Page 15 of Holidate Scramble
"Aha!" I crowed, filling in the last number of a particularly tricky sequence. "Beat you!"
"You reversed the last two digits," he pointed out, showing me his correctly completed version.
"Dammit." But I was laughing. "I was never good at these in school."
"Whereas I did them for entertainment," he admitted, looking slightly embarrassed.
"That's adorable." The word slipped out before I could stop it.
"Adorable isn't usually an adjective applied to me."
"What adjectives are usually applied to you?"
"Difficult. Demanding. Detached." He ticked them off on his fingers. "My ex-wife had a whole list."
"Tell me about her," I said, then immediately backtracked. "Unless you don't want to—"
"It's fine." He took a sip of water. "Adrienne and I were together twenty-seven years, married for twenty-five. We met in undergrad—she was in the business program while I was pre-med. It made sense on paper. Two ambitious people, similar goals, complementary careers."
"But?"
"But that's all it was—a partnership that made sense. Over time, we pretty much turned into roommates who shared a mortgage and raised two kids but rarely spoke, much less spent any quality time together." He played with his napkin, folding it into neat squares. "I started wanting more. She thought I was having a midlife crisis."
"Were you?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I was finally waking up." He met my eyes. "Either way, Adrienne wasn't interested in exploring it with me. We'd been sleeping in separate bedrooms for years anyway.The divorce was just paperwork acknowledging what already existed."
Our food arrived, and we dove into the ridiculous portions. The pizza was perfect—wood-fired with creative toppings that somehow worked together.
"What about you?" he asked, stealing one of my fries. "Any significant relationships?"
"One," I admitted. "Lasted eight months, which was a record for me. He was a lawyer, very proper, very... beige."
"Beige?"
"Everything in his life was neutral. His apartment, his clothes, his personality. He was pretty much exactly the same, all the time—no big emotions of any type, decidedly risk-averse. He liked that I was “bubbly”—as he called it—at first. Said I brought excitement to his life. But then the excitement became exhausting. I was too loud at his firm dinners, too spontaneous for his scheduled life, too everything."
"His loss," Rhett said simply.
"That's what everyone says, but after a while you start to wonder if maybe you really are too much. If maybe you should try to dial it back, be less... you."
"Don't." The conviction in his voice made me look up from my pizza. "Don't dim yourself for anyone."
"Being alone is better than being with someone who doesn't appreciate who you are."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Very much so."
We continued eating, the conversation flowing to lighter topics—his kids (Eliza was acing med school, Aiden had just sold his first painting), my business (December was crazy but January was dead), the upcoming town events.
"So what's your plan?" I asked, stealing a bite of his pizza. "Long-term, I mean."
He was quiet for a moment. "That's what keeps me up at night. My mother's care gets more complex every month. She's still in her own home now, but that won't last forever. I've been looking at memory care facilities, but none of them feel right."
"That must be hard."
"It's impossible. How do you choose a place for someone who spent fifty years making a home for everyone else? She ran that bakery like it was the town's living room. Everyone was welcome, everyone was family." His voice caught slightly. "Now I have to decide if she stays in the house with round-the-clock care or moves somewhere with more support. And then there's my career—Boston wants an answer, but how can I commit to eighty-hour weeks when she needs me here?"
