Excerpt from Getting to Happy

As Isaac passes behind me, he smells like green apples and fresh-squeezed lemons. For a split second it reminds me of when we used to linger in the bathtub surrounded by sage and lemongrass candles, my back snug against his chest, his arms wrapped around me and our toes making love. Those were the good old days.

I snap out of it.

Now he's pushing my favorite mustard-colored duffel across these terra-cotta tiles with those size-fourteen boots, leaving black scuffmarks behind him as he simultaneously pulls a white sweatshirt over a white undershirt. It's a V-neck and shows the top of a black forest on his chest. "If I could, you know I would," I say while checking my e-mail. Of course there are back-to-back messages from Robin: a joke I don't bother to read and an attachment about a new motionless exercise she told me and Gloria about last week that almost had us choking from laughter. She believes almost everything she sees on TV.

"You just don't want to go," he says, and starts looking through his pockets to make sure he has everything. He doesn't. I know just about all his patterns. "Why don't you just come out and say it?"
"Because it wouldn't be true." I rarely lie, although I'm not always a hundred percent honest. This is one of those times.

"Then I guess I'll see you on Tuesday. After rush hour." He walks over, presses his palms against my shoulder blades, gives them a little squeeze, bends over and gives me a peck on the cheek. I don't feel a thing except the scratchy new growth on his face.

"You have everything?" I ask.

"What if I don't? Would it matter to you?"

Terry reveals how she "got to happy" after her public divorce