She should think about Johnny. She is lucky to have him. He’s probably in their apartment right now. Johnny, with his slight southern accent and dark, dark eyes, his tie loosened, his Burberry oxford shoes and Rolex. He says, “How goes it?” whenever he sees her, holds her hand when they’re out, and will listen when she talks about a cat that bit her or an old dog that died from anesthesia on the operating table. Johnny, in his late thirties, has a son named Jeremy, eleven, who lives forty-five minutes away. He loves that kid, and seeing them together, seeing how Johnny would die for this boy, makes Ginger love him more. Johnny’s got a deal in South America on the day of Suzette’s wedding and can’t come.
Leda, her neighbor who has been in the building the longest, sized him up. “Looks like a young Paul Newman. Charming,” she said.
In the beginning of their relationship, Johnny would drop by her office to see what she did. To see her checking a kitten’s throat or filing down the teeth of a pet bunny. The other ladies—the vet techs, the receptionists—would watch him the whole time. “Where in all of Georgia did you find him?” one said. “Holy hotness,” another said, and the fact that he smiled at them, that he joked with them, too, just made him more popular. But Ginger finds there is a limit to his charm. She hates to say it, but she could sometimes take him or leave him—and she doesn’t know why. When he goes on trips with Jeremy, like the two-day skiing vacation they took last winter, she feels a thrill when he leaves, when she knows he’ll be gone. As soon as the apartment door closes, she silently celebrates. She hates that she feels this way. He doesn’t deserve that.
Maybe it’s Luke’s fault. Maybe she can’t trust anything to be real—even something that appears to gleam with certainty and possibility—since her first major relationship dissolved the way it did. She should call Johnny right now. She should say she misses him. She does miss him. She does. She misses his sounds—his throat clearing, his burpees and push-ups in the apartment, his fingers hitting the laptop keys, his blender whirring with a protein shake. She misses the way he stands behind her and says, “How’s my girl?”
She knows she shouldn’t think about Luke. Ancient history. She just wonders why she saw him. Maybe the universe wanted her to. Is the way she felt when she watched him sing, when she would wake up next to him in her apartment and just study his silent lips, his long eyelashes, how she should always feel?
The day his dad died, she wanted to never leave him. She never felt a person just disintegrate the way he had: his face slick, his breath bad for the first time. She knew, knew he was using something at that point. She never knew what. He slept too much, he would be too punchy when he’d call her late at night. Was it terrible she didn’t think badly of him for it? That she just thought he was sensitive, and sensitive people felt things so deeply, to the point where it could wound them. If he needed to take a pill or two, smoke a thing or two, even though she was never, ever that person, wouldn’t she be able to get him back to where he should be? But she couldn’t. The day she returned to Georgia, after his dad’s funeral, it was March. It was still so cold. The ice hung on the power lines, the ground was frozen. She remembers thinking “Come find me, Luke” when her plane finally was cleared for takeoff.
But he didn’t.
Two years now with Johnny, and he will probably propose soon. Why doesn’t that make her happy? He makes her happy. He does. She loves his smile, his sense of humor, juggling apples and imitating Leda’s voice perfectly. She loves to lie naked with him on a Friday night—to go away with him to Jamaica, a bed-and-breakfast in St. Simons. She thinks of a poem she read once: This is what the living do. Yes, this is it. If you’re lucky enough to have someone like this, you never let them go. You love them back, fully. But at the end of the day, she can’t ever see herself wanting to do what Suzette is doing; she doesn’t want to walk down the aisle toward Johnny.
* * *
She forgets to stop at the vet’s for the heartworm meds. She passes right by. She turns off the radio and knows she shouldn’t drive over to Luke’s old house. But it’s so close, she feels like she needs to.
Mrs. Crowley’s house—does she really live there all alone now?—sits on a charming street. There are rocking chairs on the front porch and electric candles in every window. The same stone swan sits at the top of the porch steps, and on the door is a rope wreath with an autumnal bow.