But it wouldn’t be just like this, would it? Because Beau would be there. Or he wouldn’t be there, because… why would Beau Rochester want to sit at a thing called a Microbrew Meetup? And if he were close, but not with me, I’d miss him the entire time. Just like I do now, only I’d have the option to walk from the café into his arms in less than ten minutes. The way I feel about Beau makes it hard to leave him and even harder to be apart for any length of time.

Would it really be any different if we moved here? Or would I still feel like an outsider?

Forget all that for now. I lose myself in the flow of conversation. Whatever happens this fall will happen. I’ll make a choice, and Beau will support me in that choice, and it will all be okay.

A small part of me insists that not everything will turn out. There’s plenty of difficult shit going on right now. Joe Causey’s trial. Getting used to life without Paige. There are no guarantees.

“All we have is this moment,” one of the guys says. I have no idea how they got there in the conversation, but that’s okay.

Someone passes a joint. I hesitate, but then… why not? All we have is this moment.

Whatever was left of my trepidation disappears after that. I find myself agreeing to plans for next week. For the fall, if I get in. I exchange phone numbers with Grace and promise to text her later. Kevin gives me his email. The meetup is only supposed to last an hour, but it goes on longer. Nobody seems like they’re in any hurry to leave. Ten more minutes, I keep thinking. Ten more, ten more.

It’s been another hour when I turn my phone over to check the time. Beau looks at me from my screensaver. It’s a photo of him I took before construction started on our new house. He’s standing right where our kitchen is now, his hands in his pockets. His expression is severe, but there’s a smile in his dark eyes. It wrenches my heart.

I think of what I told him as I walked out the door. It lasts until midnight, but I don’t think I’ll stay long. Except now it’s already eleven, and I’m still here.

It’s not late, per se, but I feel guilty. Like my loyalty to him wavered. All it took to make me lose my sense of what mattered was a microbrew and a single drag on a joint. I don’t like that I lost my focus.

I get my purse out and put a twenty on the table. “I have to head out,” I say. “It was so great to meet you.”

“Oh, don’t go,” Grace says. “It’s so early!”