Dear Walt,

I’m drinking good coffee and eating half a cinnamon raisin bagel with cinnamon pecan cream cheese and I’m thinking about you and how you made me come to love both. I’m sure I drank coffee before you but not good coffee, grinding our own beans. We loved Sumatran the best.

You showed me even before we were married the yumminess of mixing brown sugar and cinnamon into cream cheese. We ate bagels often for breakfast when I slept at your house.

Our first date was at Pappasito’s where we met for a Tex Mex dinner, each paying our own check, both of us ridiculously broke. We stayed till the restaurant closed, talking, talking, talking.

You didn’t want to date me. I lived forty miles across town. Our outlooks on so many things were completely opposite. We found this out during those hours when we couldn’t stop talking that night we first met. You said you knew me immediately when I walked in blindly to meet you. I left that night thinking I’d made a really good friend but we would never make it as a couple. You leaned in to kiss me. I offered you my cheek. A friendly goodnight. We were such fools.

That was in December. I didn’t see you again until February. You brought your son to my book signing for The Heartbreak Kid. He disappeared into the store’s kid’s section. You stayed by my side the entire time, talking, walking off only when readers came to the table. Later, when you left, you held my hand and backed away, our fingers drifting apart. I knew then. I knew. I knew.

We next met halfway at a Barnes & Noble. We browsed the romance section and I told you about all the authors I knew. We drove a few blocks and walked around the Waterwall Park. I lost an earring there. When I drove you back to your car, since we always took mine because yours was a POS, you kissed me for the first time. It was so hard to go home because I knew.

Our next date was dinner at Chili’s and a movie. Something with Clint Eastwood I think. After both, we sat in my car and talked and talked and talked until the shopping center went dark. I think a week later you were spending most nights at my house, driving those damned 40 miles.

My kids hated you. We’ve all laughed about that recently because of how very much they love you now, and how you became the father they needed after losing their own. But wow. That summer when I moved them those 40 miles across town and you dared to move in with us a week later… I like not thinking about those days. Except those days brought us to the ones we shared here in our empty nest. The beautiful 1600 days before December 21st happened.