36
Ethan and I walk down to the street and into the parking lot, and he leads me to his car. Pete is right behind us, so we’re quiet. Pete’s Honda is parked next to Ethan, and we stand there and watch him root through his briefcase for his keys.
“See you tomorrow,” Pete says.
“Yes,” I say.
He looks at us over the hood of his car. He’s about to say something but just shakes his head and gets in.
When he’s gone, Ethan takes me in his arms and I rest my head on the lapel of his beautiful suit. “Do you feel good?” he asks.
I check myself for how I really feel. “I feel great,” I say.
“You were amazing. Like if the person you were in high school grew up to have superpowers.”
Yes, I think. That’s how I feel. I am Super Me.
“Let’s go celebrate,” he says.
“The diner?”
“Nope. Get in.”
We drive to the inn and walk through the lobby, but before we get to the deck, we turn into a long hallway that leads up a flight of stairs to a locked door. Ethan opens it and we are in a suite. It has a beautifully furnished living room, all blue and white fabrics against lemon-yellow wallpaper. There’s an antique writing desk and a wall of hardcover books. I stand there for a moment taking it in, the fact that I am the sort of woman that a man would bring to a secret suite for sex in the afternoon.
“It’s my grandparents’ apartment,” Ethan says. Okay, not exactly a secret sex suite. He walks through to the kitchen and pulls a tray of sliced chicken and Caesar salad from the refrigerator.
“Grab that?” he says, and eyes the bottle of champagne chilling on the shelf.
I grab it and follow him through the living room onto the terrace. We’re at the corner of the inn, looking out over the water toward the end of Beechwood Point. A dining table has been set for lunch, champagne glasses included. I take this in, the fact that I am the sort of woman a man would plan a surprise for.
I reach for his hand. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“We have a lot to celebrate,” he says. “Sit.”
When we’re seated and we each have a glass, he raises his. “I’m just so happy you’re single. And that Ferris peed on me.”
“Cheers to wet socks.”
Ethan clinks my glass and laughs. Then he looks out at the water, sort of smiling at his own thought. “Do you know how many entries they get for the Sunbelt National Sweepstakes?”
“I don’t.”
“I was thinking about this the other day and I looked it up. Nine hundred thirty-six thousand entries.”
“That’s a lot.” My salad is delicious.
“So I called my mom and asked her how many times she entered, just to see what her chances were.” He’s looking at me like what he’s about to say is going to blow my mind. “Once.”
“Wow.”
“Right? A one in nine hundred thirty-six thousand chance. One in nine hundred thirty-six thousand chance they’d win that thing, decide to move to Florida, and make me come down here that day that I ran into you.”
I smile and reach for his hand. “You might have been here anyway.”
“No. Not a chance. I never come down here except for holidays, and that was the first time I’d ever been to the dog park. My dog before Brenda, Sharon, was totally antisocial.”
“Sharon?”
“You’d understand if you met her. She was a total Sharon.” He pours me a little more champagne. “Anyway, what I’m saying is that this was totally meant to be. One in almost a million.”
He sits back and smiles at me, delighted by the statistical unlikelihood of our meet cute, unaware of how ridiculous his dogs’ names are, and I feel a warmth in my chest. I picture him stopping to buy hot dogs that he doesn’t want from an old man. I see him standing up to Pete. I feel him holding my hand as I step onto a skateboard, steadying me just enough to prove I can balance, all on my own. I see him ahead of me at low tide, looking over his shoulder to check that I’m okay. Ethan shows up, every time, in the best possible way. And there it is, right in front of me—I am in love with him. The realization makes me catch my breath. I am at once surprised and not surprised; he’s impossible not to love. Of course I’m in love with him. And of course there’s a world of pain waiting on the other side of these feelings.
He reaches for my hand. “You okay?”
Maybe, I think. Because I’m Super Me now. I love the person I am with him. I love how there’s no hiding or ducking or making myself small. Maybe I can handle this. “I am,” I say. “This is such a fun surprise.”
I get up and sit on his lap. I wind my arms around his neck, and I want to say all of it. It’s as if I’ve completely unlearned how to push my feelings away. I want to believe he’s looking at me like he loves me too.
“Let’s be done with lunch,” he says, and kisses me.
“Okay,” I say, and kiss him back. I run my hands inside the collar of his crisp shirt and then my hands are unbuttoning it, all on their own. He gets up, barely breaking the kiss, and leads me into the bedroom.
We lie in his grandparents’ bed. There’s a balcony and we have the curtains open so that we can see all the way out to Long Island from the bed. A sailboat goes by and I track it with my eyes as Ethan runs his fingertips up and down my arm. He asks if I want him to bring me my glass of champagne. I say no; I already feel as if I could float away.
“I’m going to have to go get my kids soon,” I say into his neck.
“I won’t allow it.” He pulls me in closer. “What if we call Frannie and ask her to get them? Doesn’t she owe us some babysitting?”
I imagine Frannie at camp pickup trying to explain to my kids that their mother’s in bed celebrating her divorce. “I don’t think that’ll work,” I say. “Also, Greer has a very important sleepover tonight, like maybe the most critical make-or-break sleepover of all time, so I’m going to need to be there to get her ready and out the door.”
“Sounds like high stakes,” he says.
She’s lost her grandmother, her parents have divorced, and now she’s tiptoeing toward the minefield of seventh grade. The stakes could not be higher. “I’ve been training for this my whole life,” I say.
And I have. Here I am, weirdly, inexplicably in love with this man who has cracked me open and helped me feel things again. I am in possession of a clean kitchen, a binder full of power, and a man who wants to surprise me with champagne. I can handle whatever Greer’s about to walk into.