minute, she wished that she had thrown herself into a meaningless fling or two in the time she’d been alone. She wished she’d fed the part of her that wanted someone else’s hands and skin and pulse under her fingers. It was too disorienting, too delectable and scary, thinking about this suggestion. Her husband was not the only person she’d kissed, but he was the only person she’d had sex with, and it was like the grown-adult yes, please and the high school crush and the hard-won wariness were all trying to squeeze through a door at the same time, and it was chaos.
“I’m not ready,” she said. “And I don’t want to get into this when I’m not ready, because…I’d regret it, and I’d regret…regretting it. Do you know what I mean?”
“Sure,” he said. “It sounds a little bit like ‘maybe later.’ ”
“I know,” she said, cringing with her whole face. “And I would never do that if it weren’t a—”
“Special case, no, I get it. Totally fine. But I’m going to assume this is the answer, so if it is ‘maybe later,’ then later, you’re going to have to give me some kind of a go sign if you change your mind.”
“A go sign? I have to give you a go sign?”
“Yeah. That’ll be up to you, to give the go sign.”
She took this in for a beat. “All right, what do you think it should be?”
“The go sign?”
“Yeah.”
“I think it should be ‘go.’ ”
“That’s the go sign? The go sign is ‘go’?”
“That’s the go sign.”
“All right. Got it. Hey, don’t burn my sandwich.”
As he stood at the stove, she mouthed it to herself, just to see what it would feel like.
Go.
A COUPLE OF THURSDAYS LATER, EVVIE was watching Halls of Power when there was a knock at her door. Who would be knocking after ten at night? But she looked out the window and saw Andy’s car in the driveway, so she went over to the door and swung it open. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Yeah, everybody’s fine,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I was at my mom’s, and I came straight here. I need to talk. Is that okay?” His hands were stuffed into his pockets, but she could see a little girl’s hair tie around his wrist, meaning someone had taken her braid out over at Grandma’s.
“Of course, sure. Come in. Do you need a beer? Or a cup of tea or something? Are you sure you’re all right?”
“No, I’m okay, thanks.” He sat on her couch, but he sat forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced together. “I need to talk to you about something, and I tried to think of a good buildup, but I don’t think I have one.”
“You’re scaring me,” Evvie said, sitting next to him. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was over at my mom’s, and we got talking about you and how you’re doing.” Eveleth found this kind of confession mortifying, but Andy kept going. “And we got talking about the night that Tim had the accident.”
“Okay,” she said, and she started to pick at one fingernail with another.
“My mom told me that one of the things that made her sad was that she realized that you had thought, when you came to the emergency room, that Tim was hurt. And that you’d expected to spend a long time at the hospital with him, which she thought was touching. She talked about how much you had to have loved him to have gotten ready to stay as long as it took. ‘That girl packed her bags for the long haul,’ is what she said.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling her mouth dry out. “What made her say that?”
“Do you remember that you couldn’t drive yourself home that night? And so I drove you back here? And my mom had somebody drive her to the hospital the next day to pick up your car?”
Eveleth stared helplessly at the carpet. “I don’t think I remembered who got the car, it’s all sort of a blur. But that makes sense.”
“That’s how she knew you’d planned to stay. She told me she saw that you’d brought a suitcase to the hospital. To sit by the bed. To wait with him. She told me she looked in the back of your car when she was picking it up, and she saw it. She talked about how sad she always thought it was that you turned out not to need