“That’s kind of why I’m here, actually,” Rob said.

I glanced at him over the rim of my margarita glass. “What? Because of…kids?”

“Yeah, basically,” Rob said.

Without another word, I took a huge slurp of my drink. And got a brain freeze. And choked.

“Whoa,” Rob said, looking concerned. “Slow down, slugger.”

“Sorry,” I said, wincing because of the brain freeze. I stuck the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth because that is what is supposed to cure ice-cream headaches, like the one I suddenly had.

But I didn’t know of any cure for the heartache his words had induced.

Because it had all become clear. Why Rob was here, I mean.

He wasn’t just getting married. He was having a kid.

That had to be it.

And why not? He had his own place now, not to mention his own business. He was his own boss at last. The next natural step was marriage and a child.

Which was great. Really. Just great. I was really happy for him.

But why had he felt compelled to come all the way to New York to tell me? Couldn’t he have just sent me a wedding invitation in the mail? That would have been a lot easier to handle than…this. I mean, did he have to come all the way here to rub my face in it?

“The thing is,” Rob said, leaning forward a little in his chair. He had clearly seen that I’d recovered sufficiently from my frozen-drink headache. The heartache? That was still going on, but I guess I was doing a better job of hiding that than I had the brain freeze. “I know things have been…well, weird between us. You and me, I mean. The past two years or so.”

Weird.That’s what he called it.

Whatever. At least he realized how long it had been. Since things had ceased being hunky-dory (they had never been perfect) and started being…well, what he said.Weird.

“But we’re still friends, right?” Rob’s big shoulders were hunched as he leaned towards me. The ladylike little table at which we sat—the one decorated all over in mosaic tiles, which had always suited Ruth and me just fine—suddenly seemed too small, dwarfed as it was by Rob’s man-sized body. “I mean…maybe we aren’t—whatever we were—anymore.”