Page 5

“I would.”

He sighs. “Jesus Christ. Okay. I can’t believe I am telling the story of my life’s biggest failure to a complete stranger. A charming, lunatic stranger, but a stranger nonetheless.”

“Thanks for the compliment. And quit stalling.”

His palms are up in a defensive stance again. “Okay, okay. Kim and I met in college, dated, got married when I started law school. We’re both from Minnesota but managed to get jobs in Wisconsin—Milwaukee actually—so we moved. It was good for a while, a few years, but then came the talk of children. I’ve always wanted kids and she said she’s never dreamt of being a mother but might do it for me.”

I nod.

“Only she kept dragging her feet. She wanted us to buy a house, then for us to hit this or that career milestone, and before you know it, we’ve been married eight years and she’s still not sure if it’s the right time.”

“So you broke up?”

“Not right away. The thing is, she did get pregnant. One of those things where birth control pills lose their efficacy if you take antibiotics. I was ecstatic at first—everything I’d ever wanted was coming together. But Kim got more and more subdued with each passing day.”

“She wasn’t happy to be pregnant?”

“No.” His face twists at the memory. “Then she had a miscarriage. I was devastated and she seemed so ... relieved. Overjoyed, even. I... I couldn’t believe it. It broke my heart that she was so happy to be rid of it.”

I meet his eyes and he looks so wounded, there’s no way he’s making this up. Or if he is, I’m sitting with the next Ted Bundy, and this is the last anyone will have seen of me.

I reach out and squeeze his hand. “I’m so sorry, Joe.”

“Thank you,” he mutters, looking at my hand on his.

“Then what happened?”

“That was the beginning of the end. We started fighting; we’d never fought before. I couldn’t forgive her. Her relief. She said I was imagining things. But I wasn’t. I know I wasn’t. And eventually we had a big showdown, and she told me she’d never wanted to have children, period. That I was the asshole who didn’t love her enough to stay together without the kids.”

I squeeze his fingers. He squeezes mine back.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It was almost three years ago. Two since the papers were signed. I moved out, quit my job, and moved here.”

I watch him in silence for a long moment, before I whisper, more to myself than to him, “Kind of like me.”

“Kind of like you what?”

“Never mind.” I pull back.

He grabs my hand again. “No, I want to know.”

I shake my head. “Nope. Not yet. You haven’t finished telling me how you’d started finding me delightful before we even met.”

A warm chuckle rattles Joe’s chest. “Well, I noticed you when you walked by me. I noticed you were tall. I noticed you didn’t want to be noticed, with that hood on”—he reaches to push it off my head—“sitting here in the corner, scowling. I saw you move the chairs, to make sure no one sat down to bother you.”

I smile. “I guess that explains why you brought your chair with you.”

“Sure does.” He returns the smile. As our eyes meet, a bit of warmth pools in my chest. “I kept glancing at you,” he says, “and I could see a little bit of your hair, and how smooth and creamy your skin looked.”

I’m sure I’m blushing now. This is ... quite unexpected.

“And I loved how I could see the different emotions cross your face when you were focused on the game—”

I slap myself on the forehead. “Shit! The game! We’ve been yakking it up and the second quarter already started!”

He straightens and checks the score. “Doesn’t look like we’ve missed much.”

“That was beautiful, by the way,” I say. “What you said about me earlier. Beautiful in a little too earnest, maybe trying-a-little-too-hard way.”