“Tell Roger thanks,” Elliott said, pulling out a chair for me as best he could on the sand.

Elliott sat and grabbed my hand hungrily across the table. Elliott always had this almost palpable need to touch me. And it was one of the things that had made him so irresistible to me. I was trying to ignore it, but I had to admit that I felt the same. But I was also afraid of what loving him this much could cost me, could cost him.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just have to make sure this is real and you’re here and this is happening.”

I took a deep breath, pulling my hand away. I wanted to sink into how good it felt to be with him, to ignore that every man I had given my life to was gone. But that wasn’t reality. For almost a year together, I had ignored that. And then the truth had sunk in. I was in love with Elliott; he was in love with me. And after a year, a couple in their late thirties (him) and midforties (me) had to move forward. I would have to make hard decisions about what came next. We couldn’t just sail along with Elliott at his house and me at the mommune. And all the old fear that I’d spent so much time and energy chasing away had crept in. What if I did change my life? What if I let myself really be with Elliott, full-force, all-in? And what if he died? I couldn’t let that happen. And so, I had let him go.

“Elliott…” I started. I didn’t know what came next. This was impossible. I wanted this. I wanted him. But I had no idea how to move forward.

Elliott shook his head. “Can I say something before you do?”

He had saved me. Because what was I going to say anyway?

“Al, you broke my heart.”

I bit my lip. I knew it, but I hated to hear him say it.

“I have spent three hundred forty-one days blaming you for my pure misery.”

My heart fluttered nervously. Had I read this all wrong? Was I here so he could tell me off?

Elliott leaned toward me. “And three days ago, I woke up, and I had an epiphany: I’m just as much to blame here as you are. Because I never should have walked away from you.”

I thought back to that night on the beach, me sobbing, telling Elliott it was over. That I was cursed, that I couldn’t lose another man I loved. “Elliott, I was pretty firm in that decision,” I said. Broken and battered, but resolute.

He shook his head and looked me straight in the eye. “Alice, you love me.”