The sun was just setting when they arrived at the nearly empty restaurant. He turned to her and asked, “Would you like to take a walk on the beach before we have dinner?”

Although she didn’t feel well and would have preferred to be home sleeping, it was a beautiful night. The sky was perfectly clear, the air crisp. She reasoned that the sea air might help settle her stomach and relieve the pounding in her head that only intensified as she studied his every gesture and movement. She searched his face for clues as to what he was thinking and feeling.

She opened the door to the screened-in porch and started to enter, but stopped abruptly in the doorway.

“Oh, wow,” she muttered.

“Hey, girlie!” came a familiar voice. “Isn’t this unreal?”

Her friend, Michaela, was seated on an old couch placed askance at one end of the room. On the windowsill behind it, music was emitting from an old cassette player. The room was otherwise empty.

As she gazed past the porch into the living room, she could see that it too was empty. The stark, freshly-painted white walls contrasted with the rich dark floorboards.

“This is unbelievable. It’s like being in a totally different house!” she told Michaela.

They never went to the party that New Year’s Eve.

Better late than never” he had toasted. As she gazed expectantly into his soft brown eyes, she found no answers to all of the questions running through her mind. Rather, she was met with the same bemused expression with which she was so familiar: The look that gave way to more questions, but seemed never to yield any answers. Perhaps tonight would be different, the start of a new chapter in their lives.