I’M SURE I’M doing the right thing. I’m certain I’ve read that whole interaction with Bel right.
She was quiet. She was staring at the table. She seemed distracted. It sounds like they’ve been spending time together, so she must like him. And she’d already made plans with him for tonight, long before we agreed to spend today together.
In short, something was on Bel’s mind, and the obvious conclusion seems to be that the guy she liked was in the bar with us and she wanted to be with him, not with me.
It makes sense. We’ve already confirmed that we’re just going to be friends. If Isabel is really ready to move on, then as a good friend, I should encourage her to do so.
And I should be feeling pleased. In one single weekend I’ve managed to move from burning anger toward her to genuine goodwill.
The problem is that as I push through the door and step out into the street, instead of feeling pleased, I feel like I want to smash something. In fact, there is so much unbridled energy pumping through my veins, I’m positively vibrating with it, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from turning around, storming back across the restaurant, picking up that smug bastard and throwing him through a window.
Residual jealousy. This doesn’t mean anything. Just keep a calm head and get used to the idea of Bel being with someone else, because she’s probably feeling better about things, too, now that she’s found some closure and moving on with her life will almost certainly mean dating other men.
An image pops into my mind uninvited. I see Isabel on our wedding day, with the late evening sun filtering through her wild halo of ringlets as she floated down the aisle toward me. Only the image in my mind takes an awful turn, and I see that guy standing there, waiting for her at the end of the aisle instead of me.
It turns out that after a lifetime of living in my head, a mental image like that is more than enough to make me run on pure feeling for just a moment. I spin on my heel and turn back toward the bar but manage to stop myself again at the door. I take several slow, calming breaths, then spin again and walk away.
Heavy rainclouds are still hanging over the village and it’s sprinkling on and off. I was going to catch a cab, but now I’ll walk. I need to do something to burn off all of these loud emotions.
The problem is that every step feels heavier than the last, and while intellectually I am sure I have made the right decision in encouraging Isabel to stay with her...friend, my heart is racing and my gut is churning.
I’m so focused on my inner turmoil that I don’t notice the sound coming from within my backpack at first. When I finally realize it’s my phone ringing, I curse and drop the backpack to the ground so I can fish around inside to withdraw the device.
I notice the time before I notice Dad’s name on the screen. It’s 7:35 p.m., Sunday night. I’m thirty-five minutes late for my regular dinner with him because I completely forgot to tell him I’m out of town.
“Dad,” I say as I pick up the call. I’m now pacing on the sidewalk, unable to convince my legs to begin the journey toward the house—or more specifically, away from Isabel.
“Son! You’re late. Everything okay?”
“I’m so sorry. I forgot to tell you I went to Greenport for the weekend.” Added now to the turmoil in my chest is guilt. Dad will have cooked a meal for me. What will he do with the excess food?
“Greenport, huh?” Dad says thoughtfully. “One last time before the house goes to Izzy?”
I barely even hear him. Now I’m imagining Dad inviting his girlfriend to sit at the table to eat the food he’s prepared for me.
“You have a girlfriend,” I say, and I hear Dad’s sharp intake of breath.
“How do you know that?”
“Isabel is here. We got to talking and she mentioned it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wait...you and Izzy talked?”
It says a lot about how hard our separation has been on the people Isabel and I care about that they all seem to react with shock when I mention we’re in the same place at the same time.
“It’s a long story, Dad. And don’t change the subject. Why wouldn’t you tell me you’d met someone? And why tell Isabel but not me?”
“Well, in my defense, I didn’t mean to tell Izzy either,” Dad says. “I guess she told you I’ve been working out with her a bit.”
“Yeah.”
“Elspeth was training with me at the gym, and Izzy asked me if there was something more going on than just a friendship. I have no idea how she knew, but I couldn’t really lie to her.”
“Why didn’t you want to tell us?” I ask stiffly. “Didn’t you realize we’d both be happy for you?”
“Son...” Dad sighs heavily. “When I fell in love with your mother, it was like I’d been struck by the very best kind of lightning—like something exceedingly unlikely had happened. I’d met someone who was brilliant and beautiful and kind and giving. How many people do you know who meet criteria like that? And then she fell in love with me? I’m far too right-brain to believe in ‘the one,’ but I do believe in statistics, so I was reasonably certain that the odds of someone like me meeting a woman who fit me as well as your mom did were astronomically small, and then the odds of her loving me back? It was miraculous.”
