Judy Greer

I did.

I am guilty of that.

Elizabeth stands to greet her son, and Monica does as well.

He kisses both of them on the cheek and accepts a glass of champagne from the waiter before they all sit again and touch glasses.

To happiness, Elizabeth says, and they drink.

And Elizabeth speaks easily, casually, of an exhibit she is interested in seeing.

The room is warm and candlelit, and it seems right to take her husband's hands, to slip her fingers through his.

He neither resists nor responds.

She remembers that first night with him, how cool the tips of his fingers were against her collarbone, how light their touch, as though he was somehow surprised to have found her there naked and breathing in front of him.

The last man Monica dated before Martin was an old acquaintance, someone she'd known vaguely in high school and met again not long before taking the job at Martin's university.

His name was James, but call me Jimmy, he'd said.

And he had a girlfriend and a three-year-old daughter by a woman he no longer dated, but whom he still counted as a friend.

He told Monica one day a few weeks after their first meeting that he'd stopped seeing his girlfriend, that he wanted to ask her out.

She said yes.

And at the end of that first date, after a steak dinner and a stop for ice cream, he asked her out again.

Before he'd even gotten her back to her house, she still shared with her mother.

James was a man who understood exactly what was possible for him and was happy with that.

A man who had no need of exceeding his reach.

And later that year, when Monica told him she was moving for a new job, he was genuinely puzzled.

But why would you leave?