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  Silence settled over the apartment.

  “I’ll never forget my first time with you,” Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. “The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch.”

  “Yes, there were some moments there,” Cal said.

  Min shook her head. “We’re never going to be rid of those people.”

  “I know,” Cal said.

  “Thank God we have each other.” Min looked up at him. “I love you.”

  “Thank you,” Cal said and kissed her.

  “So I’m buying a house,” Min said when she came up for air. “How do you feel about an Arts and Crafts bungalow like my grandma used to live in?”

  “Are you in it?” Cal said.

  Min nodded.

  “I’m there,” Cal said. “Can we go back to bed now?”

  “Yes,” Min said. “Bring the doughnuts.”

  An hour and a half later, Min lay curled beside Cal with Elvis asleep at the foot of the bed, looking like rusty velvet on the lavender blue satin. Cal was breathing almost loudly enough to be called snoring, and she patted his shoulder. A month ago, I didn’t know him, she thought dreamily. And now he’s the rest of my life.

  Then she pulled back a little. That sounded ridiculous. Completely irrational, in fact. Screw rationality, she thought, but the thought didn’t go away. You’d have to be insane to pin the rest of your life on somebody you’d only known a month, especially somebody with a past like Cal’s.

  She slid out from under his arm, and picked up his shirt from the floor. When she put it on, it failed to meet in the middle over her chest. That always works in the movies, she thought, disgusted, and dropped it on the floor. Instead, she pulled the comforter off the bed, annoying Elvis but leaving Cal asleep under the sheet. It was June. He wasn’t going to freeze.

  Then she went out and sat on her grandmother’s couch, wrapped in her comforter, and tried to make sense of everything. Elvis padded out to join her and curled up on the back of the couch, and she moved her head a little bit to rub against him and make him purr.

  So, she thought, essentially what we have here is that I’m looking at the biggest player in town and thinking he’s True Love That Will Last Forever. What are the odds on that? Across from her, the clock on the mantel clicked as the hands hit midnight.

  “Hey,” Cal said, and she looked up to see him in the doorway, stifling a yawn. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s midnight,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’m turning back into a pumpkin.”

  “That explains the couch,” he said and came to sit beside her. He put his arm around her and pulled her close and kissed her on the forehead, and she closed her eyes and leaned into him, loving him so much she was weak with it. I’m in big trouble here, she thought.

  “Something wrong?” he said. “I thought everything was pretty much perfect once the loons left.”

  “It is,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s next.”

  “Next.” Cal nodded. “Okay. Well.” He took her hand and yawned again. “Tomorrow, I’ll call my mother so she doesn’t put a curse on us, and we’ll go have dinner with your parents and make sure they’re not still nuts.”

  “There’s a hope,” Min said. The comforter slipped down over her shoulder, and Cal put his hand there, making lazy circles on her skin with his fingertips as he talked.

  “And then we’ll go looking for that house you were talking about, one with only six steps up from the street.” He shifted a little to avoid a spring and added, “And we’ll get a new couch.”

  Min felt herself start to smile, the happiness bubbling up in spite of the odds, and he held her tighter. “And then we’ll get married, and we’ll live happily ever after.”

  Min went cold as he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Yeah. That’s the part I’m wondering about.”

  Cal’s hand tightened on hers. “You think we’re going to have problems?”

  “I don’t know,” Min said, looking into his eyes. “I think we’re going to love each other till the day we die, but I don’t know if that’s enough. Life is not a fairy tale.”

  “Okay,” Cal said. “It’s midnight, I’ve had a very full evening, and I’m a little slow here. What are you worried about?”

  “The happily ever after,” Min said, knowing she was sounding like an idiot. “All the stuff we just did, the romance part, the fairy tale stuff, I know how that works, I read the stories.”

  “Fairy tale stuff?”

  “But they don’t tell you about the happily ever after. And as far as I can see, that’s where it all breaks down. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, and yes, I know those statistics are skewed by repeat divorcers—”

  “It’s midnight, and I’m listening to statistics,” Cal said to the cat.

  “—but I’m worried. There aren’t any happily ever after stories. That’s where it ends. Where the hard part starts.”

  “All right,” Cal said. “So?”

  “So,” Min said, meeting his eyes. “What are we going to do?”

  “You want me to be philosophic about the future now?” Cal said. “I’m not even sure where I left my pants.”

  Min looked at him for a moment, loving him in spite of the fact that he had bed hair and was making jokes and wasn’t helping. In spite of everything, she thought and smiled at him. “No.” She clutched the comforter around her. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Let’s go back to bed.”

  “We’re going to take it one day at a time,” Cal said, holding on to her. “I don’t know anything about this, either, I didn’t plan for this, but I think we just stick together. Take care of each other. Pat each other on the back when things get tight.” When she still looked unsure, he smiled at her with so much love in his eyes that she went dizzy, and then he said, “Bet you ten bucks we make it.”

  What are the odds? she thought, and realized with sudden, blinding clarity that she wouldn’t take the other side of that bet, that only a loser would bet against them. This is really it, she thought, amazed. This is really forever. I believe in this.

  “Min?” he said, and she kissed him, putting all her heart into it.

  “No bet,” she said against his mouth. “Your odds are too good.”

  “Our odds are too good,” he said, and took her back to bed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In case you were wondering . . .

  David got over Min pretty quickly, although the fact that Cal won bothered him for years. Four months later, he met a woman who agreed with everything he said and slept with him on the third date. They were married six months later. She never cooks with butter.

  Cyn took longer to get over Cal because she really did love him. She holed up in her apartment, subsisting on carrots and nonfat ranch dressing, until Liza dragged her out into the sun, made her write about her breakup, and called in a favor from one of her many former bosses to get the book to another editor. The editor, a guy with glasses who was two inches shorter than Cynthie and slightly overweight, made her rewrite it four times and then threw all the promotional power of his publishing house behind it. He married Cynthie the day before the book hit number one on the NYT list. They have a penthouse in New York and eat only in the very best restaurants.

  Emilio let Liza tell him what to do and within the year Emilio’s was the hottest restaurant in town. He offered her a partnership if she stayed, but things were running well and she was bored, so she introduced him to a friend of hers with an MBA in management and left to go save somebody else.

  George stopped taking his overworked secretary to lunch, for which she was grateful even though she missed the expensive food. He now has lunch with Nanette three times a week. She eats.

  Reynolds spends so much time with Min, Cal, and Bink on social occasions that, given their willingness to say, “Reynolds, you’re being a butthead,” he has stopped being a butthead when he’s with th