Page 85 of The Husband I Left

“They’ll figure it out,” he says.

Chapter 31

Genny

I spend the next several days in a state of confusion and my ex-husband is to blame. Because you don’t share ice cream and shy smiles with a man who gave up a fortune for you and then just… go back to normal. That’s not how these things work. Something was going to happen. I was so sure of it. A dinner invitation. A confession in the hallway. A knock on my door, with roses.

Except nothing happens.

The next morning, Oliver catches me as I leave for work in the morning, same as always. “Good morning, Genny. I hope you have a good day.” That evening, there’s a container of chicken paprikash waiting on my step with a note that says Joe supervised. The morning after that: “Good morning, Genny. I hope you have a good day.” And so it goes, day after day, for two solid weeks, as if the ice cream never happened. Like I didn’t stand there under a streetlight looking at him and thinking Oh no, I’m falling for him again.

At first, I think he’s being careful. Then I think he’s being respectful. By the end of the second week, I think he’s being infuriating.

“Maybe he’s waiting for you,” my sister Liz suggests when I complain over lunch. “You know. Since he’s the one who wrecked everything the first time. Maybe he figures the next move belongs to you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “He’s Oliver Sinclair. Oliver Sinclair doesn’t wait for signs. He makes things happen.”

“Maybe he’s realized that wasn’t the best way to be,” Liz replies with a shrug. “From what you’ve said, he made some pretty major changes in his life. I doubt ‘used to’ is a great predictor anymore.”

I hate it when my big sister is right, and she knows it, which is why she smirks at me over her sandwich.

The thing is, I suspect what he’s waiting for. I’ve known since the morning he made me eggs. If you ever want to wind down with a cup of hot chocolate and a talk, my door is always open. He put the invitation out there months ago.

So it goes on. Good morning, Genny. Dinner on the step. Note taped to the container. I hope you have a good day. And every evening I look at his door and hesitate, and every night the hesitation gets longer, and every night I end up just going into my own apartment. I’m not sure I’m ready for what it means if I go to his.

Then comes the Thursday from hell.

It’s been one of those days where everything that could go wrong at work did. The grant I’ve been fighting for got pushed back another month. Three employees quit without notice. The water cooler broke and flooded half the break room. By the time I drag myself up the stairs to my floor, it’s past nine, and all I want is food and bed, in that order.

The container is waiting on my step. I bend down and pick it up, and through the plastic lid I can see some kind of stew, thick and rich, with a folded note tucked underneath.

Long day? Joe says beef stew fixes everything.

I stand in the hallway, holding warm stew made by a man who tracked my schedule closely enough to know I was late, who cooked for me anyway, who left it on my step and went back inside without knocking because he’s decided, apparently, that the next move is mine.

And suddenly I’m just so tired. Not work tired. Tired of standing in this hallway every night holding dinner and pretending I don’t know what I want.

I turn around and walk to his door.

Then I stop, because the last time I knocked on this door uninvited, I cried all over his shirt, announced I wanted to kiss him, and threw up on his coffee table. It’s not exactly a track record that inspires confidence. My hand hovers in the air, knuckles an inch from the wood, and I have a brief, vivid fantasy of retreating to my apartment and eating my stew and dealing with all of this some other day, some braver day.

I knock.

The door opens so fast he must have been standing right behind it. Oliver looks at me, and something in his face goes soft.

“Genny.”

“Can we talk?” I ask.

“Of course.” He steps back, pulling the door wide, and I walk into his apartment for the second time ever. I glance around and then stop. On the kitchen counter, sitting out in plain view, are two mugs. Beside them: a container of cocoa powder, a bag of marshmallows, a small saucepan already on the stove.

Two mugs. Not one. Two.

I turn and look at him, one eyebrow climbing. He follows my gaze to the counter, and the tips of his ears go pink, and he shrugs with an attempt at nonchalance that fails completely.

“Hope springs eternal,” he says.

“How long have those been sitting out?”