Page 5 of Untangled
I roll my eyes, slowly enough to really emphasize the point, and then lean over to nudge him in the shoulder. “Of course not,” I reply. Turning my neck to hold his gaze, I ask earnestly, “You’ll take this whole thing seriously?”
“I will. Promise.”
With that, he reaches for the deck in my hand, slides the day one card to the bottom, and replaces the cover card on top.
“I will too. Promise, promise,” I reply.
Day 2
Discuss when you first saw each other, and what you noticed.
The expectation of doing a new card tonight has had energy humming under my skin all day. It’s not quite anticipatory jitters—the flutters in your belly before a first date, for example—nor common anxiety. It’s something else entirely, a mix of fear and hope and curiosity swooping through my chest and squeezing around my heart. I’ve been counting down to 7:30 p.m. since Violetwoke up a casual fourteen hours earlier and did not, to my dismay, go back to sleep. And now it’s nearly here. Suddenly, I’m not sure I’m ready.
Daniel seems to feel no such nerves. He strolled in two hours ago, dropped his briefcase by the door, and was crouched low with open arms to greet our girl before I had a chance to say hi. God, how those two love each other. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only mom in the world that feels like the third wheel in her family. If I always will.
No.
This is why the deck is important.
And with Violet tucked safely in her crib, lashes fanned across her cheeks, looking like the sweetest starfish in her sleep sack, I’m out of time for any lingering doubts about starting this experiment with Daniel in earnest. He knows it too.
“Ready, Molls?” He asks, finding me wiping the counter, newly clear after I’ve rehomed seventeen items that don’t belong on the kitchen island. I turn toward him, and he looks like everything I don’t feel. Calm, with a relaxed set in his jaw. Content, with a long exhale through soft lips. Easy, with the sleeves of his button down rolled to his elbows and an open bottle of beer in his hand. Handsome as ever, this husband of mine. Infuriatingly so, sometimes.
He takes a seat at the counter across from me, reaches for the Amorous Advent deck sitting next to the coasters, and slides it my way.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I reply, before discarding the cover and rotating the cards so we can read the one on top.
“Oh, this is simple,” he says while drumming his fingers on the granite. “Want me to go first? I remember everything about the first time I saw you.”
That night is clear to me too, wrapped in the warm glow of wistful nostalgia. I feel some of Daniel’s calm start to loosen my shoulders, and I nod.
“That bar in Midtown,” he starts. “Back then it was called Rock Bottom. Now it’s something trendy and uptight—maybe The Loft? Doesn’t matter. You were there with some friends, Lydia and Sara. You three were two bodies shy of a trivia team and Brett and I were the unlucky—verylucky, looking back—recruits you set your sights on.”
At this, the warmth in my chest spreads. We were twenty three, barely dressed, and four shots deep when we spotted the boys. They didn’t stand a chance. I shake my head but can’t help the smile tugging at my lips.
He continues, “You were…this sounds corny, so bear with me, but I was hypnotized that night. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you. Your hair, blonder than it is now, was a mess of curls that you flipped one way and then the next with the beat. Long legs, black dress, bright blue eyes, plus a shock of pink on your lips. And you didn’t know shit about a single category we were playing,” he chuckles, and his eyes catch mine, “but your confidence never wavered. It was sexy as hell.”
Admiration is the feeling that floods through me when I consider the woman he’s describing. Can you admire yourself from afar, across years of distance when she—you—is no longer touchable? That version of Molly Hayes, or rather, Molly not-yet-married Hodges, feels like a mirage. Like something I conjured up to lure Daniel, who was looking for something me-shaped, before dissolving into the Molly I am now once he got close enough.
Sometimes I wonder who feels that loss more acutely—me or him. Sometimes I worry I’ll feel parched for who I was for the rest of my life.
“That night was something, wasn’t it?” he says, stealing my attention back to him and the way he runs his finger over the lip of his beer.
“Youwere something that night,” I reply with an exhale that comes out like a huff.
“Was I?” he asks before raising the bottle to his lips and surprising me with a wink. It shoots straight to my belly, a low swooping sensation that’s as unfamiliar to me now as Molly from eight years ago. It feels good though. Hopeful.
“Daniel, you were wearing a sweatband around your head and shouting out answers before the host even finished the questions. I’m pretty sure everyone in that bar was waiting for the bouncers to escort you out,” I say with a laugh.
“Except for you?”
“Except for me. For some reason I still can’t articulate, I found the whole thing endearing.”
“It was the sweatband, wasn’t it?”
“It was how you didn’t take yourself so seriously. For as much as I projected self-confidence, I was super insecure. I wanted to look the right way, say the right things. But you—you joined our team and our table, and you were so unapologetic about who you were and what you were there for. Which, looking back, was getting drunk on vodka and feeling the full weight of glory from winning bar trivia,” I say, and the memory takes on that fuzzy quality that comes with romanticized distance. “But also, you were tall. That helped.”
“I’m still tall,” he says, with a nod from across the counter.
