New York City, at times, most times, has been a place she has wanted to leave, but is now a place she has come to on purpose, for some sort of recovery. The loving attention from her bud does make her reconsider the kind of excitement that her husband wants. It is exciting when someone pays attention to you, a new person or a new old person or any person. It would be lovely, so lovely, if she could believe that any new person would be the thing that fixes everything. Nothing is fixed. Nothing was broken. Everything was good and then one big part of that got broken by one person on purpose. Well, we don’t know if that’s true. That’s today’s story. We may never know if that’s true. We still don’t know what’s true. Maybe her marriage was broken. She didn’t feel that she was broken, she felt closer to whole as she got older. There was a time in her life when she did believe that the relationship part of her was broken, in some invisible way that was not ever going to be repaired, and not for lack of trying. Then she met someone and stopped believing that. Look, she thought, I’m not broken after all! I’m doing this! I’m pretty good at it! Then that someone left. It was all a big fake-out. Now she’s spending time with a new (old) person and it can be extremely pleasant to spend time with a new (old) person, and then the morning comes and things are not fixed, grief still exists. They are not sleeping together, though it’s not like the idea of sleeping together isn’t there. It is there. Or it’s there in her mind. Or it’s in your mind. It’s in your mind, right? It’s surely in your mind. Will-they-won’t-they-when-will-they-already is part of the template. They are affectionate in a way she’s never been in a platonic friendship before, but there’s a boundary, even if it’s a flexible boundary, and it’s enjoyable. He’s not her boyfriend. We can’t call it a relationship but it’s not not a relationship. All friendships are relationships. They sleep with whomever they want except for each other, and then they come home. Except no one is sleeping with anyone else. Or she’s not. He might be. But he’s always there. She doesn’t want to think about what he does with anyone else. She wants him to want to have sex with her. (I mean, she wants everyone to want to have sex with her, in the same way that she wants to be invited to more parties and then not go.) She might want to have sex with him? Someday? He might or might not want to have sex with her, someday? She might want to have sex with no one ever again, on any day? He doesn’t want a relationship with anyone right now, full stop. Sorry, were you thinking this was going to be the love part of the eating and praying, did you think she was going to get her groove back? She doesn’t want any more endings unless they’re happy. Is this because she never writes happy endings, because she writes vague endings? Should she write herself a happy ending? Knowing full well that the rest of her story will write itself however it wants to? And that she’ll probably write all that nonsense down and then that story will change and she’ll have to rewrite the whole damn thing yet again? She doesn’t want to regret having loved, but sometimes she does, she doesn’t want to fear loving again but you know she does. She doesn’t want to start her life over, but it’s already too late for that.