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“Are you saying you don’t recognize Harry?” he jokes.
“Can I feed him?” I ask, bending down so my face is level with the tank. Harry spins in a little circle and a few bubbles float up to the surface. It’s all very cute.
When our lunch arrives, we take it into the living room and sit in the center of the floor, envisioning what he could do with the space. I don’t insert myself into the design plans, not yet anyway. This is his house, and maybe one day I’ll share it with him, but it feels presumptuous to assume that will be the case now, after we’ve only just started to get back on track. Still, he wants my opinion.
“Do you think we should put up curtains?” he asks, pointing to the row of floor-to-ceiling windows that display a gorgeous view of the backyard. It would soften the space a bit, but I don’t think they’re necessary, so I tell him so.
“You don’t want to obstruct that view if you don’t have to.”
He agrees and admits he’s been dragging his feet on hiring a designer.
“My life has been in limbo for too long,” he admits, surveying the room. “I think it’s finally time I start to get settled here.”
I look down and chew on my bottom lip before asking a question that’s been in the back of my mind. “James, when I left…you didn’t—I mean, you weren’t waiting for me to come back, were you?”
I asked him not to, not if it meant he continued to live like this. I feel guilty knowing he might have hit pause on his life in the hopes that I might return.
“It wasn’t my intention. Up until I saw you at the gala, I was under the impression that you’d moved on, so I tried to do the same. A few months after you left, I started to go through the motions of dating. I needed plus-ones for a few events, and it was a good way to test things out without jumping into anything too serious.”
Jealousy digs its sharp claws into me.
“Did you like any of the women?” I ask, focusing down on the noodles twirling around my fork.
“Yes,” he admits with a sigh, and my stomach twists into a tight knot. His answer shouldn’t bother me, but it does. “They all fit the bill of what I was looking for.”
Oh, I’m sure they did—smart, beautiful, perky, closer to his age, and probably begging to settle down and start flexing their ovaries.
I barely stifle a sneer.
“None of them lasted though,” he reassures me, reaching over to still my hand. I’ve twisted and twisted my fork around so many times, nearly every single one of my noodles is wrapped around it in a heaping mess. “Apparently, according to most of them, I wasn’t emotionally available.”
“That’s too bad.” I try to sound genuine, but he sees through my thinly veiled disguise.
“Oh, yeah?” he asks, pushing our plates aside and pressing up onto his knees. “Do you wish I’d tried harder to move on?”
I finally gather enough courage to look up and meet his eyes. “Not exactly…though I do feel bad for hurting you, for leaving like I did.”
He smiles as he stands and extends his hand down to me. I let him pull me to my feet and then we’re pressed together, hip to hip. His hands wrap around my waist and he squeezes gently. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it up to me.”
“I plan on it, but first, I have one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have any emotions available now?”EPILOGUE
FOUR MONTHS LATERIt’s the middle of the afternoon and sunlight streams in through the living room windows. A group of older women ranging from their late 50s to late 70s sit in a small semicircle conversing with each other in broken French. Mrs. Walters sits closest to me and I listen intently as she practices simple sentences.
“Le chat brun.”
“Good.”
“La pomme verte.”
I shake my head. “Try it again, and this time emphasize the long m sound rather than the e. Like this: pomme, not pommay.”
The next time she tries it, it sounds much better. She’s learning fast, just like the rest of the women in our small French club. It all started a few months ago, after I first moved in with James. His neighbor Mrs. Walters came over to see if we needed help—though at 70, I’m not sure how exactly she would have assisted us with the moving efforts. Anyway, we got to talking. She asked what I did for a living, I told her, and when she heard I was out of work, she hired me on the spot. She’d always wanted to learn a foreign language, and she knew a few other women in the neighborhood who would jump at the chance to keep their minds active.
