“There he is! How’ve you been, son?”

My uncle greets people like he’s been waiting for them all along, even when the person shows up completely unannounced. Like now.

I step into the private dining room of Maison, the Acre’s restaurant, and shake his hand, then that of Willem Schuyler. He’s new to Tim’s circle, but preceded by plenty of talk over drinks and cigars around here: the kind of guy who pulled himself up by the bootstraps, nothing to his name. Not even a decent education. The kind of guy I used to be.

“Can’t complain,” I tell Uncle Tim, then take a seat. “Just stopped by to visit.”

“It’s been a while since you stopped by during work hours. Business slow, these days?”

I scratch my neck and stall with a sip from the brandy he offers me, glowing from the decanter in the center of the table. It makes me think of that night with Mara again. Not that I’ve stopped thinking about it all week.

“Slower than I’d like,” I say, finally, and he and Willem nod with some polite laughter. As if their businesses hit true slumps, anymore. They’re both at the place in their careers where they don’t even have to show up at the offices. The ventures run themselves. All they have to do is check their account balances every morning to know things are operating as they should.

It used to be my career goal, getting Fairfield Party Suppliers running like a robot I only had to check in on periodically. Now it feels like a needy houseplant I’m not sure I’m helping or killing.

We sit and visit for a while. I haven’t seen Uncle Time since the reception, and I like talking to him. Probably because he’s one of the few father figures I’ve had in life, as long as I can remember. When I need advice, he’s always willing to give it.

The problem? I have no idea what to ask, even when Willem says goodbye for the day, and it’s just us in the dining room. We head for the balcony off the ballroom, where he immediately lights a cigar.

“Something on your mind?” he asks. The smoke swells out of his mouth like a mushroom cloud.

“Kind of.” All week, ever since the night of my argument with Mara, I’ve been thinking about marriages. Where and why they go wrong, and how mine barely had a pulse by the time I noticed it was dying.

“When you and Jeannie got married.... I know you already owned the Acre and the train station, and investments in the stadium, but—but you were, like, running those, right? They still took a lot of time and attention, especially when the market got bad.”

Tim nods with a weird smile, waiting to see where I’m going with this. I’m not sure, myself.

“Did Jeannie ever...I don’t know, get mad at you? For spending so much time at work?”

“Not really,” he says, and I fight the urge to sigh. “She understood our lifestyle, the estate—it required a lot of upkeep. But it had always been that way, with us. When we started dating, I was shadowing my father full-time. Me working a lot was nothing new.”

I push my hair back, nodding as what he’s saying sinks in: yes, he was a workaholic…but he was always a workaholic. He didn’t change.

The day Lindsay left for good—the day we both knew, without a doubt, it was over—she told me I wasn’t who she married. All I could think to do was laugh.

“You’re right. I’m not.” My voice lashed out of my throat like a snapped fishing line. “The guy you married was broke. I guess you got what you wanted, though, huh? Waited until ‘for better or worse’ switched to better, then grabbed whatever you could.”

“Give me a fucking break, Levi. You know the money doesn’t matter, here. It never did. I was fine in Drexelwood.”

“Oh, you were fine,” I laughed. “You were fine in a studio apartment over somebody’s garage, with nothing but a hot plate and futon, and that shitty toilet that wasn’t even secured into the floor. You were fine with Ramen noodles and tap water every single night.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes shone in the light spilling inside from the golf course. “I was. Because all that, it was ours. But all this?” Her voice choked as she shook her head and started away. “It’s yours.”

“You wanted all this, too,” I barked. I caught her arm and turned her back to me. “I did it all for us, Linds.”

“You did it for yourself.” She wrenched out of my grasp, but stayed where I’d planted her. “You wanted to prove you were smart, even though you dropped out. You wanted to prove you were self-made, even though you’re a Fairfield. And you did. The problem was that you didn’t know where to stop.” Slowly, her volume dropped. So did her shoulders.

“You turned into exactly who you wanted to be,” she whispered. “But you lost everything that made me love you.”

I wiped my face as soon as the tears fell. She didn’t deserve to see them. Not when I’d just caught her leaving a motel with some other guy, draping herself all over him while her wedding band glinted in the sun.

“We said we were going to really try, this time,” I said softly. I wanted to scream at her. But the tears in my throat, the sight of hers on her lashes, made it impossible.

Lindsay’s face darkened with what I hoped was guilt. “Yeah. We did. And I noticed how...how much you cut back your hours, scaled back the business. I appreciate you doing that.”

I couldn’t help myself; I took her hand in mine. I was furious at her. I’d honestly never hated anyone more.

But I’d never loved anyone more, either, than how much I used to love her. This couldn’t be it. That kind of love—we could get it back. We could fix this.

Then, suddenly, I let go.

“No, you don’t,” I told her, and it felt like I was telling myself some new, shining truth I should have known all along. “If you appreciated it, if you wanted to really try…you wouldn’t have cheated again.”

