“That’s an exaggeration.”
“You were in a coma for three days.”
I winced. The guy behind me honked again. I flipped him the bird and he leaned on his horn harder and yelled something out of his window that I couldn’t hear. “You should worry more about me driving on I-90 with these lunatics.”
Richie was quiet again. I waited for him to collect his thoughts, but it was taking too long.
“Where did all of this come from, Richie?”
“This weekend.”
“What about it?”
“It was great,” he said.
“Of course it was,” I said.
“And it made me think.”
“About what?”
Richie took a breath. Let it out. “I want to grow old with you.”
I’d never thought it possible to be annoyed and deeply moved at the same time—and yet here we were. “Me too,” I said.
“Really?”
“Look, one reason why I took this Welch case is because I’ve been thinking about getting a second place near you,” I said. “With this kind of money, I could spend part of the year in Asbury Park at first, then stay longer. And then, if that works out, we could maybe think about giving living together another shot.”
“What about your job?”
“I could move my business to Jersey.”
More silence.
“Richie?”
“I want you to think about us,” he said.
“I am thinking about us,” I said.
“I want you to think about our future. I want you to think about being alive for it.”
I gripped the wheel. I nearly said,Since when do you get to tell me what to think about?But I didn’t.
“I’m not suggesting you retire,” Richie said. “But maybe you should take on cases that are less…dramatic.”
I inhaled sharply. “Pushing paper around a desk.”
“They have computers now,” Richie said.
“No kidding?” I heard the ding of a phone—not mine. Dylan’s. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
“I love you,” Richie said.
“I love you, too,” I said.
We hung up, which was a lot better than arguing. I knew Richie’s intentions were good, but still the conversation bothered me, and if I’d stayed on much longer, I would have told him so. My mother had said something similar to my father when she was convincing him to retire. And while he’d acquiesced, for her sake, it was hard not to think that in urging him to stay out of harm’s way, she was missing a crucial part of who he was. That may have been okay for my dad—being in love with someone who didn’t fully comprehend his soul. But was it okay for me?
