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"Good morning," Banks says, putting his hands on his hips as he slows to a walk. Sweat is streaming down his bare chest and Marigold wills herself not to look at his strong physique. She and the rest of the book club are well aware of what's going on between him and Sunday, and, truth be told, she's thrilled for both of them.
"Hi, Banks," Marigold says, tilting her head up so that she can see him from beneath the brim of her yellow baseball cap. She squints in the bright morning light. "Beautiful day for a run."
"It is," he says, turning to look at the horizon over the water so that his profile is facing Marigold.
Banks is an incredibly handsome man--the strong, silent type. There's no woman alive who would say that he wasn't attractive, but he's not exactly Marigold's type. Much to her own amusement, her brain quickly squares him up against Cobb and she realizes how much she loves her ex-husband's lanky, boyish looks. He isn't as fit as he was in his thirties, but he's still lean. Even with the health crisis he's been through, he's retained his strong posture, easy gait, and the twinkle in his eyes has come back.
"Do you have any big Valentine's Day plans?" Marigold asks, trying to keep the teasing out of her voice. She's well aware that she's digging for info, but it feels good to joke around with a neighbor she's bumped into on the beach, and she hopes he'll tell her that he has a dozen roses for Sunday or something equally romantic.
"The lady I'm seeing has requested that we take a trip to Destin and spend a night there in a hotel to attend a jazz concert on the beach, so I've arranged for that." He's picked up on her jocular tone and matched it, smiling knowingly as he says "the lady I'm seeing."
"Well, isn't she a lucky broad. Good on you for giving her what she wants." Marigold drags her bare toe through the cold, wet sand as they talk. "I know you already know this, but she deserves everything."
Banks still has his hands on his hips, but he's quickly caught his breath after running and he nods now. "She does."
"She went through so much..." Marigold trails off as she remembers that Banks lived in close proximity to Sunday and her ex-husband, the former Vice President, and probably had a front row seat to the way Peter Bond treated her.
"Indeed she did," he agrees, glancing at the horizon again. "I'll treat her right.” He turns his eyes back to Marigold and looks right at her. "Sunday is the kind of woman who deserves happiness. And if that means a jazz festival on the beach, then she'll get it."
Marigold smiles at him, resolving not to launch into some version of a "don't hurt her or the entire book club will come after you" speech. She believes him, and so she doesn't need to say anything else.
"Hey." Marigold frowns. "If you're leaving the island, then who's watching Ruby?"
"She swears she can look after herself, but I actually took a week off here, and Eldrick Watkins, Harlow's former Secret Service detail, will be filling in for me. So everything will be fine here."
"Oh, I'm not worried--Ruby is a tough old broad, I just didn't know how that worked. Like, are you allowed to have a day off?"
Banks smiles at her in amusement. "Of course. Yeah. I'm allowed to do a lot of things that real people do."
"I'm happy for you, Banks," Marigold says, readjusting her baseball cap. "I think this is great."
"That I get a week off?"
"That you get a week off and that you get to take a trip with Sunday." She reaches out and pats his bare shoulder. "Have a fabulous time, alright?"
"Will do," Banks says with a crisp nod. "See you around." He starts jogging again immediately, running along the shoreline as Marigold watches him go.
She's happy for Sunday, of course. Most sentient American adults are aware that Sunday and Peter didn't have a fabulous relationship, and the women in the book club are even more aware of how bad things were. If any woman deserves happiness and a second chance at love, romance, or even just lust, it's Sunday Bond.
Marigold turns and starts walking again, heading down the shoreline in the opposite direction that Banks is running.
She can't compare herself or her own marriage and divorce to Sunday's--their situations are light years apart--but she can think about her own hopes and dreams, and she can wonder whether she herself might ever get a second chance at love, romance, or even just lust. Marigold kicks at a piece of seaweed on the sand as she walks.
She wouldn't mind a second chance, and she might even be ready for it.
* * *
Marigold has taken Cobb at his word and assumed that he truly was at the store getting things to cook for dinner, so when the afternoon bleeds into evening and the sun starts to dip, she wraps a cardigan around her shoulders and closes the laptop on the desk in her bedroom.
"Cobby?" she calls out, holding her sweater around her body. Elijah is gone back to London now, and it's just the two of them. The house echoes weirdly even though Elijah was just one extra person in the space, and she can tell that Cobb feels his absence too. "Cobb, are you--"
Marigold turns the corner to the kitchen and sees Cobb standing there, holding a bunch of wildflowers in his hands.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Marigold Pim," he says, giving her the same hopeful, impish grin he'd worn the night he asked her to marry him. "For you." He holds the flowers out shyly and she takes them, then looks down at her battered navy blue sweat pants and the oversized t-shirt she's wearing under her cardigan.
"Cobb," she says, putting her nose into the wildflowers and inhaling deeply. "These are beautiful. But I'm not dressed for dinner, and you look like you just stepped out of a magazine."
He does, too. Cobb is wearing a forest green shirt over a pair of perfectly worn-in blue jeans, and his feet are bare. He's showered and combed his still-damp hair, and he smells like aftershave.
