Page 20 of The Cubby Hole

I didn’t have a lot of experience with the kind of gratitude lottery winners must feel. I’d become so fluent in jaded self-talk I didn’t have a private vocabulary for joy.

Clichés on labels scrolled across the screen of my mind—The Luckiest Man in the World, The Happiest Man on Earth, The Perfect Couple—while a sappy Pandora station played classic love songs—“The Way You Look Tonight,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Time After Time.”

The ghost in the machine had taken over, and he didn’t seem to give a fuck about my carefully cultivated taste in music.

I wore a grin that wouldn’t go away.

9

7:07 A.M.

I awoke to find Ben gone from bed. I followed the smell of coffee brewing and discovered him in the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless in yesterday’s jeans, plating lox and bagels.

I slipped my arms around him from behind. “Happy birthday,” I murmured against his neck.

He turned to kiss me, humming against my lips. “Happy birthday.” Even though his pretty blues were sleepy and bloodshot, they still glowed.

It should have been impossible that I could feel this giddy and hungover at the same time.

Ben poured our coffees, but neither of us could sit still or eat anything yet. We circled one another for a few moments, grinning over our cups, before I returned for another kiss. This one caught and unfolded, deeper and longer with a little bit of ass-grabbing.

My fingertips nudged something crinkly in his back pocket.

The paper from the photo box he’d snatched from me.

I pulled it out quickly and immaturely danced out of his reach.

He only shrugged. Go ahead.

The glossy paper had been folded and unfolded so many times it was little more than a grid of white lines, but I recognized it immediately. It was a page I’d carefully torn from a magazine, an advertisement for men’s wedding bands made from beautifully masculine materials like tungsten and oak from old whiskey barrels.

I frowned at him. “I gave this to Nick.”

“You did. I was there. We were having dinner at your place after you guys moved in together.”

I rolled my eyes. “He called the rings crude.”

“I thought they were cool as shit.”

“You swiped it?”

Ben made a soft sound of disgust. “He left it on the table. Threw his dirty napkin on top.”

“That was fucking ten years ago.”

He shrugged. “I hold on to stuff.”

“Except for that letter you burned?” I asked with a straight face. Him saving the ad was some consolation, but I couldn’t resist the chance to tease him.

Ben shook his head and smiled. “I’m never going to hear the end of that.”

I tried to go back to making out, but he insisted there’d be no more action until after we ate something.

Once my mouth was crammed with smoked salmon and cream cheese, he said casually, “We should get married for our fortieth.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, struggling to chew and swallow as quickly as possible. “Are you seriously fucking proposing to me with a picture of a ring?”

“Kinda says the same thing as the letter.”