So when people said things to me like, “Oh, you’re still young, it’s different for a guy, you’ll be fine . . .” I kind of wanted to fucking punch them in the face. It wasn’t that easy to just pick up, move on, and start over. I didn’t trust anyone or anything to turn out like I thought.

Plus, it’s not like this small town was overrun with hot single women banging my door down.

I was closer to forty than thirty. I was a farmer and a science nerd. I got excited about things like soil and microclimates and carbonic maceration. I loved getting my hands dirty.

I had a pretty decent body (thanks to hours spent working off tension at the gym), but I wasn’t ripped. I had a career I loved, but I wasn’t rich—and I was never going to be rich. I drove a beat-up truck, tracked mud in the house, and got a fourteen-dollar haircut.

Did I own a suit and tie? Yes, but three-hundred sixty-five days a year, I went to work in frayed jeans and shirts with holes in them, and I liked it that way.

Back when she gave a fuck, Renee used to say I was good in bed—I never took a woman’s pleasure for granted—but those days were long gone.

Christ. Would I ever have sex again? I missed everything about it—the smell of perfume in the dark, the feel of soft curves beneath my palms, the taste of a woman on my tongue.

I nearly groaned aloud as I reached the end of one row and started down another. But there was no use getting worked up about it. I wasn’t ready to date anyone, and I wasn’t the type to jump in bed with some random woman I didn’t know.

I told myself to be grateful for what I did have—a nice house, a great job, some good friends. Sure, my sex life was depressing as fuck and my first Christmas alone was going to be hard, but I’d get through it. Maybe I’d buy myself a present—a new truck, a nicer watch, a fishing boat.

At the very least, a subscription to a better porn site.

I was going to need it.

3. Sylvia

Three

Sylvia

One week after the Breakfast with Santa debacle, the kids and I caught a 5:50 A.M. flight to Salt Lake City, then a 9:35 A.M. flight to Detroit before finally hopping on a small plane that took us to Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City. By the time my dad picked us up, we’d been traveling for almost ten hours. We were exhausted, grouchy, and starving.