“No, Dad!” she had cried. “I have to find out what happens next!”
He had left her to her reading, trying not to feel too many feelings about her calling him “Dad” instead of her usual “Daddy.” She was growing up, that girl of his, and he was proud and dismayed at how fast it was going in equal measure.
On top of that, he was starting to get into a real groove with his business and the new clientele he’d built up here in Massachusetts.
Life was good. It was really good.
He glanced at his calendar and smiled.
Even better, his next meeting was with Diana.
He had really enjoyed their last conversation… and all the ones before that. But opening up about losing Shannon was always hard. So many people didn’t know how to react when he confessed that he’d been married and then widowed. But Diana had neither shied away from his loss nor pressed him for details like it was a bit of salacious gossip. Anthony wouldn’t have thought such a thing was common, but he’d learned differently in the past few years. A lot of people simply did not have any conversational manners to speak of when it came to sensitive feelings around losing a loved one.
But Diana had just been kind. And then she’d returned to talking about how great Eloise was.
There wasn’t a parent on earth who didn’t like to hear that, Anthony was pretty certain.
Plus, she was very pretty. He had been trying to avoid thinking about it, but it was really no use.
She still looked pretty when she came in through the door of his office, of course, but there was still something distinctly out of sorts about her. Anthony frowned and hoped he wasn’t about to overstep the boundaries of their newfound friendship.
“Hey, Diana! Are you… is everything okay?”
She blinked at him, as though the question surprised her, then visibly deflated.
“Anthony, hey.” She gave him a weary smile. “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just… well, another bad date, if you can believe it.”
He sat in the chair next to hers. It somehow didn’t feel right to have a desk separating them at this moment.
“I don’t want to pry,” he said, “but I have been told I’m a pretty good listener, if you need to get anything off your chest.”
She leaned back in her chair in a disheartened slump that was somehow as charming as it was distressing.
“Oh, it wasn’t a real horror story like you hear about, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said, and although he was glad to hear that, it didn’t cause the band of worry in his chest to unclench. She just looked too defeated for him to feel relaxed. “I just went for dinner with this guy last night and he was… well, his photograph is probably next to the word ‘egotistical’ in the dictionary, if you catch my drift.”
“Ah,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “And, whatever, I mean, if this guy thinks he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread just because he’s a dentist, it’s no skin off my back, right? Except in between all his bragging and boasting, he said, ‘And I don’t mind that you’re just a shopkeeper, obviously. When you get to be middle aged like us, you can’t really afford to be picky, can you?’”
Anthony felt his eyes grow wide in shock. “Hesaidthat?”
“He did!” Diana sat up and smacked a hand against her knee. “And sure, I’m a shopkeeper, but I’m a shopkeeper of a reallycoolshop. That I own! And I don’t have to smell people’s stinky breath all day! Take that, Mr. Dentist Man!”
Anthony appreciated that she could keep her sense of humor about all this, but he was still stuck on being horrified.
“Yeah, you’re an entrepreneur!” he said emphatically. “And I’m not one to imply that getting older is any kind of insult, but I can’t believe that you’re ‘middle aged’ either. You have to be younger than me, right? I don’tfeelmiddle aged.”
“I’m thirty-eight.”
“Okay, yes, close to me. I’m forty. But I’m going to give this guy a piece of my mind if he thinks that’s an age where I’m supposed to… what? Settle for someone who is rude to me on my first date? No, thank you.”
He said this decisively, punctuating his words with a sharp nod. He was pleased to see that Diana let out a little smile.
“Logically, I know you’re right,” she said. “It’s just… have you ever had someone say out loud the thing that your meanest internal voice says about you?”
“The other day my ten-year-old listened to me tell a joke and asked straight to my face if I was trying to be funny. Even worse was that she was trying to be helpful, not trying to sass me. So, yes. I’ve been there.”
Diana’s smile got a little wider. “Well, I think you’re funny,” she said. “But to my point, this guy just… pushed my exact button, you know? I know that, by thirty-eight, most people who want to settle down and have a family have already done that. I do know that. But saying that I should then just… give up?” She pointed to her temple. “It was the mean inside thought coming from the outside. And I know he’s wrong. But still. It got to me.”
