I swallow hard. “I’m not fixed. I’m not even sanded down. I’m still rough, and some days I’m held together with bathrobes and sarcasm.”
“Perfect,” he says, no hesitation. “Then you’ll fit in great at dinner with me.”
I stare at him, all warmth and nerve and ridiculous potted daisies, and realize I’m smiling. That quiet, reluctant kind of smile that sneaks up before your brain can veto it.
“I could do appetizers.” My voice is barely above a whisper. “No promises. Only appetizers.”
He stands, brushing off his jeans. “One mozzarella stick. No pressure. Though if you have two, I might ask you to dance. There’s no excuse about you not knowing how. Remember, I saw the video.”
“Don’t push your luck,” I mutter.
As he heads for the gate, he pauses, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Nice flannel,” he calls. “Your husband had good taste.”
I press my hand to my chest and swallow.
Yeah. He really did.
Good taste in friends.
Shame he couldn’t say the same about his traitorous wife.
______________
I lean over the counter, stirring the stir-fry on the stove.
“How was the weeding?” Viv skates through the door, and Marin flops in behind after her.
“Good.” I take in Viv’s energized bouncy up and down and Marin’s half-dead expression. “How was the yoga?”
“Revitalizing!”
Marin rolls her eyes. “Next time, I’m coming out to the garden with you. My body wasn’t made to move like that.”
“Well, the garden wasn’t exactly peaceful this evening.”
The ladies both stop and stare.
I hold up my phone like it’s radioactive. “Noah asked me out. I might have said yes. Kind of. Soft yes. Only a whisper of a yes to appetizers.”
Viv immediately throws both hands in the air like she’s scored a touchdown. “Okay. My brain is confused. This is a good thing, but you’re delivering the news like it’s a bad thing?”
“It’s a horrible idea. What will the neighbors think? It’s too soon!”
Viv takes a dramatic sip of her chamomile, which she’s added three splashes of wine to, because that’s the way the “love of my life always drank it” and she’s “never going back to boring tea.”
“I mean, the man has the bone structure of a Disney villain. If anything, you owe it to the community.”
I groan and flop into a kitchen chair, hugging a throw pillow like it might absorb my panic. “It’s too soon.”
Viv slides me a glass of water, eyeing me like I’m seconds away from spiraling.
“Is it too soon because your heart or your guilt is saying it is? Or because you’re worried about what everyone else will think?”
I stare into the water like it might reflect the answers back at me. “All of the above?”
But it’s more than that. It’s the way I still reach for a second toothbrush in the Target aisle. It’s the empty side of the bed. It’sthe memory of casseroles and pity smiles and being told “you’re so strong” when I didn’t ask to be. I don’t know if I’m ready, or if I’ll ever be ready to love again. But I do know that moving forward feels suspiciously like leaving him behind.
