“So we lost over four decades because every single person involved kept deciding what was best for somebody else.”
“Pretty much.”
“That is incredibly stupid, Jeffrey.”
“Also true.”
We sat there in that room and didn’t say anything for a while. A monitor beeped somewhere down the hall.
Then I Remembered
I looked at him.
“Jeffrey.”
“What?”
“I’m sixty.”
His eyes widened.
And then that smile came back across his face, the whole thing, and for one second he was nineteen years old under some bleachers in southern Pennsylvania.
“So you are.”
“We had a deal.”
He Raised His Pinky
His hand shook badly. He had to lift it with the other one.
“If we’re both still single at sixty…”
I hooked mine around his.
“We stop being idiots and find each other.”
Tears ran straight down the sides of his face into the pillow.
“Still single?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
And I looked over at that little blue velvet box sitting open on the tray table.
