I finished eating and took my dishes to the sink. “Let’s wait and see what happens.” It was too much to think about, too many unknowns branching into other unknowns, too much of my old life falling away behind me with every step I took forward. But hadn’t I wanted a new life? A different sense of myself? I had and I did. But I would have to go forth and meet the future bravely, and there were times, like now, when I didn’t feel anything close to brave.

We went up to the magazine office and we looked at the typeset issue pages and once we were back in our old work routine, I felt a little better. And pleased, too, at my part in it. I’d worked on the layout, translating Doug’s notes and directives into an orderly assemblage of black type and white space. “You’re pretty good at this, you know?” Jonathan told me. “The design part.”

“It was a computer program. It’s not like I did anything hard.”

“But you got it, not everybody does. And you’re fast. You could find a real job doing it. If you’re still looking around for some other kind of work.”

One more step in a different direction. I could tell that Jonathan felt sorry for me, it made him feel bad to see me moping around about Aaron while he was getting three love texts an hour from Paul. Then he would stop and giggle and text him back. I didn’t mind. But the more I saw of love, at least of other people’s love affairs, the more curdled and gloomy I felt about the whole subject. When I first met Aaron, hadn’t I been just the same? Hadn’t we spent whole days and nights in bed together, our two hearts pressed together, thanking the universe for our good luck? Well. So much for that.

Love made people act like idiots, at least for as long as it lasted. I didn’t share this opinion with Jonathan, who was still in the fizzy fuzzy stage of things, though I did ask him to stop singing “Only Us.”

We worked until early afternoon without Doug or anyone else disturbing us, and then I figured I’d logged enough free hours and told Jonathan to call me if he wanted more help. We agreed to keep everything on a loose, as-needed basis. Story of my life right then.

I told him I was headed up to the writers’ conference at the end of next week.

“Into the Woods? Lucky you. You’re going to have a fantastic time. Just try not to start any fires.”

I let myself out and was walking toward my truck when I heard someone behind me, a man, calling “Excuse me. Excuse me.” I ignored it and picked up my pace, since you just never know. Panhandlers, crazy people, garden-variety harassment. But I wasn’t fast enough, and he caught up to me as I was trying to find my keys.