Dad trails off for a moment. “I saw you fall in love with Izzy. I knew you had that same out-of-body experience—watching a miracle unfold before your eyes, feeling the truth of it all in your very bones. So at the worst moment in your life, when you were watching all of that end, how was I supposed to tell you that lightning had struck me again? I knew you would never begrudge me from moving on from your mom, but I just couldn’t bear to tell you that while you were losing the love of your life, I was finding the second love of mine.”
“I appreciate you trying to protect me,” I say. “But I would have been happy for you. Yes, this year has been shit for me, but Dad...you were alone for twenty years. I would always have celebrated that with you. I want you to be happy.”
“I want you to be happy, too,” Dad says, his voice suddenly rough, then he adds, “And that’s exactly why I want to backtrack for just a minute. Explain to me how the hell you and Izzy went from sworn enemies to vacation buddies in less than a week.”
“We didn’t come out here together.” I stare back at the bar. “We just wound up at the house at the same time and we got to talking.”
“And...”
“And what?”
“And did you resolve anything?”
“We’ve spent the whole weekend together, and all we’ve done is resolve things. Maybe we resolved everything that was left unsaid.” And had sex. But there are some things a father just does not need to know about his son.
“So, what does this mean?”
“It means we’re friends now.”
“Just friends?”
I swallow hard. “Just friends, yeah.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I don’t even know,” I admit. “But it doesn’t matter what I want. Anything else is impossible.”
“Paul, you are far too intelligent to use a lazy term like impossible to describe an event which is, in fact, possible,” Dad scolds. “Let me ask you something, son. What are the odds of shuffling a deck of cards properly and dealing any particular order of cards?”
“Any particular order of cards?”
“Sure.”
I pause, begin the calculation and quickly come to a surprising conclusion. “Exceedingly unlikely, I’d say. Close to impossible.”
“That’s correct. In fact, there are roughly as many variations on how a deck of cards might be ordered as there are atoms in the entire universe. In fact, every single time a deck of cards has ever been shuffled or will ever be shuffled, it’s probable that an entirely new and exceedingly unlikely order results. So sometimes, my son, achieving the impossible really is just a question of actually dealing the cards in your hand.”
“Dad. You would never use that analogy in one of your lectures.”
“Correct. It’s an extremely fluffy application of statistical probability, and one that can only be used by a man in love.”
“So now that the secret is out, do I actually get to meet this Elspeth when I come back to the city?”
“I’ll make sure she’s here when you come for dinner next week,” Dad says, then he adds, “And by all means, feel free to bring Izzy along, too. Go get her, son.”
“It’s not nearly that simple.”
“I just used math to show you that it is that simple,” Dad chuckles.
“You just used math to show me that when you’re in love, you forget how probability works.”
“Love you, son. Good luck.”
I glance back at the bar one last time as I drop the phone into my pocket and then try to turn to leave.
But I can’t.
I just can’t.
This jealousy I feel is not some hangover from when we were together. It’s fresh and it’s new, and it’s urgent. On Friday, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that Isabel and I could even be friends again someday, but over the course of this weekend, I started to want even more than that.
It didn’t happen Friday night when we had sex. It happened yesterday morning when we sat down to breakfast and we chatted about our lives and we connected on an emotional level. Sex with Isabel is amazing, but it always has been. What’s been missing, at least for the last year of our marriage, was a solid foundation of friendship.
And we have just spent forty-eight hours proving that we really could build that better than it ever was before we broke.
I take a step toward the door, but my heart is racing now, and I’m conscious that I’m about to take the greatest risk of my life. I’ve never really risked rejection from Isabel before. She kissed me the first time. She was the first to say, I love you. Every time I took our relationship to the next level, I did so in the safest way I could come up with.
Not once have I ever put myself out there for her.
That’s part of why you lost her, asshole.
I’ve changed and grown this year. I’ve proven to myself, and maybe even to Bel this weekend, that I can be someone better than I used to be.
I push the door open and stride back into the bar.
She’s sitting at the booth with the guy, nursing what’s clearly a fresh glass of wine as they share a quiet chat. I can see that their gazes are locked, but I can’t read her expression at all and I don’t have the time to stand here and stare at her until I figure out what she’s thinking, and that means I’m walking in completely blind.
My palms are sweaty like I’m a thirteen-year-old kid about to ask a girl out for the first time. I’ve had girlfriends, lovers and a wife, which is what makes it very fucking weird that in some strange way, I am about to ask a girl out for the first time.
This is a risk. But even if the odds of the cards shuffling out in my favor are astronomically small, Isabel Rose Winton is worth taking the chance.
I stride to the booth and she looks up at me. Her eyes are wide, her brows are knitting. Her mouth falls open, and she shoots a look at the other guy.
