I also remember what it feels like when he touches me.

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