The First Husband

“Yes,” I said. “Well . . . based out of London.”

“When?” he said. “Not that it matters, exactly, but when did they let you know about the offer?”

I started talking entirely too quickly, trying to explain. “Griffin, I was going to talk to you about it,” I said. “But with the restaurant opening and everything else that’s been happening around here, I just haven’t had a chance yet, and since I’m not going, obviously . . .”

“To London? Where Nick is?”

“Based out of London,” I mumbled, as though this was the point. “And Nick’s not there for much longer.”

“So do you think you want it?” he asked.

For a second, I didn’t know if he was talking about Nick or the job—my eyes getting wide.

“The job?” he said, looking more than a little irritated.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

He looked right at me, the coffee still by his mouth, waiting for something closer to the truth.

“I don’t know, Griffin,” I said. “I don’t really know anymore. But I am worried about what else I’m going to do here. What else I can do. That’s not a secret.”

I looked back up at Griffin, who was still silent. But I wondered if he was hearing the rest of what I was thinking: about seeing Nick, about what that was triggering for me. Because instead of getting madder, it was like it just washed his anger away. And he gave me a smile I didn’t recognize.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Before you walked in the door tonight, I was just thinking how my mother used to take Jesse and me to the General Store on Friday afternoons, back when we were little kids. She’d do her shopping for the weekend, and we’d each get to pick one candy,” he said. “Just one. And, the thing was, Jesse would always know exactly which candy he wanted. These hard little guys called Pop Rocks.”

I watched him reach over, put the brown bags from Lasse’s in the refrigerator, move them away from us.

“I remember Pop Rocks,” I said. “Wasn’t that the candy they said could kill you if you ate it with a soda? The one that they say killed that kid Mikey from the Life cereal commercial?”

“Exactly,” he said. “And I don’t think they actually killed him.”

I shook my head. “Man, those were great.”

“That’s the thing,” he said. “Jesse would grab the candy and be out of the store in fifteen seconds flat. And I’d still be standing there, just staring at the candy shelf for as long as my mother shopped. They’d play these old records in the store . . . the Beatles. The Beach Boys. Billie Holiday. So my mother thought I wanted to listen to the music, but really I couldn’t decide. I’d pick up something pretty great, put it back down, pick up something else. And just when Emily would call out that I was out of time, Jesse screaming through the window for me just to get some more Pop Rocks, I’d panic, as only a six-year-old can, and end up picking something pretty awful.”

“Like Fun Dip?”

“On several occasions, yes.”

“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.

He smiled, giving me a small laugh. Then he looked right at me.

“You shouldn’t take that job, Annie,” he said, solid and firm. “And I’m not saying that because of me. Or because it’d be difficult to go with you. I would figure out how to, if I thought it was the right thing. For you, for us.”

“Then why are you saying it?”

He shrugged. “Because I’m worried you’ve just convinced yourself you need to go there, and that’s not the same thing as actually wanting to.”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

He paused. “You were the one that told me you wanted a different life.”

“Well, I’m not sure my different life is entirely realistic,” I said.

“Says who?”