I had changed. I’d made mistakes, many more than she had, and for a lot longer.

But not once had I given up on us. My love for her was gone, but not because I gave it to someone else.

Lindsay pulled her sleeves over her hands and dabbed her eyes. “I guess...I guess I’d already made up my mind. No matter what you did, it was always going to be too little, too late.”

“That’s great. I change my business—my entire life—for nothing. The least you could’ve done was warn me.” I looked up past her head, catching my reflection in the mirror by the backdoor. I looked run-down, trampled. Broken.

“Bye, Levi,” she whispered, and touched the side of my face, fingertips guiding my mouth to hers.

I thought I’d remember that kiss forever. The last kiss with the first woman. But all I could think about was last year and that kiss with Mara, in the middle of a snowstorm: needles in my nerves and the taste of raspberry on her lips. The feeling of her fingers, breaking up the ice crystals at the nape of my neck.

Pulling me into her, like she needed me.

Lindsay hadn’t kissed me like that in years. Even now, she was staying where she was, keeping me where I stood. Our mouths touched, but it wasn’t a kiss.

“Bye,” I whispered.

It was the last kind moment we’d ever have. Whatever tears and tenderness she displayed that day would be long gone in the courtroom, when all the things she said she didn’t care about, the money and house and all the stuff, were suddenly worth fighting for. More than she’d ever fought for me.

“You can’t ruminate on it,” Uncle Tim says, bringing me back to the present. I blink and push the memory away. “One bad marriage doesn’t mean you’re done with love for good. Someone else will come along.” His expression draws a little tighter; he clears his throat. “After all—seven billion people on this earth, right? You’re bound to meet at least one more that does something to you.”

Already have, I think. Too bad I can’t figure out if the “something” Mara does to me is make me happy or drive me crazy.

“It’s not like our marriage was bad, though,” I tell him. “It used to be great. Then it went to shit, and I didn’t even notice until it—” I pause and breathe. “Until it was too little, too late.”

“You learned from it, though, right?” He hits my arm. “That’s what matters.”

“True,” I relent. I learned a hell of a lot.

I learned there’s a fine line between determination and obsession. I learned I can be a giant asshole. And I learned when one person wants to give up, there’s really nothing you can do. People have to let you love them. Or at least let you try.

Uncle Tim walks me out to the courtyard. The lights from Juliet and Cohen’s wedding are long gone; in about eight weeks, the Acre will put them and thousands back up for their famous Christmas tree ceremony. Out of nowhere, I wonder if Mara has ever watched it. If she’d want to go with me.

Except, I remind myself, she’ll be gone by then.

I thank Tim for talking to me. He shrugs and says he’s not sure if he was any help; I assure him he was.

The inside of my truck smells like flowers. I dig around the console and find the source: a small roller of perfume Mara left in the cupholder, lid off and upside-down, when I took her to work this morning. The rain sweeping the city wasn’t as bad as the hurricane last weekend, but it still seemed cruel not to offer her a ride.

I pick up the roller. It soaks my fingertips.

Mara isn’t as tough as she likes to act. She knows it, too. Her mistake is thinking it’s a weakness, when it’s actually the best thing about her—how real and honest she is, how human, when you finally get past the doesn’t-give-a-shit exterior. That’s the biggest reason we’ve been walking on eggshells this week: I saw through the leather jackets and makeup, the sarcasm and cynicism, and learned more than she meant to show.

Even now, as awkward as things get between us in the house, I feel a closeness we didn’t have before. You can’t have a tell-all night like that and not feel some kind of change.

My phone buzzes. I dig it out of my pocket: it’s a text from her. Instantly, my pulse quickens, like she’s been reading my thoughts this entire time.

“Found a place—checking it out tmw at 2. Mind coming with? Need opinion.”

My heartbeat slows down to a crawl.

Found a place.

The phone slides into my lap. I push my hair back again, pressing my palms into my eyes until my head hurts.

I want her to stay.

The realization is an obvious one, but still surprises me so much, I drop my hands and stare at the steering wheel.

I don’t want Mara to move out. Even if nothing happens between us—which is probable, given her views on relationships—the bottom line is that I like having her around.

My brain replays the night she told me everything. More specifically, it replays the kiss.

There’s no way I could survive having her in such close proximity longer than a month. It would only be a matter of time before I’d want something more. And it would be about five seconds before she put me in my place.

This is how it’s supposed to happen. One month, then we say goodbye. She goes on living her life relationship-free. I go on trying to save my business the way I couldn’t save my marriage, all the while hoping I’ll find someone in a sea of seven billion people. It’s no different than the way we were living two weeks ago.

“Congrats,” I type. I grit my teeth through every letter. “When’s your shift end?”

“Twenty. Why?”

“We should celebrate. Drinks on me. Omw.”

There’s a long pause before she sends back a smile emoji. I start my truck and begin the drive.

I was wrong: things will be different than two weeks ago. Because if nothing else, I’ll make sure we part as friends. I think even Mara would have to agree we both need more of those.