Page 42 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Libby

Hawthorne Lane

Libby’s side aches as she picks up the cloth napkin in her lap, dabs at the corners of her eyes. She can’t remember the last time she laughed like this. The last time she felt so light.

“You don’t know how much I needed that,” she tells Peter.

He beams at her over the table, the rounded tops of his cheeks rising to meet the frames of his glasses. “Happy to be of service,” he replies.

Libby can tell that he means it too. That he’s happy simply because he made her happy.

Maybe she was wrong, maybe this dating thing doesn’t have to be complicated at all.

She’d made it out to be this looming, frightening obstacle in her head, but in reality, it’s rather nice to be sitting here in this quaint little restaurant with such pleasant company.

The problem, she realizes, is that she was looking at this all wrong—she’d looked at dating someone new as the end of a chapter of her life, the final nail in the coffin of her dying marriage, but she sees now that it’s not an end, it’s a beginning.

The beginning of something that feels as airy and unencumbered as champagne bubbles.

“It still feels so strange to be sitting here with you, live and in person,” she tells him, spinning the stem of her wineglass between her fingers.

He looks different outside of the pixelated square she’s used to looking at on his dating profile, better somehow.

She’d come to associate him with that one static image, the parameters of him rigid and unchanging.

But here, in person, he’s so much more. There’s a brightness to him, a realness that even the best camera can’t capture.

“I know what you mean,” he replies. “But at the same time, it kind of isn’t strange, if that makes sense? Maybe it’s because we’ve already been talking for a while, but I don’t know, sitting here with you, it doesn’t feel like a first date. It feels like we’re old friends.”

“Friends, then?” Libby smiles playfully. “Is that the direction we’re going in?”

Even in the soft glow of the candlelight between them, Libby can see him blush.

Peter adjusts his glasses. “Er, no. At least I hope not. Gosh, I’m really awful at this, aren’t I?” He laughs, and it flows as easily from his mouth as water in a brook. “What I meant to say is that even though we’ve just met, I feel like I’ve known you all my life.”

He looks at Libby, the light from the candle dancing playfully across his features, and it causes something to stir in her.

A feeling that has long lain dormant. He really is quite attractive.

It was hard to see it at first, behind the rather dated way he styles his hair, the thick rims of his glasses—Peter isn’t the type to fuss over his appearance—but sitting across from him now, it’s all she sees. “I know exactly what you mean.”

There’s a silence then, but for once, Libby doesn’t rush to fill it. She finds that she’s comfortable here, that she can exist in the gaps between their words.

“I’m glad we did this,” Peter says. “I was pretty nervous about tonight.”

“Were you?” Libby hadn’t considered that, that Peter might have been feeling the same way she was about meeting. He seemed so confident, so sure, in his messages.

“Well.” He drums his fingers on the tablecloth. “To be honest, this is the first date I’ve been on in…hell, I don’t even know. Years.”

“Me too,” Libby admits, her voice small.

“I was afraid I’d forgotten how to do this. That it would be awkward and I’d make a fool of myself trying to impress you.”

Libby’s fingers rise to her lips, covering the smile that’s crept onto her face. “I was feeling exactly the same way.”

Peter laughs, and Libby finds that she loves the sound of it. “And just look at us now. This isn’t even the slightest bit awkward.”

Libby’s smile grows wider. “Not in the least. But seriously, though, I didn’t realize that this was your first time on a date since…since your…”

“You can say divorce, Libby, it’s not a curse word.” He chuckles. “And, yes, it is. I know we talked a little bit about this in our messages, but I was married for a long time. And when it ended, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be ready to move on.”

“What changed?” Libby asks. Maybe it’s strange, asking Peter’s advice about how to move on from her own marriage while she sits here across the table from him on their first date, but somehow she feels like he understands.

“I’m not sure, to be honest with you. I think one day I just got tired of being alone, you know?

And I realized that the longer I waited to put myself out there, the harder it was going to be to do it.

So I signed up for a few dating sites. I never really seemed to connect with anyone, though.

If I’m being frank, I’m not sure my heart was in it before.

I was sort of just going through the motions, edging into the whole dating thing slowly.

But then you popped up as a match, and, I don’t know, something just felt different this time. I wanted to know you.”

Libby feels a warm flush spread across her cheeks.

Maybe this really could work. Or maybe it will crash and burn.

There’s no way for Libby to know for sure.

But in this moment, it feels so good, so very good, to be understood, to talk to someone who has lived through this difficult thing she’s been grappling with on her own for so long.

Their waiter appears beside their table, holding out a leather billfold. “Would you care to see a dessert menu?”

Libby looks at Peter across the table. She isn’t ready for the night to end. She hopes he’s feeling it too, this connection that seems to be growing between them.

“Life is too short to skip dessert,” Peter says. He tosses Libby a wink as he takes the menu from the waiter’s hand.

—

Libby feels like she’s floating as she drives home.

It was a wonderful evening. She and Peter stayed at the restaurant talking, sipping wine, sampling decadent desserts, lost for hours in their own little world until they noticed the staff mopping the floors, the hostess yawning at her stand waiting to close up for the night.

Libby can’t remember the last time she smiled so much, the last time she had so much to say.

She found that Peter was easy to talk to.

Libby loved the way he really seemed to listen to her, never once reaching for his phone, never glancing down at his watch.

She’d forgotten what it was like to have someone take an interest in her.

She takes the Sterling Valley exit off the highway and she’s back on more familiar roads.

She hopes she didn’t talk Peter’s ear off tonight, but she doesn’t think he minded.

He’d asked her a lot of questions and even suggested a second date at the end of the evening.

Libby smiles again just thinking about it.

“Listen,” he said as he walked her back to her car, opened the door for her. “I know this is terrible form, and I’m supposed to do that whole thing where I don’t call you for four days. Or is it three?”

“Pretty sure it’s four.”

“Right, four, then. But would you mind terribly if we skipped all that? I like you, Libby. And I’m not interested in playing games at this stage in my life. So if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just tell you right now: I’d like to see you again.”

“I’d like to see you again too, Peter.” She smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling.

He tucked one of her blond curls behind her ear, his touch as gentle as a brush of feathered wings. “Then it’s a date. Just tell me when.”

Libby rolls to a stop at an intersection, the red light suspended above the street glowing bright in the dark night.

It takes her a moment to register where she is.

If she makes a right at this intersection, she’ll be headed back home, to Hawthorne Lane, but if she makes a left, the road will take her to Bill’s town house.

Libby realizes with a start that this is the first time all night that she’s thought of Bill.

Of Heather. Tonight, with Peter, was the first time in the past year that her mind hasn’t been consumed with regrets over mistakes she’d made in her marriage, with worries about the future.

Tonight, she wasn’t Bill’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, she wasn’t Lucas’s mom, she was just… Libby. And that was enough.

Libby doesn’t know whether things will work out with Peter in the long run—after all, this was only their first date—but she knows now that either way, she’ll be okay.

As the light turns green, she looks in both directions down the empty stretches of pavement, at the crossroads of her life.

She flicks on her right-turn signal. It’s time for her to move on.