The party winds down, and we head out for some food. We ask a museum guard for a recommendation, and he suggests a local pizza place, which sounds fine to me, but Mr Faraway says, no, I’m used to eating a little better than that around you.
We wander, not too purposefully, holding hands as we walk, and each time we stop for a light to change, he pulls me close.
Eventually, we settle on a Thai restaurant, and chat about this and that as we wait for our pad thai. He has been taking care not to mention his almost-Ex, and I’ve been trying not to mention The Departed. Statements about them tended to be along the lines of, I like this now, I wish he or she would have done this when we were married. It was better for us, we agreed, to simply focus on the things we liked, and leave off the reminders of past disappointments. So we chat, merrily, but with a bit of effort at the points where we have to remind ourselves about things and people best left in the past. It’s a pleasant conversation, all the more so for our awareness of it.
The food arrives, and I remark on very pleasant it is to have a pleasant chat over dinner, but I slip and continue the sentence: So many of our meals were eaten in silence, when I was married.
He sits back and looks perplexed, hesitating. I don’t know how to say this, he says finally, but here is what I want to know. Why the hell did you marry him in the first place?
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