This divorce isn’t what I wanted. Jack did this same thing. I think.
I stop thinking, just in case.
“I think the store is closing,” Oliver whispers in my ear, his lips brushing the side of my face when he talks. “Walk with me for a while and talk some more, yes?” He asks like he’s seeking permission.
Outside on the sidewalk, Oliver puts his arm around my waist, and I slide into him. He whispers something in my ear, but his words are breathy and my head is fuzzy so I don’t understand him, but I laugh anyway. I turn my face up to his and he kisses my nose. When I look back toward the street, I see Jack across the road.
I blink, and then it’s not Jack after all.
We walk past my car in the parking lot and down a few blocks toward a little section of old houses with quirky flower gardens and yard sculptures that catch the moonlight and toss it back out as magic. Oliver stops in front of one of the houses and bounds up the stoop. I remain on the sidewalk, and he looks back at me quizzically.
“Is this your house?” I ask. “Maybe I should go home.”
He closes his eyes and turns toward the sky, relief and regret on his face, and I wonder what his story is. Bad breakup? Still in a relationship, perhaps? I realize how much I don’t know about him.
He comes back down the steps. I want so much to be that romantic type who throws caution the wind. I imagine said wind, loaded down with the cares of innumerable people caught up in moments too strong for them, too passionate or reckless, desperate and unmanageable. I imagine some French couple at an outdoor café in Paris, sipping their coffee, smoking their cigarettes, being blown right out of their chairs by some rogue, heavy laden wind from the other side of the world. Crazy American fools, they would say, righting their chairs, lighting a new cigarette, calling for the garçon to bring new cups of coffee and perhaps a patisserie while he’s at it.
“The voice of reason,” he says, and reaches for my hand. “Wise and mostly unwelcome by those about to make bad decisions.”
I hold his hand and we sit on the stoop. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Still recently divorced. Still don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“Hmm,” he says and exhales deeply. “Yeah, I’m coming off a difficult breakup of sorts myself. I have no idea what I’m doing either.”
I twist the ring on my finger that, despite the paperwork that’s been signed, filed, and finished, I still wear. I know this is impulsive and most likely a bad idea. Yet, I feel like I’m walking backwards, trying to undo something that I really don’t want to forget.
“I know what it’s like to be caught in between what you know and how you feel,” Oliver says. “Let me get you a coat and I’ll walk you to your car.”
I wrinkle my brow.
“You’re shivering,” he says. “These spring nights can get chilly.”
“I don’t think that’s why I’m shivering,” I say, finding it easy to be honest with him.
I look him in the eye, and he kisses me softly on the lips. The wind blows and I wonder if that poor French couple will forgive me the intrusion on their peaceful day. It’s just a light breeze after all, nothing to disrupt them too much. Although it’s disrupting me something powerfully.
Oliver leads me up the steps into his house. The interior is clean and sparse. The small living room holds a couch, an old rocker, and a small television. The most dominating thing about the room is a wall of music—songbooks, at least three guitars that I can see, CDs, a stereo system, and an old piano.
“Does anyone still listen to actual CDs anymore?” I ask, running my hand along the line of plastic cases.
“Believe it or not, that’s pretty high tech in this house,” Oliver says.
“Do you live here alone?” I ask as he closes several large books that were open across each other on the coffee table and tosses them onto the floor beside the couch.
He disappears down the hall and returns with a gray, hooded sweatshirt.
“I do now,” he whispers, handing me the hoodie, which I pull over my head and down across my body.
I don’t ask for details even though I find myself wanting them. He doesn’t offer any more information. This young man’s house is far from where I thought I’d be tonight. There’s a place in my gut that yells at me for putting Dad aside like this, for pushing Cassie and Jack from my mind. But the option is either this or sleeping in my childhood bed quilted in by the heavy-handed stitching of the way things end up.
“I’ll walk you back to your car,” he says, and reaches out to adjust the hoodie so it fits properly across my shoulders as best it can.
“Thank you for staying a while,” he says after the short and silent walk to my car.
You’re welcome seems a strange thing to say so I offer something else even stranger, “Will you kiss me one more time?” I feel foolish now that I’ve said it out loud.
He looks at me with such focus and concern that I think he’s going to say no. He steps closer to me and touches my cheek.
“Nina,” he says and pulls me to him in a tight embrace. “I’m glad I found you tonight.”
I give in to the hard clinch of muscled arms holding me tight to this semi-stranger who may be the only piece of the world that makes any sense to me right now. I let go of everything that holds me in. Forty years of everything that means anything collects in the palm of my hands, the shallow of my throat, the escape of my breath.
“Me too,” I whisper into his hair.
He steps back from
