“Have you ever played that game?” I asked. I was toying with my novel again. As if my collective experience even when supplemented with my imagination would ever amount to such a thing.

“No.”

“Why not?” I asked. Chance. I have always thought chance played such a huge role in life, in love.

“It’s not a game. That’s a cop out,” he says. He’s distracted.

“A cop out?”

“Jennifer, at our age, love is not a game of chance. Love is patience and perseverance. It’s hard work. It’s remembering that every day we spend with someone is a day they trusted us with everything that makes them who they are. You don’t get there my flipping a coin or betting that the next person to walk through the door is the one,” he says.

I love when he gets like this, pulls me out of my insane fantasies and grounds me.

“Yeah, but for a book? No?” I smile, looking at the ground. And he laughs out loud.

“For a book? It’s perfect. It’s everything everyone else is caught up in.”