Chapter 2

“What have you been up to?” he asked.

“Work. Six days a week.”

“Are you still feeding homeless people?”

I had volunteered at a local shelter during holidays to feed not only the homeless, but also my insatiable need to do the right thing, the Good Samaritan in me.

“On weekends,” I answered. “I’m a chef during the day.”

“Where? I’ll have to stop in.”

I wiped grease from my mouth with the edge of a crinkled napkin. “The new Greek restaurant that opened three months ago on Main.”

“I’ve been gone a while.”

“Too long.”

We stared at each other momentarily, seconds turning to minutes, and I felt like a voyeur, ogling his attractive face and impressive body. His smile was beautiful, flirtatious, and cordial. I wanted to kiss him, but I reprimanded myself, turning away toward a group of children darting past us, laughing and screaming playfully, a dark brown Great Dane chasing after them, following closely behind.

Dave raised his beer to his mouth and emptied it.

I devoured the last bite of my Michigan, stood, and headed for the concession stand for a cold bottle of lemonade. “Another beer?” I asked him.

He raised his empty bottle in the air. “You know me like a book.”

When I returned, I watched Dave uncap his Bud Light, and toss the lid on the grass beside him. He was stretched out, his sinewy legs the result of being a devoted runner in high school and college.

My idea of exercise was walking to the refrigerator late at night for a midnight snack. “That hot dog hit the spot.”

“The carcinogens in it will kill you.” He winked.

“You never had an appetite for good food,” I teased him, staring out into the mass of eager faces awaiting this year’s fireworks.

His robust laugh prompted me to smile.

“I’ve missed that beautiful sound,” I said.

He fingered a bubble of foam dribbling out of the corners of his mouth.

I sat up, Indian-style, facing him.

He caught me staring at him, committing his face to memory. Again.

He licked beer from his fingertips.

I gawked, openmouthed, at the way his lips puckered around the edges of his moistened fingers. It turned me on. I shifted nervously, folding and uncrossing my legs.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, shaking off the engaging thoughts of us together from a year ago, playing out in my head like a spool of film, over and over.

“Waiting for the fireworks.”

I cocked my head. “Come on. After a year, you didn’t drive an hour all this way to Oakville just to watch fireworks.”

He peeled off the label from his bottle and then looked up at me. “What I wanted to say to you on the phone last night had to be said in person.”

I nodded. “When we talked on the phone, it felt like you’d never left.” I shrugged. “Like you were just a hop, skip, and jump across town.”

The bulge of his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down languidly, like a marble caught in his throat.

He gulped his beer, kept quiet, and glanced out at the tranquil waters of Lake Champlain as night descended, the pink sky turning a dark shade of bruised eggplant.

“Even though we’re many miles apart, I think about you every day,” he said. “I’m glad I called you.”

We had been reticent for the last year. “What went wrong a year ago?” I asked.

He turned to me, pulling his knees up to his chest, and exhaling. “I wanted space. I was too confined. Claustrophobic.”

“I never knew how you really felt until now,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. What happened a year ago was my problem, not yours.” His face pinched, as if thwarted. “Maybe my being an introvert drove us apart.”

“I think that was part of it.”

He nodded.

“Did you miss me?” I asked.

“Every day.”

“I missed waking up to you in our bed and cooking you breakfast before you went off to work.” I smiled at the epilogue of our lives a year ago. “Two eggs, over easy; one toast, slightly burnt, buttered; a glass of orange juice, never from concentrate.”

He smirked. “You know me well.”

“A year’s worth of good times,” I reminded him.

“Not all of them were happy.”

“Nobody’s relationship is perfect.”

He took a slow, deep breath. Held it. Shook his head. Exhaled, drank his beer.

“What did you miss about me?” I asked.

He tossed the empty bottle between his legs. “Your loyalty to keeping the rough patches of our life tolerable.”

“Is that another reason why you split?” I tilted my head to the side and added, mostly as an afterthought, “When things got rough…”

He turned away from me, looking out at a family of four—mom, dad, two boys, sitting on a blanket across the grass, arms slung over each other’s shoulders, laughing.