Free The Daylight Marriage by Heidi Pitlor

to work his way through high school and college and had amassed more student loans than he might ever be able to repay, even with his grants and scholarships. He was used to the relentless grind of paying for life. He’d not had the twenty-some years with hardly any restrictions. He and Hannah had such different lives before they met each other. They were thoroughly different people. Had she ever had to work for anything before he met her?
    Of course Lovell himself had reaped the benefits of her funding. He had enjoyed three or four years of constant dining out and shopping binges and theater and vacations to the Caribbean and Switzerland, and Tunisia for their honeymoon, hypnotizing, otherworldly Tunis.
    Their first night they’d sat on the roof of their hotel overlooking the souk. They sipped sugary mint tea as the call to prayer filled the city. They watched two men haggle over a piece of silk and tried to predict each other’s future and the future of everyone they could think of—Lovell’s parents, his brother, Hannah’s sister, Sophie, her parents, even Doug, despite Lovell’s obvious discomfort with that subject matter on their honeymoon.
    Lovell decided to just take his and Ethan’s burgers and fries home for later, and the three soon got up to leave. The couple at the next table turned their heads to watch them pass.
    â€œAre you fucking kidding me?” Janine said as they approached a boy holding He-Man toys and smashing them together. “Skeletor? Beast Man? Look at those saggy loincloths. What kind of violent sicko guy decided to force these on little kids?”
    â€œKeep walking,” Lovell said. The couple could still hear them.
    â€œI liked He-Man,” Ethan said. “It was the secret identity of this prince, and Teela, a princess, she thought he was a total wimp and that she had to do all the work because she didn’t know that he was actually He-Man.”
    â€œSounds like you and Mom,” Janine said.
    â€œMove it,” Lovell snapped.
    â€œTake it easy,” Janine said.
    The couple took it all in. The man adjusted his glasses.
    â€œNow, please. Let’s go,” Lovell said.

Chapter 8
    I t occurred to Hannah that Lovell must have been her first male friend who did not immediately try for more. When she told him this a month or so later, after one too many martinis at the Oak Bar, he replied, “Oh.” He appeared relieved but then confused. “Should I apologize for not making a move?”
    She smiled. “Not at all.”
    They began to meet at a greenhouse on Beacon Street, where sprays hissed with warm steam. Tropical plants stretched from each corner and hung from the low ceiling. A small café with just three tables was nestled in the corner. Lovell brought homework and she books of poetry , and they read and talked over tomato and mozzarella panini and cups of cappuccino. She told him about her father, originally from Ireland, a sailboat manufacturer who could be at once boisterous and aloof, her mother who had modeled as a child and had recently retired as an agent for child models. Lovell listened to everything with genuine interest. He asked to hear more about the sailboats and her mother, those child models. What was that like for a kid? Did you ever want to do that yourself? He looked relieved when she shook her head. Hannah eventually told him about her engagement to Doug Bowen, their summers at his parents’ house at the beach outside Santa Cruz, their road trips up to Victoria and camping in Glacier, their plans to live in San Francisco after graduation and have four kids and work for Doug’s uncle, who ran a liberal independent press in Oakland—and how naive she had been in the end. She told him that Doug had been seen at a Del Fuegos show with his hand down some girl’s leather shorts and later in the ladies’ room with some other girl who had a dog collar around her neck. Other friends