“Em is eccentric,” I repeated. I hated myself for saying this. I felt like I was betraying Em. I really missed writing her, and receiving her letters. She’d written me not that long ago, but I’d put off answering her, and now we were no longer writing to each other.

“You used to talk all the time about going to Aspen and the Hotel Jerome. If you’re still interested in going there, you better do it before you have a wife and kid,” Em had written to me. “You would have a lot of explaining to do, if you went there with a wife and kid, wouldn’t you?” Em had asked me.

While the night groomer was finding the channel for the ball drop on the TV in the living room, my mom was doing her jock walk in the kitchen, where she was watching Grace and me at the sink. At that moment, we must have struck my mother as a model of domesticity—I was washing the pots and pans, Grace drying them. We were standing hip to hip at the sink, almost touching; the way we’d been talking about the writing business, anyone would have thought we knew each other. I stole a look at her in profile; she seemed flawless. It felt completely natural to be standing this close to her. Em was right: I would have a lot of explaining to do if I went to Aspen and the Hotel Jerome with a wife and kid. That’s a trip I should take alone, I was thinking—as soon as there was a window of opportunity.

The relaxed way Grace spoke to me made me think we were already living together. “If you feel like having half a beer, I’ll split one with you,” Grace said. My hands were wet; hers were dry.

“Sure—the beer is in the fridge,” I told her. That was why she saw the grocery list. I’d not written anything on the list since the snowshoer and Em had gone back to New York. I saw Grace pause at the door to the fridge; she was reading the grocery list. At a glance, I could see it was a longer list than I remembered writing—ever.