“Absolutely.”
—
At five o’clockon the dot, Josh is in the kitchen getting ready to start the meal. He doesn’t strike me as a guy who eats this early, so I have a feeling it’s a kind gesture for my benefit.
“What’s for dinner?” I ask, adding with a coy smile, “I hope it’s something I like.”
“Veggie tacos,” he responds. “Nothing too fancy, but I took a guess based on your love of margaritas that tacos would be a good choice.”
“You chose wisely. I will make us both a drink to go with the meal.”
I watch Josh start his work in the kitchen with an unmasked curiosity. He cooks just like he does home repairs. First, all of the tools he needs are put out on the counter. Cutting board, knives, prep bowls. Then he washes all of the veggies. He is careful and methodical—in direct contrast to the way I move around a kitchen like a hurricane.
“Can you talk and cook at the same time?” I ask.
His big laugh answers the question for me, and I waste no time diving right in while he tends to dicing onions and garlic.
“You know a lot about my dating life now, thanks to Tonya atCosmo. So, now it’s my turn to pepper you with probing questions about your love life.”
“You’re serious?”
“One hundred percent. I want this friendship to be built on equitable ground, and it can’t operate that way if you know everything about me, but you’re still a mystery. First question: Have you ever been married?”
“Yes.”
I wait for him to go on, but nothing is forthcoming. “Yes? I only get a yes?”
“Yes, I was married in my early twenties. My high school sweetheart, Tessa, and I managed to stay together during college even though we were a few hours away from one another. We got married a few months after graduation. It took us about six more months to realize we had made a terrible mistake.”
He’s now slicing a red pepper while he’s telling me this, and I wait until he looks up and catches my eye. Only then am I convinced he’s being honest. I’m shocked.
“We stayed married for another year so that our families wouldn’t totally freak out, but I was indeed married and divorced before my twenty-fifth birthday.”
“Does she still live in town?”
“No. She moved away a while ago. She’s remarried and has two kids. We see each other every now and again when she comes home to visit her parents. It feels strange to call her my ex-wife because we really were just kids.”
“Josh, I’m not sure I’ll be able to top this first revelation. My mind is truly blown right now.”
He makes a joke about being an actual man of mystery, but all I can think about is how, aside from Ben, he’s the most honest and open guy I’ve ever met. He grabs the last remaining veggie, a sweet potato, and begins chopping it.
“It’s probably breaking the rules for me to askyoua question, but how old were you when you married Ben?”
“Twenty-three. Just like you.”
“That’s the universe for you. For every success story there has to be one failure to keep things balanced out.”
He scoops up all of the veggies and drops them in a big bowl, tossing in olive oil and a host of spices to season it all. My stomach growls, and I realize that downing a margarita before my meal likely was not the most responsible decision. I’ve always been a lightweight. The mental lubrication does, however, allow me to keep on my line of questioning.
“You seem like a guy who only answers the question exactly how it’s presented to him, so let me follow up with this: Have you ever been married more than once?”
“No, but I was engaged. To someone other than Tessa, I mean.”
“I need all the details on this. Please tell me everything while you cook,” I beg.
And he does. While the veggies sizzle on the stovetop, he tells me about his formerfiancée—the now-infamous (at least to me) Katrina. Lenny and Sunny both somehow left the fiancée bit out for reasons I simply do not understand. Josh and Katrina met when she came to town to teach a few classes at Canopy Community College. It was only supposed to be a six-month contract, but she metJosh and decided to stay. They dated for five years and were engaged for one more before she sat him down on a completely normal January evening and told him she was leaving. The prime dating years of his late twenties and early thirties were gone, and he felt he had nothing to show for it.
“Six months after she left, business really started to boom, and my love life has been mostly awful since then. I love it here, but small-town dating in your midthirties is not for the faint of heart.”
