I carry the ice-cream bowls back into the dining room. Sawyer’s eye catches mine. This is a parental moment, not the other kind, but I still register the buzz of intentional eye contact, and I smile involuntarily at him. He smiles back and shrugs, as if to say, Okay with me.
“Sure,” I say.
We finish up our ice cream, and it’s nine thirty now, well past the boys’ weekend bedtime, so we need to move the party along. “Boys, pj’s and teeth.”
The boys rush off. Jonah won’t need to get sleepover stuff from his house, because his things have gradually migrated over here. I have a pair of his pajamas that go through the wash with Madden’s, and his toothbrush and toothpaste live in our bathroom drawer.
“I’ll help you clean up,” Sawyer says.
We’d pushed all the Catan bits into the middle of the table to eat ice cream, but now he leans across the table and begins bagging up all the little wooden pieces. I work on collecting the cards. “It’s a really good game,” he says. “I’m not a game guy, but I actually liked this one. I haven’t played a board game since—”
He goes suddenly silent.
Right.
“—since Lucy died,” he finishes—because we both knew that was what he was going to say; there’s no use pretending it wasn’t. He shoots me an apologetic look.
“It’s okay,” I say, meaning it. Or at least really wanting to mean it. There’s a sore spot in my chest, because Sawyer’s so great, and it must have been lovely to be Lucy, to be the woman he talked about like the sun rose and set wherever she was. “You gotta be able to talk about her, right? And look at me, I’m the one blathering about my divorce when I’m trying to hook up with a stranger in a bar. Look,” I say. “You have been more than clear about what you want out of this, where you stand, all that, and I’m a big girl. So—let’s just be who we are, shall we? Battered and maybe in need of some TLC, and by no means ready to shake off the past and march undaunted into the future. It doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.”
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can’t figure out what he’s thinking. Then he says, “Are you sure?”
“ ’Course I’m sure.”
“You’re a good sport.”
“Why, thanks,” I say, and his praise is nice but I feel a flutter of regret, like seller’s remorse. Though I don’t know exactly what it is I think I’ve given up. Nothing I ever had to begin with.
We finish dumping the pieces into the sturdy Catan box, and I pull the cover back on. He rises from the table and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. I’m sure he’s about to tell me he has to go, has to get back to the house for whatever reason, but instead he sits down suddenly and says, “Hey. How about a rematch?”