“They’ve tried. But unfortunately I’m still hung up on the girl next door who ditched me for the New York lights.” He said it cheerfully, with none of the bitterness that Rae thought her actions merited. “Pretty lame, huh?”
“Very lame,” Rae agreed. “Sounds like that girl doesn’t deserve you.”
“Oh, but she does,” Stu said. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders, she’ll come back begging for me sooner or later.”
“Our breakup didn’t shake your confidence, I see.”
“Not much,” Stu agreed. “So, you free tomorrow night?”
Freeimplied a spiritual state more than a physical one, but Rae didn’t go down a philosophical rabbit hole. She just let bad habit beat good humor and said, “I’m not really dating.”
“Think of it less as a date,” Stu said, “and more of a guided tour of Indy with an old friend.”
“I grew up near here,” Rae said. “I don’t need a tour.”
“Things have changed,” Stu said. “Have you seen the new poetry museum?”
“What poetry museum?”
“It’s a new thing only the locals know about. I can show you if you’d like.”
Rae was nearly certain Stu was pulling her leg, but she was intrigued enough to agree, with the appropriate terms. “I can’t stay out late. I have work the next day.”
“I’ll have you home by a-love-in.”
Rae tried to roll her eyes, but the corners of her mouth rolled up instead. “Bad pun.”
“Better than ‘I’ll pick you up at sex.’”
“Your pickup lines have gotten worse. And that’s saying something.”
“Sorry. I’m much more refined when I’m not sweating.”
“You’re sweating?”
“Profusely. And you’re smiling.”
“No,” Rae lied, kicking a stray pebble forward on the gravel running path.
“Well, we’ve gotta change that tomorrow. Good night, Raelynn.”
“Good-bye, Stu.”
“Thanks for not adding-pidto my name this time.”
“I considered it.”
She hung up and kept running, feeling stuck. Not the familiar stuck of latching on to the past or freezing up when she thought about the future, but the fresh stuck of staying firmly planted in the accessible now, kicking herself for defaulting to her disagreeable banker defense mechanism.
Beneath the analytical regrets, though, something else was stuck, too—a childlike smile that she tried once or twice to wipe away but decided it was easier to just let stay as she watched the day fade over the western plains and the first stars freckle the sky with humble light.
“That was the best poetry I’ve read in ages,” Rae told Stu, standing outside her apartment complex the next night, sometime before eleven, somewhere between buzzed and drunk. “Have you ever heard of a verse as elegant as the Forget-Me-Not Lager?”
Stu had taken her to a beer garden, apparently the city’s newest must-see establishment. Rae had audibly scoffed (“Thisis the poetry museum?”), but Stu had insisted she’d understand once she saw the creative menu. And to her surprise, she had.
The notion of beer being poetry was very Bellini-esque, but the date had gratefully ditched Bellini’s dark edges, staying light but not shallow—a pairing Rae would have once called paradoxical.
Being back in Stu’s buoyant presence had made Rae realize on a whole new level just how sick Dustin had been during their relationship. He’d taken so much from her, and worse than that, she’d willingly given it to him. She would still be force-feeding him her love if she hadn’t had that agonizing, essential moment of knowing that enough was enough.
