Like I’d start taking those walks I told myself I would take. Going to those Pilates classes at that studio just down the street that looked really cool and opened up two years ago (and yet, I had not stepped foot in it once). Driving up to the mountains and hiking a trail. Hitting the trendy shops on Broadway or in Highlands Square and spending a day roaming. Using that foot tub I bought (but never took out of the box) and giving myself a luxurious pedicure. Calling my friends to set up a girls’ night out and putting on a little black dress (after I bought one, of course) and hitting the town to drink martinis or cosmopolitans or mojitos or whatever the cool drink was now.

Seeing a man looking at me and, instead of looking away, smiling at him. Perhaps talking to him. Definitely speaking back if he spoke to me. Accepting a date if he asked. Going on that date.

Maybe not going to bed alone.

Every day I thought about it. I even journaled about it (when I talked myself into making a change that day and being together enough to journal).

But I never did it.

None of it.

I thought all this as I drove home, then into my driveway and down the side of my house, parking in the courtyard at the back. I got out and went inside, stopping in my kitchen, realizing from all these thoughts something frightening in the extreme.

I was stuck in a rut.

Stuck in a rut that began twenty years ago on the front stoop of Logan’s and my row house, watching him leave because I’d sent him away.

Walk through fire.

The words assaulted me, and the pain was too intense to bear. I had to move to my marble countertop, bend to it to rest my elbows on it and hold my head in my hands.

Then it all came and blasted through me in a way that made my head feel like it was going to explode.

You love a man, Millie, you believe in him, you take him as he is. You go on his journey with him no matter what happens, even if that means you have to walk through fire.

His voice was not coarse back then. No abrasion to it. It was deep. It was manly. But it was smooth.

Except when he said those words to me. When he said them they were rough. They were incredulous. They were infuriated.

They were hurt.

Walk through fire.

The tears came and dammit, dammit, they should have stopped years ago.

They didn’t.

They came and came and came until I was choking on them.

I didn’t make a salad with wilting spinach and the dregs of shredded carrots. I didn’t hit my desk and get back to work until all hours of the night, trying to catch up.