What does that look mean? Is it I’m sorry about this? Is it save me, my crazy ex-husband is about to make an idiot of himself?
The only thing worse than how exposed I feel in this moment is the regret I know I would feel if I didn’t at least try to convince her to try again. I won’t get this exactly right—I won’t have the most persuasive words or the most charming delivery. But I let her slip out of my life once before while I waited for the perfect time, and there’s no fucking way I’ll ever do that again.
“I know we said we’d be friends,” I say. “Maybe a good friend would leave you to spend time with this guy and I know a good friend would support you in moving on. But fuck it, Isabel, I can’t be a good friend to you, not like this. I’ll always want more than friendship with you. I want to take everything good that’s come out of this fucking awful year and use it to build a better future with you—”
Isabel stands, and time freezes as I stare at her and try to understand this expression. Her eyes are wide. Her mouth is hanging open. Her cheeks are flushed. Her pupils are dilated. Her breaths are coming faster and faster and then—
She smiles, and it is everything.
I’m vaguely aware of Darby mumbling a farewell and leaving the booth, but I pay no attention, because right then, Isabel throws her arms around my neck and she kisses me hard.
It turns out that tonight, I’m once again the luckiest guy in the fucking universe.
I cup her face in my hands and I kiss her back and I try to communicate with her—to use my kiss to tell her everything that I’m not eloquent enough to say on the fly.
She breaks away from me all too soon and when I open my eyes, her face is wet with tears. When I reach up to cup her face in my palm, my hand is shaking.
“It’s still really complicated,” she whispers thickly.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“We hurt each other so badly.”
“We can learn from our mistakes.”
“What does this even look like?”
“I don’t have any of the answers, Isabel. All I really know for sure is that you are my sun and my moon, and that there’s nothing I won’t do for another chance at proving that to you.”
A broad, relieved smile breaks over her face, and she exhales, long and slow.
I wonder if that feels like the first breath she’s taken in a year, or maybe more.
I can’t wait to get her alone so I can ask her.
THE AIR IS heavy with moisture after the storm and in the distance, I see more lightning on the horizon, so I suspect there’s more instability coming. That isn’t why Isabel and I all but run from the cab to the front door. Unlike Friday night, we’re not rushing to make an impulsive mistake now—our steps are sure and our shared purpose is clear.
I open the front door and Isabel slips inside after me. I hang my keys on the hook, and Isabel waits, close to me but not touching. When I turn back to her, we just stare at one another, a question hanging in the air between us.
“What’s the next step?” I ask her. “It’s probably too late to stop the divorce. I don’t even know if I want to—” I break off when she frowns “—let me explain, Bel. I just mean...that era of our lives is over. Whatever happens between us now is new...a new depth of intimacy. New trust. A fresh start.”
Her smile returns. It feels like the first rays of the morning sun breaking on my face after the longest night of my life. She launches herself at me and her arms are around my neck and her lips are against mine.
I catch her shoulders in my hands and say hastily, “Wait—should we sit down first? Talk some more?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Isabel laughs. “But you’ve shared so much of yourself with me this weekend. All I want to do right now is get very, very naked with you, as soon as humanly possible. There’ll be time to talk later.”
“I can get on board with that plan.” I grin, and then she’s kissing me and we’re walking blindly to the stairs, crashing into walls and stumbling as we go. At the staircase, Isabel throws a flirty wink over her shoulder and sprints up ahead of me, two steps at a time. I chase her up, and when I reach the master bedroom—our bedroom—I find her waiting for me, standing by the bed.
I leave the light off as I step slowly toward her. I’m savoring the way she looks in the semidarkness of the bedroom, trying to imprint this to memory. The drapes are open, and over the water beyond the house, lightning flickers, illuminating her silhouette. When we’re face-to-face, she starts to unzip her hoodie, but I catch her hands in mine.
“We have all the time in the world now, Bel,” I whisper. “Let’s take this slow. I want to savor every single second with you this time around.”
I’m not actually sure why that’s sexy, but apparently it is, because Isabel gives a helpless little moan and then her mouth is on mine and she’s tugging impatiently to drag my shorts down.
“We do have all the time in the world,” she mutters. “We’ll do it slowly next time.”
I laugh, and break apart from her to strip, and she’s laughing, too, as she kicks her outer clothing away. Now, she’s standing before me in the red bikini. Before she can remove it, I trail one finger slowly from her collarbone to the skin above the cups of the bikini top.
“I kept my eyes to myself today when you were standing on that swim platform in this bikini,” I tell her. “It was the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done, but I did it.”
