“Yes. Go. Before I change my mind.”
I wasn’t sure what surprised me more: that it was our anniversary or that Michelle wanted to go out to dinner. She didn’t leave the house these days unless she absolutely had to. School drop-offs, pickups, Jake’s doctor appointments… anything else felt like tempting fate. But the kids had two hours of Nickelodeon programming lined up, so it was now or never.
We drove less than a mile to a pay-at-the-counter Mexicanplace wedged between a nail salon and a dry cleaner. The kind of spot with laminated menus and a soda machine where the Diet Coke was always flat. Michelle had chosen it because it was close. Because if she craned her neck just right, she could see the cross street from the main road.
We sat in a booth near the window and ate with our fingers. And once we were bursting at the seams from melted cheese, Michelle said, “Do you ever wonder if this is just… it now?”
She didn’t look at me when she said it, like the question wasn’t meant to be answered. But it was too raw to ignore.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This.” She gestured vaguely at the table. At the half-eaten basket of chips and salsa. At us. “The careful planning. The short distances. The constant waiting for the next bad thing.” She finally looked up. “Do you think our lives will ever look normal again?”
My mind went straight to Jake, to the way he knotted and unknotted the drawstring of his hoodie, and I wondered how many knots it would take for him to feel safe again. How many it would take for all of us to feel safe again. The truth was, I didn’t know if our lives would ever return to something that resembled normal, or if this was simply the shape of our future now. But Michelle was working so hard to bring the light back, and she didn’t need my doubt. She needed my faith.
I reached across the table and took her hand. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
She searched my face. “You sound very sure.”
“I’m choosing to be,” I admitted. “But I can picture it, Michelle. You and me, graying around the temples, sitting by a pool somewhere tropical. Sipping margaritas. Living the dream.”
Her lips twitched, just barely.
“Our kids will be happy and healthy,” I went on. “They’ll have lives and partners and maybe even kids of their own.”
“Even Jake?” she whispered, the hope in her voice almost unbearable.
“Even Jake.” I squeezed her hand tighter. “And we’ll look back on this moment and think,We did it. We made this happen. We parented the shit out of our kids and somehow turned them into pretty cool adults.”
Her eyes filled, but she didn’t look away.
“You really believe that?” she asked.
“I have to,” I said. “It’s how I survive.”
She held my gaze like she was committing the words to memory. “Okay,” she said softly. “Then I believe it too. Because you’ve never let me down.”
“Except for the time I stole money out of your emergency fund.”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes smiling. “Except for then.”
Our hands stayed clasped as we stared into each other’s eyes.
“I love you,” I mouthed.
“I love you, too,” she said. “There’s no one I’d rather suffer with than you.”
“Goddamn,” I said, grinning. “You’re a romantic.”
“Speaking of that… I have a gift for you.”
I pulled back, my shoulders bumping the booth. My wife was practically a hermit these days and had still somehow managed to both remember our anniversaryandcommemorate it.
“A gift?” I groaned. “You’re killing me, woman.”
Michelle ignored me and reached into her purse to pull out a small brown paper bag. She dipped her hand inside and produced a package of Red Vines.
Okay. This was a gift I could get behind.
