Well, the good thing about heartbreak is that you can spill it on the page.
My book has been number one forthree weeks.
Every time I check, it feels surreal, like success happened tosomeone else and I'm just living inside her skin. There's even a billboard at Times Square with my titleThis Time Around, and people actually stop to read it.
Sometimes they ask me small things, like what I listened to while writing this or that scene, and I tell them to the sound of my own crying, and they laugh, and I laugh too because I'm good at pretending, so I pretend it's just a joke, not the truth.
The diner on the corner looks like it got stuck in some '90s movie—red booths, checkered floor, posters of jazz legends.
The bell above the door announces me as I walk in.
"Here!" The loud cheerful travels all the way to me right away.
"Ah!" There she is.
Sitting by the window, she's as radiant as ever. Soft sunlight catches the pistachio-green silk of her dress with spaghetti straps, asymmetrical hem—the kind of effortless glamour that you expect from Mara, no matter what situation it is. Her hair's longer, to her shoulders, honey-blonde now.
She's already flagged down the waitress by the time I get to the table.
"Decaf, babe, right?" she smiles at me.
"No. Actually. Americano, please," I tell the waitress, and shrug out of the endless rolls of my scarf.
Mara's brows shoot up. "We're living dangerously today."
I smirk and peek into the baby stroller. "Oh my god, so these are the angels."
Yup, it's a double stroller, for a boy and a girl. Blue eyes after Paul, soft cheeks after Mara, they're small cuties wrappedin beige blankets.
"They're so perfect, Jesus. How are they this beautiful already?" I say, making dumb faces until they almost smile, even though they're a month old and I'm sure they can't see me.
I give her an impressed look. "Also, your genes should be studied. They're magical."
She laughs, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, the labor was magical too. Even though eventually we had to do a C-section. Twelve hours of me yelling. Imagine—me, yelling," she mocks herself.
"Oh, god. That sounds terrible," I say, pained. "The labor, I mean."
"The doctor was exasperated. I was in so much pain, I kept crushing Paul's hand, and I think he's been more traumatized than me." She smiles devilishly. "But I'm still milking it."
I snort a laugh and pout. "Sweet Paul. I'm sure he's been atoning ever since."
"Every day. He's a great dad," she says, smiling widely, and bends to fix the baby's pacifier.
"What are their names?"
"We wanted something that started with P for the girl, after Paul, and M for the boy, after me. Spent a week arguing over it with my family." Her face drops to exhaustion, like it was yesterday.
"I can imagine," I say, amused, as the coffee arrives.
"Uncle Dino suggestedProsciutto e Mozzarella," she says with an accent, fingers pinched in that unmistakably Italian gesture.
I laugh into my mug. "Doesn't surprise me one bit."
"Yeah. You can imagine, Paul wasn't very fond of that," she says with brows up. "Ben had a better idea, Mafioso and Principessa."
And just like that, my chest caves a little.
Ben. His name.
