“So why did you marry him? You didn’t get serial-killer vibes from the start?”
It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times, because down deep, I knew it wasn’t right for me. I just ignored my gut and did it anyway.
I look at Holden and frown. “I tried to fill an overwhelming loneliness after Gramma died with something that I convinced myself was love. It wasn’t and I knew better. And that almost cost me everything.” The heaviness of the conversation forces my eyes to the table. “Chad ruined me financially. I almost lost the Honey House because of him. What a trade that would’ve been—the place I love most for the guy that loved me the least.”
“I just want to say that I’m really sorry about your gramma. She was always so sweet.”
My heart fills with a fondness for both Holden and his kind words about my grandmother. He didn’t know her very well—we’d only stop in on our bike rides for lemonade here and there—but to know that he remembers her makes my heart swell.
Holden stretches his legs out in front of him. The side of his calf bumps mine, and we both pull away quickly. As our eyes meet, Debbie appears out of thin air.
She sets a drink down in front of each of us. “Need anything else?”
“We’re good,” Holden says. “Thank you.”
“Great. I’ll be back with your food shortly.” She disappears into the kitchen again.
I watch Holden unwrap his straw. He’s so different from Chad. He asks questions about my life instead of just talking about himself. And even more shocking, he seems like he really wants the answers. When he laughs, it’s with me and not at me. But I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s exactly how I remember him to be.
“What about you?” I ask, unwrapping my straw too.
“What about me?”
“What did you mean earlier when you said it was just easier to stay with your fiancée than to split up?”
He snatches the shaker up in his hand. “I’m not husband material.”
“Um, gonna need more than that.”
A sigh escapes his lips as he seems to come to terms with the fact that he’ll have to answer me for real. “I met Jessica in college. She’s a great person, and she’ll make someone a hell of a wife.”
“Why not you?” I ask carefully.
Debbie places a plate in front of each of us. She doesn’t speak this time. Holden’s nod is enough to let her know that we don’t need anything else.
I pop a fry in my mouth and wait for Holden to answer. He looks at me and realizes I’m expecting a response. He takes a deep breath.
“Jessica wanted this oversize, fluffy, off-white-colored couch,” he says, fumbling for words. “I wanted a black leather sofa with stainless legs. By the time we were ready to leave the store, we walked out of there with a brown corduroy piece that was so stiff that you couldn’t even really sit on it.”
I sit quietly and slice my fish. I have no idea what a couch has to do with why he’s not husband material, as he called it. But the look on his face makes me wonder if he really knows either.
“I hated that thing,” he says. “And I hated the lamp in the entryway with its little beads wrapped around the shade, because I wanted to go bead-less like any man I know would and she wanted the thing to be dripping with them. So we compromised. And that was the day I realized that we were compromising our lives so much that I didn’t even recognize mine. Or hers. Instead of taking my golden retriever life and mixing it with her poodle life and getting a goldendoodle, we’d turned into a mutt.”
He shrugs as if to say, “There you go. It’s that easy.”
Except I know it’s not that easy. It never is.
“Yeah, I call bullshit,” I say, pointing a fry his way. A dollop of ketchup falls off the end and splatters on the table. “Total bullshit, actually.”
He takes a napkin and wipes up the ketchup. There’s something about the situation that amuses me to no end.
“Thanks for your input.” He wads the ketchup-smeared napkin into a ball and tosses it to the side. “You might be right, though.”
“About what part?”
He sits back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest. “That whole thing I just spit at you about the couches might be bullshit.”
I drop the fry in my hand and sit back too. My arms cross over my chest, mirroring his posture. “Then what’s the truth?”
“I don’t know. I just . . . I probably always knew that Jessica and I weren’t right. But she wanted to get married, and the look in her eye on every holiday wore on me.”