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BEN IS WAITING FOR me at my house when I get back from Fellingham’s, where the last thing I told Jimmy was not to do anything crazy with Sonny Blum.

“ Now you tell me not to go crazy?” he said. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”

Ben has already walked and fed Rip and is watching a Knicks preseason game on television, a glass of red wine in his hand. He is one of those Knicks fans who keeps convincing himself that this is going to be their year. I keep telling him that I’m pretty sure there are meds he can take for that.

“Not human meds,” he says.

From the couch he smiles at me and says, “And how was your day, dear?”

I ask if he has heard about Allen Reese, and he says he has, he got an alert on his phone.

“You want to talk about that?” he asks.

“Eventually,” I say. “But there’s something else I’ve been waiting to tell you, but I wanted to wait until we were together.”

“Oh, shit,” he says. “You’re breaking up with me.”

“Nah,” I say, tossing my bag on the side table. “I’ve got too much time invested in you at this point.”

“That’s very practical of you,” he says, then pats the couch as a way of telling me to come sit next to him.

I do, close enough to him that Rip can’t even think about trying to insinuate himself between us.

“Okay,” he says, as we turn slightly to face each other. “What’s your big news?”

I take a deep breath.

“The big news of the day is that the tumor got smaller.”

He tilts his head just slightly to the side, and his eyes get bigger. Or maybe deeper.

“Would you mind terribly much repeating that?”

I do, then say, “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

He takes a great, big deep breath now. And for a moment, I think I might see tears forming in the amazing eyes of the normally implacable and unflappable Dr. Ben Kalinsky.

But I’ll never know if he’s about to cry or not, and neither will he, because then he’s kissing me, like it’s our first overheated kiss all over again. Like we really are back to acting like teenagers in the front seat of a parked car.

When we come up for air, he says, “We need to celebrate.”

“I really don’t feel like drinking wine,” I say.

“Who said anything about effing wine?”

He’s up and gone before I’m even awake, on his way to surgery.

By the time the sun is all the way up, I am on the back patio, having walked and fed Rip and made a cup of coffee for myself and eating the Goldberg’s flagel I’ve defrosted and toasted and slathered in cream cheese.

I see the hummingbird then.

They’re supposed to be gone by now.

They’re always gone before October and I know that. But every year, every single one, I stubbornly keep the feeder full of sugar water, checking it every morning in the hope that I haven’t said good-bye to this year’s hummingbirds for good.

And now here, out of nowhere, is my stray.

The color is a dull shade of green, telling me it’s a female. She looks beautiful to me, hovering in the air, staring at me, as if to say, What are you looking at?

I stare back, not moving a muscle for fear of scaring her off, unspeakably happy in this moment.

She’s still here and so am I.

I watch her until she’s at the feeder. When she’s finished there, she’s gone, disappearing into the rest of the morning, or maybe for good.

I tell myself that even if she is gone for now, I’ll see her in the spring.

When I still plan to be here.

I get up and walk back into the house, smiling.

Taking another win.

Trying to convince myself that maybe I’m on a roll.