“Well, I’m not very good at this.” He laughed with some embarrassment. “I don’t know how to say it. You’ve only been back a few weeks. This is hard. I want you in my life. I can’t stand it when you’re not in my life. I want to know if we can make it work. People put together different kinds of marriages now, different from how they were in the fifties and sixties. It used to be that you had to have the same goals, the same ambitions, or you just couldn’t make it. We’ve talked about how you love your work and how I love to play…I wonder if it’s possible, if we try to compromise, for us both to have what we want and each other, too.”

“I’m a mother. When I look at the prospect of having a man in my life, I have to know if he’s interested in being a father.”

“I like your boys,” he said.

Now. Tell him now.

“I don’t know what kind of a father I’d be, but I know I wouldn’t be a terrible one. I get along fine with kids. But I’m not going to lie to you—I wouldn’t be hooking up with you just so I can have kids. It’s you, Leigh. I never got over you. I might never get over you. I don’t get along very well without you. I really regret that we lost each other before.”

“We never had a real courtship,” she said, but he was leaning toward her, his lips getting closer and closer. They stood just in front of the bedroom door.

“I’ll court you till you die…I promise…” His lips touched hers lightly, as if just testing the water. “I could get a lot of work done on the house this summer, and put you and the kids in it… You could vacuum sawdust when you’re not saving the world with your ethics paper.”

When he put his lips on hers and talked through his kiss, her legs turned to rubber and she felt that fierce longing that she had only known with John.

“John,” she said, stalling, but she didn’t move away from him, “have there been a lot of women?”

“You mean, do I sleep around?”

“I guess that’s what I mean.”

“No. After our breakup I did try to find someone who would help me forget you…but I couldn’t. And in the tradition of the decade, I played it very safe. It’s a whole new ball game—you have to keep a photocopy of your sexual history in your ski jacket, along with a note from your doctor. I’m okay. Soft in the head, but okay.”

“You love me,” she said, tears beginning to rise to her eyes.