“If Kai were older and had a different job, you wouldn’t care.”

“But he’s not older and he doesn’t have a different job, and if he showed you such a great time, it means he’s probably shown a hundred other women the same great time.”

“I don’t think he’s like that. He treated me really well, made special plans for my birthday—”

“He took you to an Italian restaurant. Big deal.”

“It was a big deal,” I say softly, looking up at her, my hurt cloaked. It’s not going to accomplish anything by getting into it with her. She doesn’t understand. She’s not where I am. She has a husband who comes home to her at night, a family for the weekends, all the usual things I used to know… I used to do.

But in the year I’ve been single, the invitations have declined, the support from others dwindled. It’s not that “our group” doesn’t care. They have simply returned to what they need to do—their families, their lives, their careers.

And I’m here trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do.

Not just for today, but for the future. For all the days ahead of me, the years of forty and forty-five, fifty, and so on.

If I’m not a wife but a mother, what does that make me?

Maternal? Nurturing? What about sexual?

Kai made me feel sexual. Kai made me feel like a woman for the first time in, oh… years.

Years.

“I’m going to go back,” I say, and this time it’s firm, no argument, nothing tentative in my voice. “I have to.”

Anne just looks at me, blue eyes somber, serious, with all the regret and reluctance one watches a fifteen-year-old boy with.

She thinks I’m in trouble.

And you know, I just might be.

Chapter Ten

Ten

After the kids are settled doing their homework, I head upstairs to my office and call Kai on his cell phone. He picks up before his voice mail comes on. “Hey, girl.”

Everything inside me goes warm. I take a quick, nervous breath. He’s still a stranger to me, yet he makes me want more.

More him. More me.

“What’s going on?” he asks, and I suddenly don’t know how to get the words out.

I want to come back…

I want to see you…

What if Anne’s right? What if he is like Adam Sandler’s character in 50 First Dates? What if Kai does have a different woman every week… if he didn’t like me but just wanted another conquest, another notch on his belt of female scalps? Scalps in bikinis.

“If I came back in a couple weeks, would you want to see me?” I blurt the words fast, not knowing how else to get them out.

“Yes.”