“What a gentleman. And now you get your reward.”
She reaches up behind her neck and tugs the bow to the halter top. It comes undone in one smooth movement, and the cups fall forward, leaving her breasts free. I drink her in, watching as her nipples pull tighter under the attention of my gaze, watching as her chest rises and falls as her breathing comes faster.
Isabel slides her hands slowly down her body, tucks her thumbs under the sides of the briefs and pushes them down her legs to kick them away. When she stands, I bend to kiss her, and she wraps her arms around my neck and then falls back onto the bed, dragging me with her. Soft, teasing kisses quickly become urgent and clumsy.
I sit up away from her on the bed, leaving her lying stretched out before me, all so that I can stare down at her in the moonlight. I run my hand over her skin, from the tips of her breasts, across her stomach, back up to her neck. I run the pads of my fingers over her mouth, and then drag them down slowly again, to toy at the hair at the junction of her legs.
Isabel hisses in a breath and sinks into the bed, letting her legs fall open. I’m fixated on a task again. This time, it’s touching her in all of the ways she likes best, stroking and rubbing her until she’s so wet, she’s writhing around on the bed like she’s in a fever.
“Paul,” she gasps after a while.
“Hmm?” I say innocently.
She growls at me, sits up and pushes me down onto my back, then straddles me and kisses me. I can feel her, wet and hot against my erection. The anticipation of sliding home has turned my brain to absolute mush when she breaks away from me and asks, “Should I run downstairs and get your wallet?”
I look at her blankly. “My wallet? Now?”
“I’m asking if we need a condom, Paul,” she blurts, flushing. She avoids my gaze. “It’s totally up to you. I haven’t been with anyone else, and I still have my IUD.”
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry. Right. No, I haven’t been with anyone else either.”
“I’m relieved I don’t have to be jealous, and I’m even more relieved I don’t have sprint downstairs to get that condom.”
“Isabel,” I whisper, laughing softly. “I couldn’t even bring myself to take my wedding ring off. Plus, I lasted like twenty seconds on Friday night. Did you really think I’d been with anyone else since you left?”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” She gives me a grin, then bends to kiss me again. “That was the best twenty seconds of my year.”
And then we’re kissing again, and I can’t stop touching her—my hands roam up and down her back, along the taut lines of her hips and ass, up to touch her hair and to cup her breasts. When she shifts and takes me into her body, I feel a swell of emotion. It builds and builds as she begins to rock against me, until it’s a tsunami of feeling—more than physical pleasure, more than just relief and happiness. There’s a throb in my chest and a prickle in my eyes and as I stare up at her while she moves against me, my vision suddenly blurs.
Isabel pauses and touches my cheek gently, just the way she did in the water earlier today. This time, when she lifts her finger away, she holds it up to show me the drop of moisture she’s collected. “You’re crying,” she whispers.
“I guess I am.”
“You don’t cry.”
“Don’t doubt how I feel for you,” I whisper back. “Even if I don’t tell you often enough in the future, please don’t ever doubt it. There’s nothing more important in my life than this.”
Then she’s kissing me again, and soon I’m not sure which tears are mine and which are hers. That’s the real magic of this moment: we’re in it together. I match her thrust for thrust and feeling for feeling and if this is what partnership is supposed to feel like, I had it all so very wrong the first time around. There’s new depth here, new dimensions to explore with her. I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out the words to express to her how I feel, but I know I’ll happily spend the rest of my life trying. I wrap my arms around Isabel’s back, holding her tight against me, somehow still not close enough even though I’m literally inside her.
“I’ll never get enough of you,” I say against her lips. “Never.”
She whimpers in response, and her nails dig into my arms as she suddenly tenses, then comes with a groan. That’s it for me, too—she pulses around me and I’m coming and coming, my release leaving me limp and dumb. Isabel collapses over me, and I keep my arms around her and hold her hard up against me.
“I love you,” I whisper. I don’t know if there’s some social convention here—does the clock reset? Do we date again first, and is there a right time to say I love you to someone you never really stopped loving in the first place?
All I know is that love is what I feel, and that this time, I’ll say what I feel. If Bel isn’t ready to say it back, I’ll wait.
“I love you, too,” Isabel murmurs. “This might be hard to believe, but I don’t think I actually ever stopped.”
“Maybe the reason we fought each other so hard is that we didn’t really know how to fight for each other.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing you say things like that.”
For the third night in a row, I fall asleep with Isabel in my arms. This time, I slip into sleep with a smile on my face, because I know I’m going to be doing this very same thing every night for the rest of my life.