The Flowers in Never Say Never

He reappeared on a day when my life had already been ruptured – just another text message amid a shower of text messages the evening of the day I lost my job of nine years. It was unconnected to any name in my phone, but I answered it anyway. We joke now that it was a crack that he slipped through.

He likes to say that I arrived in his life at a time when he’d not been looking for someone to date, but it was he who arrived. I was just sitting on my couch, crying off and on and looking at my phone.

Now, as I drink his wine and wash his dishes and lay with him night after night, I think about how if it were to all end tomorrow, I’d be just fine. Sad, sure, but mostly grateful for the weeks of undiluted attention and romance – and the opportunity for closure on the past and a thrill about the possibility of falling in love. It’s been mostly easy and utterly satisfying.

A crepe myrtle hangs over the pool. It drops rafts of lavender flowers. In the evenings, when we have said goodbye to friends and are drifting among the blossoms, touching limbs and feeling the heat leave our bodies, I know that I will always remember the way that the light causes the florets to glow. Should I ever write a book, I will include these quiet, up-lit moments somehow.

Pretty as a picture. As moving as a movie. Compelling like tomorrow’s news.