Roseanne
Lisa goes to the house and returns with our sandwiches and drinks in her hands. She hasn't bothered to put her shirt back on, though I wish she would. I find my eyes admiring her body too often, resting on the tightness of her perfectly sculptured abs and imagining myself flicking the button of her shorts.
I don't want to be having these thoughts about her, thoughts I've never in my life had for anyone else. But how do you make yourself stop thinking the wrong thing, and wanting it? She swings the bag down behind us, sitting too close. The distance she might sit if I were hers and she were mine.
I think of the way she said that word earlier—mine—and how it sent a visceral thrill through my chest. The way something inside me—that hard seed that began to flower the moment I met her—took another leap, came into full bloom.
While she pulls food from the bag, I look over at the paddleboards on the beach, the Sunfish bobbing nearby. "Is this what we'd have done if we came here in high school?" I ask.
Lisa gives me a sheepish grin, handing me my sandwich on a paper plate. "Well, I'm guessing, based on your memory of condom purchases, it's not all we'd have done."
I feel myself blushing as I remember that moment of intense déjà vu at the deli. It was our first time together. Something we'd waited years for. Different than London, where we must barely have waited, given how fast we got married. I don't know how many lives I've lived with her, but it feels a little unfair that I can't live this one with her too.
She's watching my face in a way I can't pretend is just friendly. "I like having you here," she says.
I twist my ring, letting my feet swing over the dock, inches from the water. "It's been the best Saturday I've had in a long time." A disloyal thing to say, but not as disloyal as what I'm actually thinking, which is that it's been the best Saturday I ever remember.
I catch a flash of her dimple. "Even if it's no Paris."
"You say that as if I routinely go to Paris. I've never even been out of the country."
"Why not?" she asks.
I smile. "Spoken like a kid who grew up with everything. I was dirt poor in a town so small you'd miss it if you blinked."
She leans back a little, a casual gesture, but there's nothing relaxed about the way she's watching me now. "I guess that's how you wound up with Jaehyun."
I bristle at her phrasing. She makes it sound like I'm saddled with Jaehyun, as if I chose him by default. "What do you mean?"
"You're just...ill-suited. He doesn't seem like someone you'd have chosen unless you were someplace where there weren't a lot of options."
She hasn't seen the best side of Jaehyun since this thing started, but it's not like I chose him out of desperation. I had plenty of options back home. "Going through a tragedy with someone shows you pieces of them you wouldn't have seen otherwise. And when my father died, I realized what a good person Jaehyun was."
Her mouth twists as if she's just eaten a piece of fruit gone bad. "Right. Your dad dies, and Jaehyun, who'd probably been after you for years, suddenly comes to the rescue."
I place my sandwich carefully on the plate and turn toward her. "He did, yes. Why are you trying to make that sound like a devious thing?"
"I just suspect he had an ulterior motive."
I run my tongue over my teeth, feeling flustered and angry, though I don't know why. While it's true Jaehyun was interested in me well before I moved home, he didn't act on it for a long time. He just remained quietly in the wings, helping us where he could. "He's not a bad person, no matter what you think."
