Page 103 of Happy After All

Time moves differently, but the feelings are real, so maybe this is real enough.

A few weeks to heal each other. To make each other laugh. To be skin to skin with another person.

No happy ending lasts. Not really. It ends the way that his did. Eventually.

It ends like Alice’s, whether it’s weeks or fifty-seven years.

So maybe I should just be thankful we have this.

“You didn’t move closer to your dad, though,” he says. “Or back to where any of your friends from high school were.”

“No,” I say.

I moved to be alone. Maybe I’m not any better than he is. It isn’t like I’ve let the people around meknowme. Not really.

Just him, and he’s leaving.

“Maybe we’re the same, you and I,” I say.

“I don’t know if I would go that far,” he says.

“Maybe not,” I conceded. “Though I think we might both be very good at figuring out how to be alone in a crowded room.”

He nods slowly. “But not in an empty field of Christmas trees.”

I think maybe that’s one of the most romantic things I’ve ever heard.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“I have an idea.” He gets out his phone. “What’s the address here?”

“They’re not going to deliver to an empty field.”

“You don’t think they’ll do that here?”

“No,” I say.

He places an order for pizza anyway. Then he goes back to my Jeep and takes a blanket from the back.

It takes thirty minutes for the food to arrive, but it does arrive. Nathan takes the blanket out to the middle of the trees, under all that brilliant light, and spreads it out.

Hands down the most romantic picnic that has ever been conceived of.

I sit there with him, eating pizza, surrounded by eclectic trees, glowing in the lights.

“Perfect,” I say.

He looks at me, and Christmas lights reflect in his eyes. “I need you to know, if you haven’t guessed already. You’re the first woman I’ve been with. Since losing Sarah.”

I probably did know that. If I paused to think about it, that’s what I would’ve guessed. But hearing it from his mouth makes my heart do all kinds of things.

“When I ... The first time I came to the motel, I was a wreck. I was four months out from losing her. It was the absolute worst time of my life. I planned on never even noticing another woman again as long as I lived. I walked into that office, angry that I was there, mad that I felt beholden to a ghost to do what she said instead of staying home in my office. Knowing that if I did stay home in my office, I was going to lose my fucking mind. At least what was left of it. I walked in, and there you were. So goddamned beautiful. It was like an out-of-body experience. Because I couldn’t feel my body anymore. I just ... I couldn’t believethat you were real. I was so fucking resentful that my wife had sent me to a motel owned by the only woman I wasn’t married to who I’d thought was beautiful in ... God, years. Every time I saw you, it got more intense. I didn’t feel disconnected from my body anymore, and you weren’t just beautiful. I wanted you.”

I realize something then.

Us sleeping together, this, it was inevitable. Coming back in December was him moving it forward.

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