Page 2 of The Autumn We Fell in Love

“Look,” she says, adjusting her hand weights — yeah, Amy is the hand weights-carrying kind of power walker, and no, I have no idea how we ended up as best friends back in high school — “you just got out of a shitty marriage. You spent your entire adult life catering to Seth the Sack. Of course it’s going to take some adjusting to. You have to unlearn what he taught you and find a new way of being.”

Seth the Sack is our term of non-endearment for my ex, short for Seth the Sack of Shit. An apt moniker, if you ask me.

I’d sigh if I wasn’t already panting so hard from my efforts to keep up with my friend. “I just thought I’d be . . . happier, you know? More adventurous and seizing of the day.”

“Maybe you can start with seizing just a bit of the day.” A sly smile slides over her face. “Like coming to belly dance class with me.”

“No.” I shake my head decisively. “That’s too much seizing. And I do meanactualseizing — what my body will be doing if I try to belly dance.”

“Or,” she continues smoothly, “what about taking that poetry class you’ve been drooling over?”

I open my mouth to fire back a quick retort — and find that I don’t have one.

Amy snickers. She knows she’s got me. Because I reallyhavebeen wanting to take that nighttime poetry course our local college offers.

At least, I do when I’m feeling brave and like I could totally try to start writing again for the first time in I don’t know how long.

When I’m not, I dive into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food and try to forget that writing poetry used to come to me as naturally as breathing and that I got so much joy from filling notebook after notebook with scrawled thoughts and verses — before life wore me down and I abandoned the art.

All my doubts come rushing to the front of my mind.

But this time, I refuse to speak them, to even give them a second thought.

“You’re right,” I tell Amy, making her mouth dangle open with surprise, “I should take that class.”

She stops on the trail as she pulls her phone from the thigh pocket of her spandex leggings.

That’s when I know things are serious, and that I’m not getting out of this even if I want to.

Which I don’t.

Mostly.

Because Amy? She never hits pause on her workouts. Not ever. Exercise is her drug, and once she gets going, she won’t ever back down unless she is physically unable to continue.

So right now, she means business.

I watch her face with curiosity as she taps on her phone, wondering what she’s up to. After a minute, she hands it to me.

“Register,” she says.

“Wait, what?” I say, staring dumbly at the phone’s screen. She has the college’s website pulled up, and I see something about the poetry class in question.

“It’s almost the start of the new school year. You need to register now before the course fills up. And,” she hits me with her sassiest know-it-all stare, “before you chicken out.”

“I won’t chicken out,” I protest, but weakly. Even I don’t believe me.

So I do it. I register for the class, right there on the trail as sweat rolls off me in buckets thanks to the intense August sun.

I pay what feels like an enormous amount of money for a semester-long course, wincing a little — then reminding myself yet again that I’m actually super rich. I could pay for an entire college degree right here and now and not be the worse for it. This course is nothing in comparison.

It’s embarrassing, actually, having all this disposable income all of a sudden. And hard to believe. Mostly I alternate between backing my favorite non-profits and trying not to think about my buckets of money too much.

And now, I’m using it to invest in myself. Something that’s long overdue.

“Did you do it?” Amy asks, doing high knees in place at my side.

“I did it,” I say.

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