The Leftovers

string-pulling abilities, but he was pretty sure Nora wasn’t one of them.
    “I guess you’re just a lucky guy,” she told him.
    “That’s right.” He tilted his glass in her direction, suggesting a toast without insisting on it. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
    She mimicked his gesture. “Same to you.”
    “You look beautiful,” he said, not for the first time that evening.
    Nora smiled unconvincingly and opened her menu. He could see that it was costing her something just to be here, exposed like this, letting the whole town in on their little secret. But she’d done it— she’d done it for him —and that was the important thing.
    *   *   *
    HE HAD to hand it to Aimee. Without her encouragement, he never would’ve forced the issue, wouldn’t have had the courage to nudge Nora out of her comfort zone.
    “I don’t want to push her,” he’d said. “She’s a pretty fragile person.”
    “She’s a survivor,” Aimee had reminded him. “I bet she’s a lot tougher than you think.”
    Kevin knew it was an iffy proposition, taking relationship advice from a teenager—a high school dropout, no less—but he’d gotten to know Aimee a lot better in the past couple of weeks and had come to think of her more as a friend and a peer than as one of his daughter’s classmates. For someone who’d made some pretty bad decisions in her own life, she actually had a lot of insight into other people and what made them tick.
    It had been awkward at first, the two of them alone in the house after Jill left for school, but they’d gotten past that pretty quickly. It helped that Aimee was on her best behavior, coming downstairs wide-awake and fully dressed, no more sleepy Lolita in a tank top. She was polite and friendly and surprisingly easy to talk to. She told him about her new job—apparently, waitressing was a lot harder than she’d thought it would be—and asked a lot of questions about his. They discussed current events and music and sports—she was a pretty big NBA fan—and watched funny videos on YouTube. She was also curious about his personal life.
    “How’s your girlfriend?” she asked him almost every morning. “You guys getting serious?”
    For a while, Kevin just said, She’s fine, and moved on, trying to let her know that it was none of her business, but Aimee refused to take the hint. Then one morning last week, without making a conscious decision, he blurted out an honest answer.
    “Something’s wrong,” he said. “I like her a lot, but I think we’re running out of gas.”
    He told her the whole story, minus the meager sexual details—the parade, the dance, the impulsive trip to Florida, the rut they’d fallen into when they got back home, his sense that she was pushing him away, that he wasn’t really welcome in her life.
    “I try to get to know her, but she just clams up on me. It’s frustrating.”
    “But you want to stay together?”
    “Not if it’s gonna be like this.”
    “Well, what do you want it to be?”
    “A normal relationship, you know? As normal as she can handle right now. Just going out once in a while, to the movies or whatever. Maybe with friends, so it’s not just the two of us. And I’d like to be able to have a real conversation, not to have to always worry that I’m saying the wrong thing.”
    “Does she know this?”
    “I think so. I don’t see how she couldn’t.”
    Aimee studied him for a few seconds, her tongue pressing against the inside of her cheek.
    “You’re too polite,” she said. “You have to tell her what you want.”
    “I try. But when I ask her to go out, she just says no, she’d rather stay at home.”
    “Don’t give her a choice. Just say, ‘Hey, I’m taking you out to dinner. I already made the reservations.’”
    “Sounds kinda pushy.”
    “What’s the alternative?”
    Kevin shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.
    “Give it a shot,” she said. “What have you got to lose?”
    *   *   *
    NICK AND Zoe were going at it pretty good. They were kneeling on the rug, close enough for Jill to touch, Zoe purring happily as Nick licked and nuzzled her neck in what looked like a vampire’s idea of foreplay.
    “It’s heating up, folks.” Jason spoke into an imaginary microphone, using a sports-announcer voice that wasn’t as funny as he thought it was. “Lazarro’s totally focused, working his way methodically downfield…”
    If Aimee had been there, she would’ve made some clever, condescending