Hello, Sunshine

Danny smiled—a real smile—like he could see it. Like that was enough for him. Fourteen years. He knew I was telling the truth.

Then he took in the property. “It’s been so long since I’ve been here. It looks different.”

I motioned toward the main house. “There used to be a lot more room.”

He laughed. “Yeah, well. I remember the guesthouse being pretty cozy,” he said.

I thought about it too. The first time I had brought him home with me from college, we’d stayed there. My father had liked Danny, so we ended up spending a little bit of time with him. Danny brought out the best of my father. It was almost enough to make me think it could be different between us. Danny had always had that power—how had I given it away?—the power to make anything feel possible.

He motioned toward the step where I sat. “May I?”

I shrugged. “You might as well.”

Danny took the seat next to me, though he kept looking straight ahead, which was a good thing. I could feel the heat coming off of him, warming me, even from several inches away.

“So . . . I just wanted you to know that I pulled down the site. Ain’t No Sunshine is no more.”

“You do realize anyone can google me and they’ll see everything, right?”

“They’ll stop googling after a while. If they haven’t already.”

“Danny, if that’s your idea of an apology . . .”

“It’s not.”

He focused on his hands, his wedding ring still there. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

“I’m not here to apologize,” he said. “And I’m not here to argue with you about whether I should.”

“So why are you here?”

“I kept thinking that I had to do it, to help you, regardless of what it did to us. It’s weird, I thought I wouldn’t care if you hated me,” he said. “Turns out I was wrong on that front.”

He paused.

“Turns out I can’t stop thinking about you.”

I looked at him. It was the kindest thing he could say, but it wasn’t enough. Fourteen years. I knew he wasn’t willing to let go, maybe neither of us was. But that was different from knowing how to hold on. Neither of us knew if we could really do that—with so much negative stuff between us now. Except I couldn’t feel the negative stuff. When I was with him, actually sitting there with him, he just felt like Danny. Maybe that wasn’t enough either. But it felt like a good place to start.

“There was another way, Danny.”

“Maybe. But this way worked.”

It had worked.

“I’m pregnant.”

Danny turned and looked at me. “Really?”

I nodded.

He turned away. “I’m going to need a minute to process that,” he said.

I started counting in my head, but before I even got to ten, he reached out and held me to him.

54

You probably didn’t think I was long for 28—or maybe you did. Maybe, after I turned Julie down (and Z turned me down), you thought this story would end with Z changing his mind, giving me a real job, a real shot at the restaurant. It would have had a certain symmetry to it. The man I had thought would be the way back to my old life would instead lead the charge to my new one.