My heart is in my throat. Pretending I’m cool about this is hard when I want to jump up and down with glee.
She turns, looks at me suspiciously. “Six years, six dates.”
I hold back a whoop of joy. She’s giving me a chance.Fuck yeah!
“Ten.”
“Seven.”
“Nine.”
“Eight,” she counters.
“Deal.”
I have just earned eight chances to win my wife back.
I willnotsquander them.
CHAPTER 17
Mia
Spring has come to Burlington, and I have a rhythm in my life. A new one.
Katya and I go for a run together every weekday morning. Then we get ready for work, eat breakfast together, and she goes to her office, while I go to Little Luminaries.
Since I get home early, I do the grocery shopping. We share the cooking, and when we don’t feel like it, we go out or order in. We don’t spend all our evenings together—we take the space we need.
We have a cleaning lady, which means no one is running the Hoover on a Saturday morning, so weekends are for doing the laundry, going to the farmer’s market, watching bad television, and doing nothing.
It’s easy to be with Katya.
We are family, and we don’t get in each other’s way. We are comfortable with our silences. And we enjoy each other’s company.
Since my Christmas meltdown, Cristiano has become an increasingly integral part of our twosome. He and Katya go way back to law school, but for me, he’d always been more of an acquaintance than a friend. That changed after I spent nearly a week crying all over his farmhouse in Stowe. Somewhere between the whiskey and the late-night talks, we became close.
“The momos are a must,” Cristiano announces once we’re seated at the Sherpa Kitchen in downtown Burlington.
Katya and I have never been here before, but he swears by the cozy Nepalese restaurant tucked away on College Street.
I am not a huge fan of food that burns my stomach lining, but I like spices. It’s just chili that gives me heartburn.
Cristiano assures us that Nepalese food is spicy but not crazy hot.
“The chicken chili? Howmuchchili?” I ask as I scan the menu.
“Decent,” Cristiano says unhelpfully.
“Hey, let’s just jump in and see how it goes,” Katya suggests, a hand on my shoulder.
I’ve grown more careful about everything—or so she tells me. Apparently, it’s bleeding into mundane things like making food choices at a restaurant.
I bob my head in agreement.
We order too much, I think, but seeing how Cristiano eats, I realize we have not.
“I’m a growing boy,” he asserts.
