Page 13 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

The shrug again, but it’s a little different this time, like something shadowed that isn’t quite at ease receiving praise. “It’s just my job. I’m a tattoo artist. So you know.” He laughs self-deprecatingly. “It helps to be able to draw.”

I look at him.

“August.” I don’t know when I started using his name. “That is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen. I want to cry looking at it and I can’t entirely explain why. Maybe that’s weird to say to someone I met fifteen minutes ago. But my filter broketoday and I don’t currently have the capacity to be less honest than that.”

He’s quiet.

I hear what I just said, played back.I don’t currently have the capacity to be less honest than that.To a stranger. In a hot tub. On the worst and best day of my life.

“Sorry,” I say. “Am I being too much?”

He looks at me and frowns like he’s confused.

His look is so direct, with the kind of eye contact I can usually only manage for about two seconds before something in me flinches sideways. But something about the quality of his attention holds me in it for three, four, five?—

“That’s actually why I make art,” he says. “For exactly that.”

He didn’t wince in subtle agreement thatyeah, that was too muchor let me off with an offhanded,don’t worry about it. Or a subject change so we can all pretend I wasn’t just socially awkward, or any of the other patient reassurances I’ve been trained to wait for like a permission slip for the size of my own reactions.

Just:That’s actually why I make art. For exactly that.

Like my response was the whole point. This guy’s got too much depth for a fuck boy.

Which freaks me out so much I stand up.

It’s less a decision, and more my body moving before my brain can weigh in. The same way it did this afternoon when I opened my mouth and saidI want a divorcewhile my head was still catching up.

“I should—” I gesture toward the cabins. I don’t know what this is, but I like it too much and there’s no rule script and maybe it turns out I really, really like having a path all laid out nice and neatly ahead of me, so?—

“Sure,” he says. Easy. With no pull on it at all.

And now I’m just standing at the edge of the hot tub, with the cold January air hitting my wet arms.

Right. Time to go.

I find my footing on the step and reach for the towel on the side rail.

“Do you want to get waffles?”

I turn around.

He’s looking up at me from the water. His expression is?—

I don’t have enough data on this person, but it doesn’t feel like a line. It looks like someone who’s actually hungry and just thought of a practical solution. And wants me to go with him.

“Waffles?” I repeat.

“Waffle House is like ten minutes from here.” A beat. “You know, if you’re hungry.”

What August is suggesting sounds an awful lot like a date.

I can’t go on a date already. That’s not a?—

People who just left their husbands don’tdothat.

Then I look down at the ring I’ve worn for nine years.

It takes some work to drag it over my swollen knuckle, but when it finally comes free, I hold the little circle of metal in my palm.