“Well, I am a very intimidating person,” I joke.
“You are, actually, very intimidating. Smart. Talented. Gorgeous.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. Reid just cocks his head at me, as if to say,I speak the truth.
I focus my eyes straight ahead of me. “I’ve gone on dates here and there since, but nothing serious. The dating pool gets exponentially smaller as you get older. Well, if you’re a woman.” Reid presses a hand to the small of my back to guide me around a skateboard abandoned in the middle of the pathway. His palm is warm and solid beneath the fabric of my shirt. “So there aren’t a ton of options out there to begin with, and among the men I have met, I just haven’t liked any of them enough to put in the work of a relationship. Honestly, though, the divorce offered a lot of relief, after the initial gut punch of it all. Trying to holdtogether a shoddily built marriage... it took a huge toll on me, in pretty much every conceivable way. Sometimes I feel like I’m still catching my breath.”
“That makes sense,” Reid says, but he seems to be turning something over in his mind.
“How about you?” I, too, am afraid to hear the answer, but once I ask, I realize I’d simply assumed that Reid was single. What if he’s not?
“Same story. A few casual relationships, but nothing stuck.” He says it casually, but from the slight tension that sneaks into his shoulders, I can tell this is a topic he’s used to skirting. I recognize the response—I’ve done it myself.
“Really? What’s wrong with you?” I joke.
Reid laughs. “Is working too much a good enough reason?”
“Sure,” I say. “But I doubt it’s the only one.”
“I would venture to say we’re both afraid of losing more than we already have.”
How very Reid of him, to topple my carefully constructed facade with a simple, incisive comment.
“And yet, here we are.” I spread my arms wide at the park. “With parents getting older, kids going to college.”
“And at the end of the day, you’re still standing there on your own, trying to hold all the pieces together.”
Yes, and whoisthe person that I’m trying to hold together? Does Reid recognize her? Can he spot the girl I once was? It’s been a while since someone held a mirror up, asked me to explain the choices that have brought mehere. And now, peering in, I find myself in unfamiliar territory. I see her, this woman I’ve become, like viewing a painting from too close and then stepping back: the brushstrokes make sudden, startling sense. I understand the circumstances that shaped me, the small, accumulated moments that pressed me into this form.
But if twenty-year-old Lili were to materialize now, what would she think? Would she be disappointed? She believed that something good, maybe even radiant, was waiting for her once she had finally crossed to the other side of her fear. And yes, there have been times when I’ve stepped into the unknown, learned to tap into my own authority. I even survived a heartbreak that had, at moments, felt unsurvivable. In its wake, I constructed a life that makes me feel secure.
But what else? Now I worry that I’ve kept thatsomething moreat a distance—that the security itself is a trap I laid.
“Well,” I say. “That got bleak.”
“We’ve barely scratched the surface of bleak, baby.”
I laugh, because I know this is true. I’ve offered him snippets of my heartbreak, but I can only imagine how deep his grief runs.
But I also know that, on this perfect June day—likely the only one we’ll get—we need to lighten the mood. I think we’ve earned that.
“You know what we need?” I ask.
Reid arches an eyebrow at me. “I have an idea of what we need, but I’d like to hear what you have to say first.”
His voice is warm honey, sticky with intention, and itsends a rush of electricity through my body. I instinctively suck in air and swallow, which only intensifies the sensations of warmth gathering beneath my chest and between my legs. I bite my lip, trying to return to the moment.
“I was going to say more champagne.” My throat is dry, my voice rasping.
“I’ll take it,” he says, his eyes catching the light.
We leave the park and pause at the corner of Waverly, our bodies reluctant to move. A bar would mean more noise, more bodies, more demands on our attention. And right now, I just want privacy. I just want Reid for myself.
I gesture up ahead, vaguely in the direction of my house. “I have a bottle at home, if you want to come over. I’m about thirty seconds that way.”
I know what I’m asking, and I know he does too.Come home with me. Close the door all the way.The invitation floats between us, hovering there for a moment, caught in the morass of possibility. I wait for it to fall, or to be caught.
Reid’s eyes glitter with mischief. “I think I can make it that long.”
