Page 63 of The Husband Hour
“Which one do you like better?” he asked Henny, showing her the options on the digital screen of his camera.
“I think the hanging version,” she said. “This Etsy thing is complicated!”
“Getting the photos right is the most labor-intensive part,” he said. “Once we have them uploaded, the rest is easy. Did you decide on a name for the store?”
She had told him a few she was thinking of, including Hung by Henny. He had to gently point out the potential sexual connotations with that one; she didn’t believe him until she Googled the old HBO show Hung.
“What do you think of Hen House Designs?” she said.
“I like it.”
“I really appreciate your help with this. I hope you’ll take me up on the offer to stay here a few nights free of charge.”
“Henny, I think I will.”
Ethan turned the page impatiently.
“Do we need to refresh where we were?” Lauren asked.
“No. I remember,” he said, yawning.
“Uh-oh. Are you going to make it through a whole chapter?”
“Two chapters,” he said.
She laughed. “That might be a little ambitious. I don’t know if I can stay awake through two chapters.”
“But it’s a good book!” he said, outraged.
“True.” She smiled, realizing she enjoyed reading the book aloud to him more than she’d enjoyed reading it herself. Ethan, nestled against her on his bed, radiated heat.
She read slowly, trying to do a decent job with the voices to make it lively. Feeling herself perspire, she turned the page and reached for his bedside fan. “Hey, are you hot?” she asked. No response. Slowly, making as little movement as possible, she closed the book, easing Ethan’s back against his pillow. He barely stirred. She kissed him on the top of the head and pulled his light summer quilt up to his shoulders, careful not to upset the meticulous arrangement of stuffed animals on the far side of the bed.
Ethan was neat for a six-year-old, maybe with a touch of OCD. She had been that way as a kid too, always needing to line up her dolls in a certain way before she could fall asleep.
She crossed the room to the bookshelf, where Ethan liked her to put Harry Potter back between Shark vs. Train and Dinotrux. Stephanie had brought a lot of books for the summer. Lauren hadn’t looked through them all but thinking about her old doll collection made her nostalgic. She wondered if Ethan’s book collection included any of her old favorites, like Where the Sidewalk Ends or Where the Wild Things Are. She scanned the spines, and a familiar title jumped out at her: Lights in the Dark: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe.
Hands trembling, Lauren pulled it off the shelf. It was clearly a new book, but the cover was the same as the one she’d given another boy to put on his bookshelf.
How strange. Just that morning she’d been telling Matt about Rory’s interest in astronomy. It had felt good to talk about the high-school stuff, to say things aloud that had begun to feel like they’d happened in another lifetime. Sometimes she felt oddly burdened, as if Rory lived on only in her memory—the real Rory, not the icon the press and the public made him into. For the one hour she spent talking to Matt, that burden had lifted.
She opened the book, her mind many miles and many years away.
Senior year, the only upside to the breakup with Rory was that she didn’t have to worry about getting into a school in Boston to be closer to him. She was free to make Georgetown her top choice, as it had been since the beginning of junior year when she’d won a journalism competition and a trip to DC.
Accepted to Georgetown, she replaced Rory’s old Lower Merion ice hockey T-shirt that she’d slept in for almost a year with a new gray and blue Hoyas shirt.
Still, she wasn’t happy. Not truly happy, not the way she’d felt when they were together. Once you’d known the complete, deep-seated joy of being in love, nothing else compared. Not even personal accomplishment. She tried not to think about him, but every corner of the school, of her house, of the neighborhood streets triggered memories of their relationship. How cruel, how unfair that he should be the one to end it and also be the one to start in a new place free and clear. It was this sense of injustice that had helped turn her heartbreak to anger, and it was this anger, festering for five months, that had steeled her to ignore his texts when they finally appeared.
He was in town for Christmas break. He missed her; they needed to talk. He was sorry. He’d meet her anywhere. Didn’t they owe it to their time together to at least talk?
Delete, delete, delete.
And then, the Thursday before Christmas break. In the Merionite classroom, a makeshift holiday party of Dunkin’ Donuts and Wawa coffee.
“You have a visitor,” the sports editor said.
Rory, standing in the doorway.
