“The good news is, nothing makes that okay. So there’s actually nothing you can say to make it worse or better. Just don’t freak out and not want to date me anymore.”
“Why would I do that?”
“My sadness usually makes other people uncomfortable.”
“Not me.” She wasn’t entirely sure that was true. She didn’t think it was discomfort making her breathing labored. It was something else. Yeah. It was something else.
Just sadness for him. Curiosity about the man he’d once been. Before the loss. Because it had clearly changed him profoundly. It made so much sense that he was a doctor. She had thought he had that sort of controlled manner about him, a confidence. The kind of guy who would be great in an emergency.
“So when you said you didn’t do this all the time after we ...”
“I really don’t. Not since my divorce, honestly.”
“Really?”
“I was never big on hooking up. Everything in the years since have been so heavy. It’s one of those things—you either keep it to yourself or you have to tell the other person. And the minute you tell someone something like this, it’s a lot more serious.”
“Yeah. I understand that. I haven’texperiencedthat. But I’m sort of dysfunctional and traumatized by the way my marriage ended, and also by the way my church treated me. So I’m probably the exact wrong sort of woman for you.”
He laughed. “I don’t know about that. I saw you, and I was instantly ... I want you.”
“Well, that is nice. Maybe we can be mutually dysfunctional until we figure something out.”
“I’d like that.”
“Do you want to talk about him?”
It must be a terrible thing to be in a town where no one knew who his son was. Where he couldn’t easily share memories about him.
“I’d like that,” he said.
They finished their meal and took a walk, and he told her all about Brody. About the games he liked to play, and how he was great at drawing and Xbox. That his birthday was in October, and he really liked ice cream. About theDungeons & Dragonscampaigns they’d done together. Which led into a long story about howDungeons & Dragonshad gotten Declan through high school.
“Are you actually a geek?” she asked.
“Guilty,” he said. “I was horrendously awkward for all of my teenage years.”
“You’re just too attractive for me to believe that.”
“It got me into a lot of trouble—please forgive me for not having false modesty here—because I could get a girl to go out with me, but she didn’t necessarily want to hear aboutStar Trek.”
She laughed. His stories wove in and out of his loss, sad memories and happy ones, and by the time they finished and found themselves back at the apartment, she was afraid she was enchanted by him.
“I’m glad you decided to go out with me again,” he said.
“Me too.” She sighed. “I was kind of afraid that God was punishing me for having sex with you.”
To his credit, he didn’t turn and run away. “I see. What do you think now?”
“I’m willing to risk it. But if another building burns down after we do it this time, we might have to rethink some things.”
He laughed. “Are you serious?”
“I don’t actually know.”
“I’m willing to risk it if you are.”
“I am,” she said.
