Hugo rolls his neck out. “Man,” he says. “Sorry for him.”
I step back into the street and keep walking. “He’s been through a lot. I think there’s something special about him. Seriously, no bullshit. It feels, I don’t know. Genuine.”
Hugo stretches an arm overhead. “That’s good, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”
I watch him lift the other arm and then twist his torso to the right and left, trying to crack his back.
“Is it weird when we talk about this?”
Hugo and I mostly talk about his dating life, not mine. And when we do talk about mine, it’s all short-lived things. We rarely delve into feelings.
“Why?”
“Because you are bending and stretching right now like it’s 1988.”
“Ouch,” he says, but he stops. “Yeah, I mean it’s kind of weird. But I love you, so it’s worth it.” Hugo slings an arm over my shoulders and squeezes before letting go again.
“How was your night?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Natalie and I went to San Vicente Bungalows for, like, one drink and then came home and ordered Night Market.”
“You ordered takeout on a Saturday?”
“Oh, yes, I know. I’m usually such a delinquent. Honestly, the thought of sitting at a restaurant was not that appealing. We watchedShark Tank, and I fell asleep at eleven.”
“You hateShark Tank.”
Hugo shrugs. “It’s not offensive.”
I peer at him. His sunglasses are looped through the neck of his shirt, and his eyes look back at me like,What?
“You like her.”
“I like Mr. Wonderful.”
“No,” I say. “You like her. You’re acting all relationship-y.”
We reach the entrance to the market. Hugo holds his hand out.After you.
“May I remind you,” he says, “that you are the one I am currently at a farmers market with.”
“Yeah, but you never would have come with me when we were dating.”
Hugo wanders over to the bagel stand. “Do you want an everything?”
“Yes. Get some raisin, too.”
He says something else, but I’m already halfway down the lane, pulled by a stalk of sunflowers. One thing that’s nice about getting here as early as we do: if you come after ten they’re all sold out.
We bring the goods back to my apartment, and I make Hugo and myself a coffee with my French press, steaming up some milk in the Nespresso. I toast two everything bagels and go about cutting up heirloom tomatoes, sautéing onions, and scrambling eggs. Murph gets some egg on his kibble, which he accepts as his due.
Hugo perches on a stool by my counter and types into his phone. “Why do I always get kicked off your Wi-Fi?” he says. A familiar refrain. He complains about it every weekend.
When we were dating, I hated his phone. I felt like it took him away from me, and I wanted all of him—so much more than I got. I remember my frustration at these moments—the mornings we would have slivers of time, maybe only minutes, to be together, and he’d be furiously answering emails before he had to run to a meeting. At the time it felt like I was being robbed of something, that he was purposefully holding us back from the sort of relationship we could have had. But maybe my need to siphon every moment was the reality that I knew our time was limited. It was always going to end, and I wanted everything I could before it was over.
Regardless, it doesn’t bother me now.
