Page 10 of Saving Forever
I feel like the conversation is unfinished, but I’m not sure what else to say.
“I guess I should go to bed,” she says finally, though she doesn’t move.
“Not yet,” I say quietly. “We can talk? Just for few minutes.”
“Okay.” She cocks her head. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me something about Holly that your husband should know.”
She frowns for a second and then nods. “Well, my favorite color is purple. I love dark chocolate, and the top three places to visit on my bucket list are Tahiti, China, and Sri Lanka.”
“Sri Lanka?” I ask in surprise.
She nods. “A friend in college was from there and she told me such wonderful stories about the beaches and the culture and the food… I want to go.”
“I never think about Sri Lanka,” I admit. “For me, I would like to go to Antarctica. See the penguins and the…” I frown. “Big pieces of ice?”
“Glaciers?”
“Yes!”
We grin at each other.
“I hear the Drake Passage is rough.”
“Yes, this is the sea that will bring together Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.”
“Yes. They say the waves can be over fifty feet high.”
I grimace. “Is good I have strong stomach!”
We laugh.
“I would go with you,” she says after a moment. “If, you know, you wanted to go.”
“We cannot,” I say glumly. “Is best to go from October to March. I have hockey.”
“Oh.” She looks almost as disappointed as I felt when I looked into it. “What about during the All-Star Break?”
I shake my head. “Is not enough time. Two days just to cross Drake Passage.”
“You’ve done your research.”
I nod. “As you say—bucket list. Sadly, I cannot go until I retire.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Also, I would like to visit Japan.”
“That’s on my list as well.”
“For the summer, when we go on honeymoon…where do you like to go?”
“You choose,” she says quickly. “You’re paying for it.”
I shake my head. “This is not how marriage works. We must…compromise? Yes? We have business arrangement but also we are friends now. I would like to go somewhere we both enjoy.”
I watch a flicker of surprise cross her features before she says, “Tell me the other places on your list.”
