Page 16 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

“You weren’t going to drown.”

“I was at least going to be embarrassed.”

“You were already embarrassed.”

She gives a hard, sharp laugh, one from deep inherguts.

Okay, so here is my problem.

I have spent the last forty-five minutes being extremely reasonable about this woman. Of course, I noticed that she’sinteresting and clearly smart and has a quality to her attention that’s rare.

She looks at you and actually listens. Take those women in the tattoo shop earlier, who are like most of the kind I run into. They’re women who just give a performance of listening when really they’re just thinking up the next thingtheywant to say.

And I’ve been setting all that noting carefully to one side because she literally left her husband today.

Today.

The ring was on her hand when she got in the hot tub and even though it’s off now— Whatever that means, it’s not anything that should involve me.

I was being totally reasonable, doing my laps and about to turn in for the night.

But then she jumped in the pool.

Entirely reckless of her, and it wasn’t because I asked or dared her to. I certainly didn’t expect her to do it.

I don’t know what to do with that.

People don’t do the unexpected thing.

In my experience people do the expected thing reliably and somewhat desperately, and I’ve always been the problem in the room because I’m the one who doesn’t.

I’m the mess.

I’m the one who goes sideways.

She’s leaving tomorrow, I tell myself.

She just left her husband today, I tell myself.

You have a son and a custody arrangement and a therapy appointment on Tuesday and your life is finally starting to resemble something functional, I tell myself.

“I should let you get sleep,” I say, climbing out of the hot tub for the last time. Making better choices is kinda my whole gig lately.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sleep is a good idea. It’s been a long day.”

We walk to her cabin. I don’t plan to walk her there. I’m just headed to my RV. I mean, obviously, that’s where I’m going. The path to my RV justhappensto take me by the cabins.

And she’s walking beside me and neither of us says anything for the thirty seconds it takes to get there.

She stops at her cabin door.

I stop because she does.

“Goodnight,” I say, because she left her husband today, and I am trying very hard not to become her next bad decision.

I turn away.

Her fingers close around my wrist.