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about.”
    Without further ado, (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase) he took me in his arms, leaned me back against the counter, and kissed me till I was breathless. It didn’t take long, I might add. He gave me time to get my wind back and then kissed me again.
    My tongue wasn’t sticking to the roof of my mouth anymore. Along about the middle of the second kiss, it became otherwise engaged.
    Jake and I have been divorced for over twenty years, and, no, I have not been celibate all that time. Not that it’s anyone’s business. But I have been very careful about things. I never had anyone spend the night at my house while my kids still lived here, I’ve never had unprotected sex, and I’ve never entered into a relationship that had the remotest possibility of having strings attached.
    However, after two kisses and one bouquet of flowers, I was ready to ask Paul Lindquist to have sex with me on the kitchen table—after I set the tulips aside—and then move in with me. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’d been spending too much time with Suzanne, who falls in love at the drop of a zipper.
    “Ready?” Paul asked, releasing me slowly and taking both the commuter cups in one hand.
    I nodded, though I wasn’t at all sure my knees would hold me up if I stopped leaning against the counter. “Where’s my purse?” I asked.
    He looked around, and I saw that his eyes weren’t as clear as they had been. “Uh...”
    I wondered if his knees were weak, too.
    “Oh.” It was on the counter behind me, one corner of it digging into my ribs, so I pushed off and slung it over my shoulder once more. “Let’s go.”
    The trip to Indianapolis had never gone so fast. We spent the time driving and, while we ate lunch at a diner complete with waitresses in pink uniforms, catching up on each other’s lives. We didn’t even have our kids out of high school yet when he drove into the parking lot at Victory Field.
    After the game, we ate dinner at Rosie Peabody’s, the restaurant I used to own, which got us up to the year of Miranda’s college graduation and her wedding and the birth of Paul’s first grandchild. We kissed in the parking lot, and while we were waiting on a red light going out of town, and when he stopped at a filling station so I could go to the bathroom.
    As we neared Lewis Point, we both grew quiet, though he held my hand on the console between the seats. What would I do, I wondered, if he wanted to make love? I’m not ready for that, unless we can do it in the dark with my bra and tee shirt still on.
    There was no doubt I wanted him; the wanting had grown with each kiss. But wanting and having are sometimes two different things.
    There was no hurry, I told myself, but I knew this day had been seventeen years in coming, ever since that night we’d met in the pharmacy. That’s not much of a hurry.
    He took my keys from my hand and unlocked the door and pushed it open, but didn’t offer to go inside. I looked up at him, and he framed my face with his hands.
    “I had a great time,” he said.
    “Me, too.”
    Just as I was stiffening my knees for another kiss, the phone inside the house began to ring. Paul followed me in, closing the door behind him as I picked up the cordless across the room.
    “Andie?” Vin’s voice sounded tense. “You need to go to Suzanne’s right away. Something’s wrong.”
    Jean
    I remember the first time I typed “The End” at the bottom of the last page of a manuscript. I laid my head down on that old electric typewriter David had brought me home from the office and cried.
    Fifteen years later, I typed “The End,” laid my head down on the dining room table, and cried.
    “Oh, Jeannie.” David scooted me out of my chair and sat in it himself, pulling me onto his lap and tucking my head into his shoulder. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth how much of yourself you invest in your writing.”
    I lifted my head to take advantage of the tissue he was offering. “Oh, I don’t