Both of us were divorced: she had a terrific daughter and an insane beagle; I carried faded dreams. I was forty and missed being married. She was celebrating her newfound freedom. Deep in my heart, unlike before, I knew this was the one. It was meant to be. After a few years, I raised, again, the subject of the future. She sighed, tore a piece from a brown grocery bag, and in black marker wrote, “I will never marry again.” She signed it, dated it, and handed it to me. I smiled at it. We have been married twenty-three years.
Dart Humeston is a Floridian who dodges alligators and hurricanes while seeking the next cool coffee shop. Of all his jobs, teaching college freshmen was the most rewarding.