“I was falling in love with you, Hope.”
“Felix,” I say softly.
“I’m sure that sounds dramatic or manipulative or—”
“No,” I say. “I was too.”
We search each other’s eyes.
“And how do you feel now?” he finally asks.
“Like it’s hard to tell if this conversation is a beginning, or an ending.”
Pain flashes through his eyes. But then it fades into something more reflective. More hopeful.
“What if it’s not either one? What if it’s—what’s that expression you writers use? A turning point in the story.”
“I suppose we’ll have to see how the plot unfolds.” I take his hand. “Let’s walk.”
We make it to the beach and climb the stairs up the side of the rocks until we’re at the top of the cliff. It’s slightly overcast, and the sun is peeking behind a flat gray bank of clouds, glinting pale off the sea.
It’s beautiful.
“Do you know that song ‘God Moving Over the Face of the Waters’?” Felix asks.
“Never heard of it.”
“A Moby track from the nineties. Can I play it for you?”
“Sure.”
He takes out his phone and opens Spotify. “Here it is.”
The song that starts playing is instrumental. It begins quietly, mournful and wistful, and slowly builds to something joyful and powerful that I can only describe as the music of wonder. Of quiet, hopeful possibility.
“This song sounds like I feel,” I say.
He squeezes my hand. “Me too,” he says. And then he pulls me toward him, puts his hand delicately against my neck, and kisses me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, when we part.
I know he’s not apologizing for the kiss. He’s apologizing for everything else.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You know, if we’d done what I wanted—stayed in touch, tried to be something—it wouldn’t have worked.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I was in a bad place. I was lost, and unhappy, and looking foranything to drag me out of it.” I pause. “You were right. You couldn’t be the thing to drag me. I needed to get there on my own.”
“Have you?”
“I don’t know that I’ve solved the puzzle of my life. Maybe no one ever does. But I’ve figured out what I want, and what I don’t. I’ve decided to give up my lease. Stay here through the autumn.”
“Wow,” he says. “What will you do?”
“Tutor full-time. Finish my book. And then when my tourist visa runs out, I don’t know. Maybe spend the winter at my parents’ cottage in Vermont.”
“Didn’t you say they were selling it in the divorce?”
