“Sorry,” he says. He twists and sets the bottle down. “I didn’t mean I shouldn’t have let you go. I meant I shouldn’t have let you go without asking if you wanted me to go with you, without telling you I wanted to.”
“Eric…”
“No, listen, I know. I’m so glad you came here. You look great, by the way.” His eyes graze over my face. I feel a familiar tenderness. It tugs at me, like a small child at the hem of a dress.Look. Look at me.
The first time I brought Eric home to meet my parents, it was a hot October day. We drove down from Santa Barbara blasting Destiny’s Child and Green Day. We took the long route, by the water, winding in and out of towns, the ocean always on our right.
When we got to my parents’ place, it was well after the hour we said we’d arrive. I figured my parents wouldn’t mind, but they’d want a reason. My mother wouldn’t want the time to go unremarked.
Eric opened my door for me, took our luggage, and then took some sunflowers out of the backseat. I hadn’t even noticed them there.
“You told me she likes yellow, right?”
I remember thinking it was so thoughtful. I remember thinking it was proof of what I already knew, what I had already uncovered: I loved him.
I loved him far before she ever met him. It might have mattered, had she not loved him. But it wouldn’t have changed things.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I love you, Katy,” Eric says here, now. “Always have, always will. I didn’t come here to tell you that I want you back. I don’t. I want you…” He winces. “Forward.”
“You want me forward?”
He nods. “I want whatever is next for us.”
I think about the house in Culver City, the garden we never made. What is our life, alone? What does it look like when it’s just us?
“How do we know it will be different?” I ask him.
He thinks about this. He wipes his hand across his forehead. “It’s up to us. We have to make it different,” he says. “You have to want to find out.”
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I tell him.
“Me neither.”
He looks out over the town. He sees the ocean, takes it in for the first time. “This place is incredible,” he says.
I nod. “It really is.”
“We should have come here,” he says. “On our honeymoon, we should have come here.”
I think about our four days in Hawaii. The mai tais onthe beach, the tiki torches, the luau filled with tourists and cameras.
I look at him. His brown hair, fogged glasses. The freckles on his face. All the tiny, microscopic familiarity.
“We’re here now,” I say.
He smiles. There is beauty in his smile, the beauty of the familiar.
“Yes,” he says. “We are.”
As we finish up breakfast, Monica emerges onto the balcony. She has on loose linen pants and a white T-shirt, her hair slicked back into a low ponytail.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Eric. He is tucked into eggs and potatoes, downing coffee. He waves me off.
I stand up and make my way over to her.
“Katy!” she says. “How are you?”
