I look up and meet her gaze in the mirror. “Jessica was in an accident while I was gone.”

“Is she okay?”

“Broken arm, broken leg, concussion.”

“No way.”

“I couldn’t get back quickly. I had to catch three different flights, fly all night. It was horrible. I felt so horrible.”

“But why does that mean you can’t go back to Hawaii anymore?”

I shrug.

“You liked Hawaii,” she persists. “You were having fun with your surfer guy.”

“I’m forty, Michelle. I’m a mom—”

“Yeah, I’m a mom, too, but it doesn’t mean we’re dead.”

“You’re not even thirty.”

“So?”

I just shake my head. “I can’t hurt the kids. I just can’t be that selfish.”

“And you being happy is selfish?”

There’s no answer. My eyes burn and my throat burns, and I return my attention to my magazine. It’s either that or cry.

We don’t always get everything we want. We don’t always get what we want or need, don’t always get the guy, the love, or the happy ending. But that’s life.

Kai doesn’t call. And I don’t call him. It’s over, we both know it’s over, no point in dragging this out.

But the bad, sad, empty feeling inside me doesn’t go away. One day becomes two days, two days becomes a week, and every day I feel worse, not better.

The ending with Kai reminds me of the ending with Daniel and the ending with the boyfriend I had before Daniel. Endings are just that, endings, and they never get any easier.

You’d think, though, after your heart has been batted about a few times, you’d know how to pick up all the pieces, dust them off, put them under your arm, and walk away quickly, albeit with dignity. But it never quite happens that way. The heart has this terrible, horrible, impossible ability to keep hoping.

To keep believing.

Goddamn heart with its goddamn optimism.

I wish for once my heart would pack up, move on. Get a good job as a lighthouse keeper on a rocky inlet and leave hope and love to those who can handle the ups and downs better.

I do not handle ups and downs well at all.

I am still, at forty, too romantic, too emotional, too sensitive, too intense. I am still slightly breathless and eager about this experiment called life, and it’s aggravating, it really is. Especially now that I am back to hurt, back to lonely, back to crying in my pillow and the crook of my arm when no one is looking.

I fell hard for Kai, I don’t know how else to put it. I just fell for him, but now it’s over and I’ve got to pick myself up off the ground and continue on.

With dignity.

Dignity.