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Light was coming through those terrible curtains Rhoda bought in Santa Fe. Somebody had finished with the tent and gone away again. My ex-husband was asleep on my arm with one leg thrown over both of mine, and I lay there in a guest house I had lied my way into, and I was so happy I felt ill.

That's not a figure of speech. I want it noted. I actually felt ill.

Then Blaine woke up.

I got to watch it happen in stages, which was a privilege. First his hand tightened in my shirt. Then his eyes opened — and I'd put money on the timing — his entire legal career came back online.

"What time is it?"

"Morning."

"Gregory, can you be more precise."

"I don't know, Blaine. I don't have a watch."

He sat up. Got about halfway, remembered he was naked from the waist down, and rearranged the entire situation with a speed I found deeply flattering.

"Everyone's going to be at breakfast," Blaine muttered.

"Probably." I fought to keep the smile out of my voice.

"My mother makes pancakes on Sundays."

"I know she does. I've eaten them."

"Gregory." He had both hands over his face. "We have to go up there."

"We could skip it for once."

"My clothes are up there. Everything I own is in that house." He dropped his hands. "Every single thing I have on this property is in a bedroom on the second floor, and the only garments in this building are your clothes and my wedding suit. So we go separately," he said. "You first. I'll come along later and sneak upstairs."

"Blaine."

"What?"

"You're wearing my shirt. I'm wearing yours. And your bizarre wedding suit is folded over that chair." I propped myself up on an elbow. "Whatever we do, at some point today Rhoda is going to walk into this room."

He looked at the chair for a long moment.

"I'm going to need you not to enjoy this," Blaine said, rolling his eyes.

* * *

I enjoyed all of it.

I have produced multiple films and stood on a stage at the Dolby Theatre, and I’ve never had such a wonderful morning. I want it in the record that I walked up that hill beside him with my hands in his pockets thinking, entirely seriously, if I could just have this. This could be the one thing that changes everything.

We got as far as the kitchen door.

Rhoda was at the stove with her back to us, doing something to a bowl of batter. The air smelled like vanilla.

"There's coffee," she said, without turning around.

"Thank you," said Blaine.

Then she turned around.

And I watched a woman in her sixties take in her son — who had called off his own wedding in a meadow the previous afternoon — standing in her kitchen at eight in the morning in his ex-husband's shirt, with his ex-husband directly behind him. And I watched Rhoda Cauthorne attempt to have no reaction whatsoever.