Not even the guilt I had over what I was doing behind Cal’s back daunted me then. I had reasoned it all out in my head to justify the situation. Cal will be fine, I decided. He has women at his beck and call. He doesn’t need a life here with October, because he has everything he’s ever wanted.

Let me have this one thing, I thought.

The rest of that day remains lodged in my mind like an indelible song. Each moment is a note, and if I conjure up the first one, the whole tune comes back to me: what the day looked like, what it tasted like, what it smelled like, what it felt like. My skin was alive, and it transcribed every feeling in a way that went deeper than memory. Memories are fragments. Unreliable. This was an experience that seemed to exist inside of me before it happened, and it remained inside of me when it was over. In my heart and behind my eyes I can still see it, not as bits and pieces, but as a whole composition.

Here’s another important distinction: I felt entirely myself that day. And I don’t mean my best self. I don’t mean I was pretending to be some ideal version of Joe Harper so that October wouldn’t change her mind. I was the same awkward, insecure, overly sensitive Joe Harper that I’ve been for as long as I can remember. But the other Joe showed up too. The man who can be thoughtful, witty, and charming when he gets his head out of his ass.

I kicked off my sneakers, and October and I sat against the headboard drinking our cappuccinos. The window was open, and a light breeze was blowing into the room. Our legs were parallel, my right one touching October’s left as we watched a gray warbler foraging on a branch outside. The bird’s little head moved in quick, jerky tics like the second hand on an old watch, its beak a tiny jackhammer.

“Do you think he’s looking for breakfast?” October whispered, as if her voice might scare the creature off.

“He is a she,” I told her. “The males have black throats. See how hers is a whitish gray?”

October dipped her head toward me and smirked. “It turns me on when you talk like the Audubon Society.”

I smiled. Bob Harper was good for something.

The late-morning sun was starting to flood the room, and even though the breeze was cool, I felt warm and content, the scene calling to mind an old Johnny Cash quote I’d read somewhere online. Johnny had been asked to describe his idea of paradise. He’d pointed to his wife, June, and said, “This morning. With her. Having coffee.”

This is simple, and I get it, I thought again. Then I put my hand on October’s thigh and left it there for as long as it took for her to get it too.

Eventually she set her mug on the bedside table, spun her body sideways, and rested her head in my lap.