It was your wedding day.

I always thought you and I would be a couple. Buy us a brownstone on 116th in Harlem. Sell it for a million dollars and move to Echo Park. Get a convertible and drive PCH whenever we wanted. Write that screenplay together in our bathing suits and drink lattes all day. Stay up late watching French films in that midcentury-modern we talked about, remember, the one with the fireplace and the view of downtown? Your art would brighten our walls and my best sellers would lively up the shelves. And we would get stoned and listen to Harry Belafonte on the Hi-Fi. Naked in the hot tub, candle drips and patchouli sunsets, ecstasy and laughter. Oh the laughter, but alas, not from the bellies of our children. You wanted to raise a family and I wanted to be Charles Bukowski.

We almost had everything.

I picked these blossoms for you. Aren’t they dreamy? I still have the self portrait you painted for me. It's in storage right now. Things haven't been going exactly the way I expected. I'm renting an apartment in Burbank with a friend from college. I sold the Volkswagen, but I can still take a bus to Santa Anita. When I get my book deal, I'm going to buy that place we always wanted, you know, with the swimming pool and the herb garden?

You look happy.

⌘