“Always a good sign,” she says.
“We were watching a Fast & Furious movie,” I spit out.
“Which one,” she asks immediately.
“I really couldn’t tell you. One with Vin Diesel in it.”
“Would make anyone horny,” she says. “And, what, it was weird?”
“No. It was . . .” I tamp my voice down, lest the food truck operator decide to lean in. “Weirdly good.”
“What’s weird about that?” Ashleigh says. “Miles is hot.”
“It’s weird because I haven’t kissed anyone but Peter in, like, five years, and I didn’t think when I finally did, it would be my ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex-boyfriend.”
“When you put it like that . . .”
“Anyway, we agreed it was a huge mistake,” I say.
“Really?” she says. “Why?”
I shrug. “I mean, for every conceivable reason. We live together. We’re both just getting out of long-term relationships.”
She rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to dive into anything serious. I finalized my divorce over a year ago, and I have yet to make it to a third date with anyone.”
“No, I know that,” I say. “It couldn’t even be serious, since . . .”
Her eyebrow sharply arches. “Since?”
I heave a sigh. I wasn’t going to tell anyone from the library about this until things were more definite, but Ashleigh’s my friend now. I owe it to her. “I’m looking for a new job.”
She stares at me, like she doesn’t understand. “You’re obsessed with your job. Sometimes I catch you just staring at spreadsheets like they’re winning lottery tickets.”
“Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” I say, “but yes, I love my job. It’s the town I’m less sold on. I mean, I like it as a town. But I only moved here for Peter. My mom’s on the east coast, and . . . I don’t know. I’m just not sure I can hack it here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She shakes her head, sets her bao bun down. “Look, I get it. We’re adults. We have to do what’s best for ourselves. It sucks for me, but I get it.”
“Thanks, Ash. Really.”
She shrugs, picks her bao bun back up, and takes a huge bite. Mouth full, she says, “But if you’re not sticking around, and you don’t want anything serious, then I really don’t see what the issue with Miles is.”
“The issue is,” I begin, “he said it shouldn’t happen again.”
“Huh,” she says.
“Huh, what?” I say, instantly panicking a little.
“Nothing,” she assures me. “That just surprises me. Last night there was a vibe.”
“I think Miles could be alone in a room with a paper bag and there’d still be a vibe,” I say, though, honestly, I’m relieved someone else picked up on it too. That it wasn’t just wishful thinking.
I shake it off. Vibe or not, the bottom line remains unchanged. I’m not going to have a one-night stand with my roommate.
“Can I ask . . .” I trail off, trying to decide how to phrase it. “Is it too soon for me to ask what happened? Between you and Duke?”
“Well, since you just told me about your clandestine roommate hookup,” she says, taking a huge bite of bao bun, “I think we’ve officially graduated from work friends to real friends.”
My heart pinches at the thought. I wish I’d made more of an effort to get to know her sooner. Even before the breakup, it would’ve been nice to have a friend like Ashleigh.
“Duke was my high school boyfriend,” she says, then pauses to chew for a second. “We broke up when we went to college. Then we both ended up back here. Eventually, we ran into each other at the YMCA, then met up at his car in the parking lot, as I mentioned.”
“Got it.”
“So nine months later, Mulder is born,” she says. “And Duke was great during the pregnancy. We weren’t really together, but he was present. And afterward, I think we were just like . . . drunk on our perfect newborn baby, so when he told me he wanted to marry me, I was like, Hell yeah, let’s do it! We’re already a family, you know?
“And for, like, five years, things were good. Then Mulder started kindergarten, and I went full-time at the library. Mulder started taking karate, and gymnastics, and Duke joined a rec hockey team, and . . .” She shrugs. “I don’t know. We still worked okay. But our whole relationship revolved around our kid. Even the other couples we hung out with all had kids Mulder’s age. That’s how we chose our friends. It’s how we chose what shows we watched. It was all we talked about. And once our son got busier, the relationship just . . . stopped feeling like enough for me.
“So we tried doing date nights, and that helped. Just having dedicated time for the two of us. But something was still off. It felt like . . . like we’d reached our final form. Like, I’d ask him to take a cooking class, and he’d say, We don’t like cooking, or I’d be like, What if we moved to Portugal, and he’d be like, We don’t have jobs in Portugal.”
“I mean . . . I hesitate to say this, but those seem like reasonable responses.”
“Oh, totally,” she agrees. “But the conversation just ended there, every time. There wasn’t a What if we visit Portugal in the summer. There wasn’t even a Why do you suddenly want to move to Portugal?”
“Why did you?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” she says, like this should be obvious. “I just wanted to feel less . . . settled.”
I snort. “We should’ve traded lives.”
