Morning Glory(60)

I smirk. “I wish it were that easy.”

“It is,” Alex says confidently. His eyes narrow then, and he looks at me tenderly. “I know you’re hurting. You may always be, and that’s OK. I just want you to know that you can find comfort if you seek it. And you can learn to be happy in the midst of it. You deserve that, Ada.”

“Well,” I say shyly, taking his hand in mine, “you should know something, then.”

“What?”

The edges of my mouth turn upward slightly. “I feel happier than I have in a long time.”

“I’m glad,” Alex says.

“What about you?” I ask, turning to him. “Are you happy?”

He takes a sip of his iced tea. “Yes,” he says. “More so now that a certain someone has moved to the dock.”

I grin.

“I’ve thought a lot about happiness over the last few years,” he continues. “If you were to ask me a while back, I might have told you I’d given up on it entirely. I was in a really bad place for so long. I swear, I thought I had a rain cloud hovering over my head.”

I don’t ask him about his demons. If I learned anything in therapy, it’s that it’s best when someone elects to share of their own accord, not by prodding.

He scratches his head. “You know, things fall apart. You grieve. And then you sit around and wait for things to somehow get perfect again. But they don’t. They never can. There is no perfect. There’s just different. But different can be wonderful.” He smiles to himself. “If I would have realized that a lot earlier, I’d have saved myself a lot of grief.”

“What finally made you realize?”

He leans back. “I was out in the kayak, alone, in the middle of the lake. It was a cold day in November. It was clear when I set out, but it clouded up and started to rain. Heavy rain, you know. Bone cold. I decided to paddle back. I was cursing the sky for ruining my morning row. I cursed everything back then.” He grins to himself. “But then I noticed something. I looked up at the sky, rain falling down, and the birds—they were all out flapping around, flying this way and that. I never noticed before that moment how rain doesn’t affect birds. They couldn’t care less about it. Sure, maybe they bristle a little when it hits their feathers. Maybe they decide to fly back to their nests and settle in until the clouds pass. But do they squawk and curse and protest? No. They roll with it. They chirp and sing the way they always do. They don’t let a little storm ruin their days, their lives.” He sighs, and turns to me. “Maybe this sounds crazy to you, but that day on the lake, I realized I wanted to be like a bird. I wanted to stop being so affected by the circumstances that were dragging me down.”

“Wow,” I say. “That’s beautiful.”

“That’s not to say that some things aren’t worth grieving over. I mean, what you’ve gone through, Ada . . .”

I nod.

“There’s a time for grief,” he continues. “I’ve gone through it. But I just didn’t want my life to be characterized by it.”

“Me either,” I say.

My eyes well up with tears, and he wipes one away, just as fellow diners around us begin cheering and clapping. We look around, oblivious to what has just transpired near us, and then notice a young couple at a table embracing. The woman holds up her left hand, and I see the sparkle of a diamond.

I think of the way James proposed, at our favorite New York City restaurant. He’d tucked the ring in his pocket and gotten down on one knee. Simple, perfect. I feel the familiar pain creeping back, and then I remember what Alex said. I know I may always ache for the past, for the two greatest loves of my life, but I want to be a bird now. I want to flap my wings through the rainstorms. I want to start my day with the earnestness of the morning glory, the way its blossoms open with the sunrise, ready to shine no matter what.

My eyes meet Alex’s and moments later, he presses his lips against mine. I’m hungry for his kiss, his embrace, just as he is for mine.

“Alex,” I whisper. “I want to tell you about my past.”

I feel like opening up for the first time in a long while. I want to tell him about everything, every painful detail. I want to lay it all out for him to see, like found rocks and jagged shells on the beach that he can pick up and examine and turn over. I want to be transparent again. I want him to see me, for all that I am.

He leans in closer, ready, open, waiting, and listens intently, as if I’m the only person who matters in the world.





Chapter 23





PENNY

Dex returned from California with tan skin and a bottle of perfume for me from Lana Turner. He said she had cases of it from a photo shoot she did for Macy’s, which made the gift seem even less special than it was.