I laugh and roll my head to the side. “Are you even watching this?” I pause the television.

Cole is sitting on the opposite end of the sofa with his legs stretched out across the ottoman. His feet dangle off the end. He removed his shoes at some point before we started the movie we found by flippantly scrolling through the television channels and discussing what kinds of shows we like and dislike.

The last few rays of the evening sneak in the window. They cast a warm, snuggly glow over his handsome face. Coupled with how relaxed he looks and how comfortable I am . . . it’s a dangerous, if not welcome, combination.

I stretch, wiggling my toes and enjoying the pull through my muscles. It’s an odd sensation to just sit and be. Typically, if Ethan is gone, I’m tackling chores or feeling guilty about all the time I’m wasting not doing something on my never-ending to-do list.

But this? It wasn’t on my to-do list, and I don’t feel guilty about it.

Actually, I’m enjoying it. Profusely.

“Can I ask you a question?” Cole asks, breaking my concentration on the sweet smile on his lips.

“Sure. What?”

“Why do women like these movies?”

“What kind of movies? Like the one we’re watching?”

“Yeah. I mean, you know that they’re going to end up together in the end. They tell you that in the opening credits.”

“So?”

He laughs. “So—where is the excitement?”

“Oh, Cole,” I say, sighing with enough dramatics to rival the actress on the screen.

“That’s your answer?” he teases. “Oh, Cole? That sounds more like what I expect will come in the movie in about another ten minutes.”

I giggle as I sit upright and pull my knees toward me. “And that’s the reason women—I—like these kinds of movies.”

He pushes up with both hands and swivels his body to face mine.

I add, “It’s . . .” I try to think of a way to describe it without sounding like a dork. “It gives people hope. You know, take our heroine in the movie. She’s a single mom. Her husband impregnated her sister—”

“On a yacht.”

I roll my eyes. “That’s the fantasy factor. There’s more than one element at work here.”

“Clearly.”

“There’s the fantasy part of it that takes you out of your reality. You can live through the heroine on a yacht and forget for a few hours that you just opened your cabinet doors so the water pipes don’t burst overnight.” I sigh. “And then there’s hope that things will work out. Like, if Gina, the maid at the motel, can find lasting love with a prince from a small country in Europe, then maybe I can too.”