Today was her day off, and the boys had stopped by before heading to a Red Sox game, Fenway only a few blocks from my condo. They’d brought two large pizzas and a twelve-pack, and Joe handed me a plate and a beer before they joined me on the couch.

Smith clinked his bottle against mine and said, “Man, you’re looking even healthier than when I saw you a few days ago.”

“Sex makes you heal faster,” Joe joked, and we all laughed.

“I’m gaining some of my weight back,” I told them. “I’m up fifteen pounds, most of it muscle.” My appetite had returned; I just couldn’t eat as much as I used to. “But I’m doing much better.”

Smith wiped the pepperoni grease off his mouth and asked, “Have you been into work?”

I shook my head while I chewed. “My assistant started coming by a few hours every afternoon, and I’ve been answering e-mails.” Physically, I could push my walker through the building. I just wasn’t ready for my employees to see me that way. “Maybe I’ll venture in next week.”

“Your parents must be dying for you to get back,” Joe said.

“You have no fucking idea.” I took another drink. “They’re giving me time, but they want me to dive in like nothing happened.”

But something had happened, and it’d changed me; the conversation I’d had with my father this morning proved that. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t working full-time from home, and I didn’t know how to tell him I wasn’t the person I had been before. My parents would soon be handing the business to me when they retired to Florida, like they’d always planned. A role they had been grooming me for my entire life, but it came with serious expectations, and I didn’t know if I was ready for it.

“Is that what you want?” Smith asked. “To throw yourself into the grind again?”

“No … fuck, I don’t know what I want.” I glanced at the bottle I was squeezing in my hand. “But twenty-hour days, sleeping at the office, flying to the other side of the world, just to get a break from my goddamn desk”—I looked up, knowing they could sympathize—“I know I don’t have that in me anymore.”

“Does Whitney have anything to do with that?” Joe asked.

I exhaled loudly. “You know, I could have fucking died on that pavement. But I’m here, and I don’t want to be sixty years old and have a wall full of pictures of myself and perfect attendance at work as the highlights of my life. I want something more.”

“Man, do I get that,” Smith said.