The First Husband

“With what?”

I was smiling, looking down at the eggs, stuffing another less-than-ladylike bite into my mouth.

“Whatever the movie brought on.”

I met his eyes and felt myself get serious for a minute—made myself swallow, hard. “I’m trying to be the opposite of myself,” I said.

I didn’t offer further explanation. I waited for him to ask for one, or compliment me—say that, from the little he knew, I seemed okay the way I was. But he did something better.

“Anything I can do to help?” he asked.

This was when I kissed him.

5

I learned an important lesson from “Checking Out” about how and why people travel far from home—far from where they started. There was, of course, the obvious reason: escape. Escape from the monotony of every day. So many of us chasing what we wished our everyday existence could be instead. But there was a less obvious and perhaps more important reason. Somewhere, often right in the middle of a trip, you got to believe this was your everyday life. You got to believe you were never going home again.

When I woke up at Griffin’s the next morning, it took me a moment to realize I wasn’t home. It took less than that to realize I didn’t want to go back. Not yet. I didn’t want to go back to how I was feeling there. And so I didn’t move. I stayed lying there, fairly frozen—feigning sleep—in Griffin’s bed.

He, meanwhile, was walking around the apartment, already in his jeans, no shirt on, trying to get it together before his twelve-hour shift started.

The hotel had given him very nice digs, a suite on the top floor of the hotel: Ralph Lauren furnished, sandy beach views, ocean views beyond that. But all I was looking at was Griffin, in front of me, still half naked, trying not to reveal that I was thinking of him completely naked. Thinking of him, thinking of me completely naked. I couldn’t help but blush, like a teenager. Worse than a teenager. A tween.

I looked away, covering my reddening face, pretending to still be asleep. But it was no use. I was caught—and Griffin was on his way over to sit down next to me on the edge of the bed. I pulled the sheets up higher, trying to gauge how weird it would be if I pulled them over my entire head.

“You’re awake,” he said.

I nodded, sheet over my chin.

He squinted his eyes, as if thinking about something. Then, instead of offering it up, he gave me a smile.

“So I’m off tomorrow, which is the good news,” he said. “What do you say you come surfing with me? I know a great place up near Malibu. A place worth seeing. And if it goes well, I’ll take you dancing after.”

I couldn’t help but smile back at him. “Oh . . . so I’m being tested now?” I said.

“What, you think you’re a shoo-in or something?”

“If not, I’m about to fail,” I said. “I don’t surf.”

“But you like dancing, right?” he said.

“Very much . . .” I said. “I like it very much.”

And my smile disappeared. Because I did. I loved dancing. But Nick never took me. The thought of going made me so happy, and then so sad, almost simultaneously, because I couldn’t help but think that this person I barely knew, he was the one willing to give it to me.

“Weren’t you saying something about being the opposite of yourself?” he asked, teasing me.

I was.

“So surfing and then dancing. Tomato, then tomah-to. Do we have a deal?” he asked.

We did.

6

“It’s just dinner, right?” I said. was looking in the mirror, checking myself out in my little yellow bikini. It was the only bathing suit I could find—and it wasn’t the one I’d wanted to find. While it was decent on the top—it had that Marilyn Monroe–like quality to it, the halter hugging at the right place on my neck—that didn’t, couldn’t, make up for the way it curved up fiercely in the behind region, revealing too much of my backside. Plus, ironically, and not in a good way, it was the same exact shade of yellow as my magic dress.

“It’s just dinner,” Jordan repeated back to me.