“I got a tan,” I answer, feeling smug and unusually secretive. The whole weekend with Kai still seems so unbelievable—surreal in the best sort of way. These island romances with gorgeous younger men don’t really happen, not to real women like me. There are two realities, you know: Hollywood reality and everyone else’s reality. What flies in Los Angeles doesn’t necessarily fly in Boise, Idaho, or Waco, Texas.

“You keep smiling,” Kristine notes dryly, setting aside the menu without even glancing at it. “That’s not like you.”

“No?” But I am smiling, and I think Kris is right. I haven’t smiled in a long, long time. In fact, I can’t remember when I last smiled this much. The muscles in my face feel warm, stretchy, and my insides keep fizzing like champagne at New Year’s.

“Talk,” Anne orders. “Tell us everything. Remember, we’re living through you.”

My friends are awesome. They love me to death, were incredible this last year while everything came apart and I had to put it back together again, but I know they don’t really understand what I’m going through. How can they? They’re all still married.

I remember a conversation we had last April when we were out for Nic’s fortieth birthday. Everyone went around the table and mentioned what wedding anniversary was coming up next—seventeen years, ten years, fourteen years, eleven years—and when it came to me, I said zero. I was trying to be funny, because I hadn’t yet reached my one-year anniversary of being divorced. My friends laughed, but beneath their laughter was tension and confusion. They were uncomfortable, and so was I. I’m one of them. But I’m not.

And they want to live through me. But then they don’t.

One of my eyebrows quirks. “I’m not sure you can handle it.”

“Oooh, I like a challenge,” Kris says. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Everyone laughs. I shake my head as if to say “You asked for it.” “I did meet someone.”

“Knew it,” Nic pounced.

“And…?” Anne prompts. “Where does he live, what does he do? Will you see him again?”

I picture Kai, and the warm fizzy inside me grows. I’m jet-lagged, wired, and excited all at the same time, and I’m not sure I’ve got the words to make them understand, to see what I saw, feel what I felt. After all, they know marriage and home, babies and family, and while I knew that once, I’m now alone and wide open, no longer a fortress of wedded stability and security.

“Start with his name,” commands Kris, ever logical.

“Kai.” I clutch my menu, press the rigid leather edge to my middle. I look from Anne to Nic and then to Kris. “Kai Carson.”

“Kai,” Nic repeats. “That’s an unusual name.”

“He’s an unusual guy.”