Page 37 of The Long and Winding Road

“Remember what people used to say about us?” he asked as he took a bite of now-cold pizza.

“That we were so perfect, we made them sick?”

“Yeah, that. They were jealous of how easy we made it look.”

“Did you hear that Harry and Trish got married and divorced within two years of leaving high school?”

“No! Oh my God. No way.”

“They were married just long enough to have two kids that they fought over in court for five years. It got really ugly.”

“Wow. That’s terrible. Those poor kids.”

“It was pretty bad. For a while, the kids were living with Mr. and Mrs. Donaldson. My mom is friends with Mrs. D, which is how I heard about it. They moved to California or somewhere out West after school.”

Lexi pushed the second half of her salad across the table to Max, something she used to do all the time. Judging by his grin, he remembered that, too.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the other couple everyone thought was so perfect in high school made a total mess of things in the real world,” Max said.

“Do you think that would’ve happened to us?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“First of all, we wouldn’t have gotten married when they did. We were both in college. It wouldn’t have happened until after that. Hopefully, we would’ve been mature enough by then to handle it.”

“Hopefully. It’s nice to play what-if. I did a lot of that when I was isolated from everyone in the hospital. I’d pretend that I was in Vermont with you and our family, and everything had worked out the way I wanted it to.”

He sat back in his chair and gave her a penetrating look. “How many kids did we have in this fantasy of yours?”

“Four. Two of each.”

“What were their names?”

“Madeline, Caroline, Sawyer and Cole.”

“We can’t have a Caroline. I had a one-night stand with a Caroline.”

“When?”

“After my brother Wade’s wedding about six years ago. She was the bride’s cousin.”

“All right, then. No Caroline. How about Abigail? That was another of my favorites.”

“I could live with that.”

“Should we be talking about this stuff?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t even know if I still can have kids.”

Max shrugged. “If you can’t, we’ll adopt.”

“You’re pretty far down the road with this life we’re going to have together twenty-four hours after we saw each other for the first time in years.”

“You agreed with me that nothing has changed between us, so why not make some plans?”

---