Page 60 of Accidental Blind Date

“They’re adorable. And they look just like you.”

“I don’t think so,” I shake my head. “They get all their good looks from their mother.”

There’s a bubble in the air between us at the mention of her and I realize why I haven’t gotten close to anyone since Tess died. Because the space is hard to fill.

“You could have told me,” she says. “About your wife. About the girls too.”

I stare forward, picking up a squishy toy off the floor and squeezing it in my palm. “I just like to keep things…separate. You know?”

“Because it hurts?”

“That. And it’s messy. Living your life as though the mother of your children didn’t die after the mother of your children did in fact die is very, very messy. If it had been up to me and my grief, I would have gotten rid of anything and everything that reminded me of her.”

“That’s terrible,” she says.

“It is. But that whole stages of grief thing…I hung out in the anger stage for a long, long…long time,” I admit, taking another generous sip of my wine.

“I get that. I mean, I’ve never lost a partner. But I have been divorced. Not that that is like this. At all. Wow…”

I can’t help but smile and I touch her leg reassuringly. “No, I understand how terrible that can be too.”

“He was…not a good guy. And when we split, I went through all the stages. Anger was some of the worst of times…but also the best. I smashed a wall plaque over a picket fence.”

“You smashed a wall plaque over a picket fence?” I echo.

“I did.”

“What did it say?”

“Soulmates,” she says. “It hung over our bed. And after he slept with someone else…someone who, and I quote, ‘had a tighter vagina and a tighter…everything else,’ I just took it out back so I could throw it in the dumpster, and I did. But first, I smashed it over the fence.”

“Did it break?” I ask.

“Hell yeah!” she lets out.

“Well then hell yeah. Did it feel good?”

“Also, hell yeah,” she says. “Well. Except for the part where the frame cut my hand open and I had to get thirteen stitches.”

“Wait what?” I ask, sitting up. “Let me see.”

She holds out her hand, and I take it. “Right there. A scar for life to remind me of my scar of a marriage. I was getting my hand stitched up, without proper anesthetics mind you, while he was out fucking a twenty-three-year-old blonde girl from NYU.”

“What?” I ask, her hand still in mine.

“Yeah,” Libby is smiling but it’s not real.

“That’s terrible.”

“Yeah,” she says, taking a sip of wine and finishing her glass. “It is.”

“He sounds terrible,” I say, my eyes on hers even though she is still staring down at her empty glass.

“Yeah. He was. But Tess wasn’t,” she looks up at me.

“No. She wasn’t,” I agree.

There’s a beat. And then, Libby turns to face me, her knees brushing my leg. And even through my jeans, I can feel the warmth. “I haven’t lost a spouse. But I do understand grief.”