Page 122 of Her Rival

"And then I want to figure out which night this week my mother is flying in."

"Okay."

"And then I want a sandwich."

"I can do a sandwich."

"And then I want to sit on the deck with you and not think about anything for an hour."

"I can do that too."

"And then tonight I would like to talk to you about the second thing in twenty hours, because the not-talking-about-it is going to add up if we let it, and we are not going to let it."

"Okay."

"I love you."

"I love you, Hartley."

"Even though you keep doing this."

"Especially since I keep doing this. Because it means I'm going to keep doing it. And we're going to have to keep figuring it out. Together."

"Right."

"Right."

I picked up the phone. I called Brynn.

She picked up on the second ring.

"My mom left my dad in September," I said.

There was a pause.

Then Brynn said, "I'm coming over."

"Bring wine."

"I'm bringing two."

We hung up.

I leaned against Jett. He put his arm around me.

The valley was going through gold and into the bright blue middle of the day, and a woman in a kitchen in Calvert, Tennessee, was, possibly, already on the phone with her sister figuring out which flight she could take on which day, and a different woman in a penthouse in Las Vegas was already in her parking garage opening the door of her SUV with two bottles of wine in a tote bag, and the man whose arm was around me was going to spend the rest of the day making sandwiches and listening and doing the small steady things he did, and I closed my eyes.

I had not, before this week, understood that the inside of a life could feel like a kitchen with the lights on.

It could.

It did.

I held on to his arm.

The day kept coming.

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