He still looks at me, a long, assessing glance that’s knowing even as it’s curious. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not what you want, girl.”

“You don’t know that—”

“And I’m not what you need.”

I stare at him, irritated as well as puzzled. “You don’t know what I need.”

“I know what you don’t need. You’re recently divorced. You’re an interior designer, and you’ve two great kids at home.”

“So?”

“So. I’m a surf instructor. This is my life. This is what I do.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yes, you do. It means we’re from two different worlds.”

This irks me. Of course we’re from different worlds. We live in different places, have different incomes, are different ages, but this is also part of the attraction. He’s not me, not my world, not anything I’ve known these past ten, twelve years in Seattle, and it’s exactly what I want. What I need. I look at Kai hard, trying to invest the full forty years of experience and wisdom into my expression. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“So you keep saying.” He’s smiling, though, teasing me. And then his smile fades. “But you’re a nice girl, Jacqueline. You don’t need me.”

I can’t figure out why his words are like pouring gasoline on fire. He makes me fight, resist, want whatever it is I’m not supposed to feel, whatever it is I want. And I want… what? Something. Something. Anything.

But not just anything. I want whatever it is he would give me.

And it’d be sex, and I don’t even know if it would be good. I don’t even know what sex with someone like Kai would be like, because I’ve grown old in the years of my marriage, I’ve changed, faded, aged.

I’ve become what I never thought I’d become, because on the TV shows I saw growing up—and I’m thinking Partridge Family and Brady Bunch here—women and wives are still perky. Women and wives never grow old or fade or go gray.

God help me, don’t let me go that way….

“I want to get a drink with you later, when you’re done with work.” I look at him, long and level, as cool as a cucumber and so unlike me. “And I’ll buy. My treat.”

In my hotel room later that afternoon, I don’t know what to wear. Honestly, I don’t know what to wear. He’s young. Cute. Broke. Cool.

But broke. And yes, to paraphrase Kai, a surfer. He’s not going to dress up much, is he?