“Shocking, isn’t it?” She grinned and then she laughed. “I told you I’m impulsive.”

“You also said you were reckless,” I reminded her. “I feel like two marriages at your age falls more into the reckless category.”

“I went through a very hard time after my mother died.” She fingered the tattoo on her wrist. Her eyes seemed bottomless with sadness. It made my chest ache, and I wanted to hug her. I was not a hugger. I resisted, but it was harder than it should have been.

She was very young when her mother died. She must have felt so very alone. I knew what that sort of loneliness felt like. I supposed the two marriages made sense in light of her grief. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded in acknowledgment. “The grief was so immense, like a great big black hole. I latched on to whatever, or more accurately whoever, I thought would fill the void. It took me a long time to figure out that I had to fill it myself and that it would take a long time.”

“And have you filled that void yet?” I asked. I told myself I was just being polite. I wasn’t asking for the seven-year-old boy who’d lost his parents to addiction, his sister at fourteen, and himself at thirty-five.

“Not really, no.” She shook her head, and her dark curls bounced almost as if inviting me to reach out and twine my fingers in them. “But maybe I will someday.”

“And what about your exes?” I asked. My curiosity was making me rude. I didn’t care. “Are you still friends?”

“No,” she said. “One of them is most definitely unhappy with me as I turned down his surprise second proposal—”

“Whoa, hold up.” I held up my hand. “Explain.”

“Ugh, I don’t want to,” she said. “I don’t come out well in this story.”

“And now you have to tell me,” I said. I was going to be as immovable as a boulder on this.

“Fine,” she said. “Annotated version only on the condition of no judgment and no laughing.”

“I’d never.” I put my hand over my heart.

“All right, so every year my ex and I celebrate our divorce by going to a fancy dinner, but this year signals got mixed and he thought we were in a place we were definitely not in, and he was about to propose . . .” She paused. A pained expression crossed over her face and I waited, literally on the edge of my chair, afraid to move in case it startled her into not sharing.

“Well, I caught on that he was about to propose, and I cut him off by saying I was moving here and then I downed my champagne.”

“And?” I prodded. Surely, that wasn’t it?