So I was done waiting for him. I was going to find him and ask him to spend another day with me. Yes, there were lots of guys I could pick up for one-night stands here at the bar. There was always someone at the last call who’d struck out all night and would gladly go home with me regardless of what I had in my apartment or how many rings I wore on my fingers, but I didn’t want them. I wanted this golden-eyed man who told me he’d catch me if I fell. I was determined that he not see me as a sad widow who’d tried to hurl herself off the cliff. That was not going to be his last encounter with me. I was fun, dammit. He was going to see that if I had to hold him down and motorboat him. And if he was nice, I’d give him the men’s socks that I’d started knitting the other evening.

“So you think you’re ready to take off your ring, huh?” Eve asked as casually as she could when the band took a break.

“Maybe.” I fiddled with the ring. It felt looser tonight, like I could push it off my finger with a light nudge.

Eve eyed me speculatively. “Randy’s got this friend he works out with—”

I held up a hand. “Just because I’m ready to take off my ring doesn’t mean I’m going to start dating.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that I can’t live like Will’s coming back anymore.” I pushed the ring back down to the base of my finger. Not yet. With a shaky smile I said, “I’m not ready for a relationship but I think what Gray has in mind might be perfect for me right now.”

The next morning I contemplated the ways that I could run into him casually. I could go to my parents’ house since that was in the neighborhood where Gray was staying. He might walk by and I could pretend I was getting the mail and he could stop to talk to me. With a sigh, I realized I was going to have to go down to Adam’s house, and I had no good excuse for it. Except maybe… A thought occurred to me as I stared at my condo walls. That green felt should come down. The half-finished afghan was the first thing that needed to be packed up. I wasn’t in the mood to complete it, and the project only made me feel bad. I could wander down and see if I could borrow a ladder from Adam’s roommate, Finn. Finn was in construction, and he had to have a lot of ladders. If Gray happened to be standing nearby and heard I needed help, well, I wouldn’t refuse it if he offered.

I drove over to my parents’ house and walked into the kitchen by way of the garage, ignoring the stepladder that leaned up against one of the garage walls. Too short, I told myself. Wouldn’t reach to the top of the green felt. Adam’s house had a pool and he’d invited the staff at Gatsby’s to come several times but I’d always turned him down. I was going to pull out a swimsuit and take him up on that standing offer to swim.

Upstairs I looked at my sparsely populated closet. I had my sketchy overall shorts that Bitsy had decreed would make a farmer embarrassed, a few skirts, and a couple of pairs of jeans. I pulled out a skirt—the short circle skirt that Bitsy had wanted me to wear to lunch with Carolyn and David. I remembered wearing it during a summer festival when Will had come home from Basic and before he took off to Alaska to jump out of planes onto mountains. We'd stayed out downtown all night drinking surreptitiously from beverages Tucker had bought for us. Will and I'd gone out to the reservoir, where we'd made love in his car. It was one of the better sexual experiences I'd had with him. I was excited he was home, so excited that I didn't care what we sounded like or that we were doing it in a car and that there were other cars parked up there doing the same exact thing.

Of course that was before the cops came and told us all to go home. That's when Will said we should just get married and that I could move to Alaska with him and then we wouldn't have to "fuck in a goddamn car." Will's mouth had turned filthy at Basic. I told him that wasn't going to happen. I was going to Central in the fall and would stay with my parents. Will huffed and we'd argued and then he'd gone to Alaska. I visited him a couple of times and each time, he begged me to marry him. When he got the call to go to Afghanistan, I called him right away and told him to come home and that I'd marry him. I think I'd half hoped that if we got married he would magically not deploy, but that didn't happen. I'd waited too long and wasted so much time here, and for nothing. I’d dropped out of Central when he died, and all I've been doing since is marking time. Like knitting one never-ending chain and never tying off.

I'd never had to suffer the indignities of wondering if some guy liked me because Will had always liked me, so the feelings of uncertainty I had with Gray were new. In some weird way, I liked that. Besides, I wasn't going over to Adam's house to see Gray. No, I was going to see if I could borrow a ladder. And should Gray be there with his shirt off, looking sweaty and delicious, it was just a coincidence. I smiled mischievously to myself and pulled on the green skirt. It still fit perfectly. Underneath, I slid on the bottoms of an old red bikini. On top of the swimsuit top, I pulled on one of Bitsy’s long tanks and a loose-fitting midriff shirt. I had the choice of some grungy flip flops or canvas sneakers. I choose the sneakers.

"What is going on?"

A sharp voice behind me made me jump as I was shoving my feet into the sneakers.

"Jesus, Bitsy, why are you skulking around like a burglar?"

"Why are you wearing my shirt?"

"I'm going for a walk."

"It's ninety degrees out, and you're going for a walk wearing a skirt—and is that mascara you have on?"

I fought the instinct to shield my face from her penetrating gaze.

"Oh my God. Does the guy Mom said you were crushing on live around here?” She ran to her bedroom and started rummaging through her closet. There were no secrets in my life. I threw up my hands.

Chasing after her I yelled, “You’re not coming with me.”

"Did you go out with him? Is that what you were doing the other day? You went out with a GUY?" Bitsy virtually screamed the last part.

"I'm right here.” I tapped my ears to check that there was no damage to my hearing.

"You're avoiding the question," she yelled at me.

"Fine, yes, Gray is staying over at a friend's house."

Bitsy gaped at me and then pulled me in for a hug. “Gray? His name is a color? Wait, I don’t care. I’m so happy for you."

"Why?" Bitsy’s energy was making me smile, making me release my pent up hopes about this afternoon.

"Because, you've decided you haven't died along with Will."

I didn't have much of an answer to that so I just finished tying my shoes. “I love you, Bit by Bit,” I said and let myself out of the house. Bitsy’s groan echoed through the door and I couldn’t stop smiling.

Gray

BUILDING THE SLIP AND SLIDE had taken a couple of hours. The house had a long, fairly steep drive. We'd gone out this morning to the sporting goods store and bought seven king size air mattresses and several tent tarps, and a kid's bouncy house was in the process of being inflated at the bottom of the drive. The big motor required to inflate it was making it hard to hear, even at the top of the hill.

"You do this before?" I asked Bo as we surveyed our work. The mattresses had been laid end-to-end and covered much, but not all, of the drive. The pressure of one end of the mattress on the other was to keep them in place, like a stacked set of blocks. The tarps, which would ordinarily go beneath a tent, were stretched tautly across the top of the mattresses. Bo, Finn, Noah, and I had worked in pairs to drive in the stakes to hold down the tarps while Adam and Mal, the other two roommates, had made sure that the bouncy house was set up securely down at the base of the hill.