Page 69 of When We Had Forever
His eyes widen. He blinks, apparently struck dumb by the fact that I’ve abandoned our script. Long moments pass, punctuated by the tick of his tabletop clock.
“Say something.”
“I...” He swallows. “All right.”
“All right like, ‘Let’s go to therapy’? Or all right like, ‘Go ahead and book a ticket’?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose with the hand holding his pencil. “I mean, all right, book the tickets. Jesus, Mina. Just... Where’re we going?”
I nearly choke. I can hardly believe my ears.Greece, I want to say, but I know that chance has come and gone. Best choose something that doesn’t involve crossing international borders. Less to explain to my mother that way, too. “Hawaii.”
“Okay,” he says. “Then choose the dates and book us in first class. Put it all on the Mastercard.”
My jaw slackens. Apparently we’re both breaking form tonight, because for him to give me carte blanche to interfere with his work...
I don’t dare complete the thought, even to myself. There’s something about gift horses and mouths that suits this situation perfectly.
“Thank you,” I say. “Wow. I love you so much.” I turn to go.
“Mina?”
I glance back to find him still swiveled toward me, his back to the desk. “Yeah?”
“I love you, too. You do know that, right?”
“I do.”
A few beats of silence pass before he asks, “Do you still want the dog?”
“Yes.” I smile. “I still want the dog.”
A week later, we bring home a shaggy, twelve-year-old mutt with a coppery coat and wretched breath. The shelter warns us she’ll have to take special pills for the rest of her life because of an issue with her kidneys—the reason her last family surrendered her, apparently—but I don’t care. I’m in love even before she flops down beside my desk in the living room.
We name her Penny.
“Just don’t let her up on the furniture,” Michael says.
I reach over my chair arm to pat her head. “I don’t think she could get onto the furniture if she tried.”
He cracks a smile. “Good point. Maybe you were onto something with the whole no-puppy thing.”
I smile back. “Maybe I was.”
In the weeks that follow, things change. I no longer write in solitude—Penny keeps me company, stinky breath and all, and Michael starts getting up ridiculously early, like he used to. He even starts running again. I can tell by the shadows beneath his eyes that the late nights and early mornings are taking their toll, but when I ask why, he only flips his shirt up to display newly chiseled abs.
“We’re going to the beach,” he says. “Do I really have to explain?”
My stomach clenches. I would never call him chubby, but the eight-packhadslowly coalesced into something more like a two-pack. Now...well, he looks like he did at twenty-five.
Predictably, we end up having sex right then and there, him hoisting me up against the wall and driving himself into me until I unravel.
When he puts me down again, my knees make a reluctant agreement to keep holding me upright. “I think we need to do that every day on vacation,” I slur. “Twice a day.”
I expect a smile, but he gives me a serious look. Not his normal I’m-working-right-now-can-we-do-this-later look, but something else. “Actually, what do you think about no sex on vacation? Just you and me and...us staring at the stars together. Or however you described it.”
“No sex?” A thoughtful note sneaks into my voice. “You mean like when we first met?”
A beat of silence passes. “Yeah. Exactly.”
