I’ve never told my friends the exact day I’m heading to Hawaii. They must know it’s soon, though. I’ve noticed a coolness this week, but I’m ignoring the tension. This isn’t about them, it’s about me. And I can’t wait to get on the plane.

While I haven’t given my friends my trip specifics, I have discussed the details with Daniel. I had to tell him, as I had to make arrangements for the kids.

Daniel made the discussion as difficult as possible, sighing irritably before cutting me off midsentence. “Just put all the info in an e-mail,” he said unkindly, and hung up on me.

I’m being punished. Again.

Fine. Punish me. But I’m not going to apologize for liking someone who likes me back. And Kai does like me. I can see it in the blue heat of his eyes, the set of his jaw, the long, slow way he has of looking at me, a sexy, hungry assessment that makes me think of dinner and dessert all at the same time. And I want to be dinner and dessert. In fact, I want to cook the dinner and serve dessert. I want to feed him the meal myself.

Sex at twenty is so different from sex at forty. All that talk about women coming into their own and peaking in their thirties—it’s true. Maybe not all women have this sexual revolution, but I have, and Kai is clearly the beneficiary. Thank God he’s still young enough to do. And do. And do….

Thinking about doing, I book a manicure/pedicure. I can’t wait until I leave on Thursday. I love going to Hawaii. And I don’t have to stay home just because no one else approves.

No one else approves.

Just one day later, my friends stage what can only be called an intervention.

Anne has rallied the troops, and they’ve trapped me at Nic’s house tonight, cornered me to talk some sense into me.

But they don’t know, they can’t seem to understand, that I’m not like them anymore. And I’ll never be like them again. At least not while I’m single.

And something else that they can’t, or won’t, understand is that I’m relieved to be single. Looking back, I see how unhappy I was.

It never crossed my mind that I’d feel trapped with Daniel. I never imagined in my wildest dreams we’d not only fall out of love, but would come to resent each other the way we did. Looking back now, I wonder if we were ever compatible, or was it just novelty? Newness?

Like what’s happened these past few months with Kai?

Novelty, newness, new. The new eventually becomes old. Novelty becomes ordinary. And then what?

What?