He smiled nervously, which made me nervous. I was grateful a martini glass appeared in front of me with something that tasted like pink lemonade. Cute. This was what a grown-up Eloise would drink for sure.

“First, I wanted to apologize for everything with Kitty that day in our apartment.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah. What in the world was that?”

He shook his head. “I feel guilty saying that it has been hard for me because I know it has been hard for you. But I didn’t come out. I didn’t plan or prepare for it. I was just sort of pushed out with no warning. My entire life changed in one day, and I wasn’t ready.”

I wanted to say—snarkily—that we were both pushed with no warning, to ask him if he thought my entire life hadn’t changed.

“I wasn’t prepared for Kitty being so upset, and you know I can’t stand it when Kitty is upset.”

I nodded, trying to hide my smile. I had never seen a grown man love his grandmother so much.

“She wanted me to stay married to you,” he went on. “Maybe have Chase on the side. And, at the time, she convinced me that everyone would be happy. Kitty would be happy because I would appear to be what she wanted. You would be happy because we weren’t divorced. Chase would be happy because nothing would change.” He shook his head. “About an hour after you left, I realized how ridiculous that was. Everyone wouldn’t be happy. No one would be.”

I reached over and squeezed his hand. I could tell this was hard for him. “How are things with Kitty now?” I practically whispered. I knew that losing her might be even harder for Thad than losing me.

“She is happy, happy, happy.” He paused and looked at me intently. “Her friends accepted Chase and me right into the fold, and, well, she’s also thrilled because we’re adopting a baby.”

I almost spit out my Eloise martini.

Then he added, “Well, no. Not a baby, probably. Maybe a toddler or a teenager or anything in between. We don’t know.”

I shook my head about a million times. So. Many. Questions. First: “I thought you didn’t want kids. We talked about how we didn’t want kids like a million times. Hell, I wrote an entire New York Times piece about it.”

A reasonable person would have realized that Thad’s being gay was why he left me. But in five seconds flat, I had spiraled down into a place where he had left me because I couldn’t have children. It was ridiculous, obviously. We could have adopted or a million other options. But in that moment, no one on earth could have convinced me otherwise. It irritated me. Hadn’t I made my peace with this like twenty years ago, realized that a biological function didn’t define me?

“I know. I didn’t think I did. But Chase really does, and the more we talked about it, the more I realized that this was a new chapter for me and what I wanted had changed.”