She holds up a hand and we smack palms. “Does this make us the black sheep of our families?”

“Baa . . .” I say, imitating that animal.

Her eyes light up. “Can you make animal noises?”

“You want more?”

She nods excitedly. “Horse, please.”

I shake my head quickly and make a neighing sound.

Holding up a finger, she asks for one more. I decide to break out my seal bark, with a throaty arf, arf, arf that cracks her up.

“Encore, encore!”

I shake my head. “That’s all you get from Wyatt’s World of Animal Sounds for now. If you’re a good girl, I’ll show you the lion in my repertoire later.”

“I can’t wait.”

I rub my palms together. “Back to Adult Land.”

We return to the papers, reviewing them. The one that catches my attention like a house on fire is division of marital property. Narrowing my eyes, I stab the pages with my finger. “What’s this? Is that like my apartment or the business or something?”

She pats my hand gently. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to make a claim on your business.”

I straighten. “Didn’t think you were,” I say in a testy tone and grab the coffee, but apparently bringing the cup to my lips is too daunting a process, and I succeed in spilling some on my jeans. “Fuck,” I curse, and Natalie grabs some napkins from her purse and hands them to me.

“Everything okay?” she asks as I wipe at the denim.

“Yeah.” I meet her eyes. “My ex from long ago tried to dig into my business. Seeing that paper just kind of . . .”

“Touched a nerve?” she supplies softly.

I nod. “Stupid, I know.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s how you feel. I’d probably be the same.”

I drag a hand through my hair. “You’re not like that. I shouldn’t even be thinking it.”

She rubs my arm. “You’re right. I’m not like that. But I get it. I swear I do.”

“You do?”

“It makes sense that you’d feel that way. And look, I’d be a little freaked, too, if I were you. You built a successful business. But you have my word, Wyatt. I’m not trying to get a piece of it. We didn’t have a real marriage. We just had a ridiculously fun one that was only ever supposed to last for twenty-four hours. I want this process to go as smoothly as possible, too.”

“Thanks for understanding. It was just one of those things I never saw coming,” I say, then share a few more details of Roxy.

“That’s crazy,” she says, shaking her head. “No wonder—”

I tilt my head when she breaks off. “No wonder what?”

She waves a hand in front of the pages. “No wonder it would touch a nerve, that’s all. If you want to get a lawyer to handle this, I understand.”

I scoff and hold up my hands. “No. I swear I don’t. I had more than enough of lawyers with Roxy’s antics. Same with someone who hacked my site several months ago. Had to get an attorney involved then, too. I don’t get why it’s so hard just to stick to the plan. Pretty sure the contract for the website didn’t call for her to hack into it at a later date,” I say, sarcastically. “I just want to put this all behind us.”

She flashes a too-bright smile. “Agreed. No sharks needed. Let’s keep moving forward.”

We spend the next twenty minutes reviewing paperwork and signing documents. When we’re done and she puts the pages away, I lift my cup. “Tell me something fun. Something to get the taste of divorce out of my mouth.”

She grabs a strawberry, twists off the leafy top, and pops it between her lips. “Strawberries taste good. But they’re not actually berries. Did you know that?”

“I did not. But I like where this is going. Do continue.”

“Thought you might like that little nugget, since you’re a collector of quirky facts.”

“What are they, if not berries? Just a regular fruit?”

She shakes her head and pops another one past her pretty red lips. After she eats, she answers, “A fleshy receptacle for seeds.”

I crinkle my nose. “That’s kind of gross. Where’d you learn that?”

“I looked it up the other day. I guess quirky facts were on my mind because of you.” She hands me a red berry. As I eat it, I can’t help but grin at something as simple as her researching life’s oddities for that reason. “Your turn,” she says. “Tell me something from Wyatt’s Encyclopedia of Quirky Animal Facts.”

“Do you know why cats can slide under a vanity cabinet in the bathroom like they’re boneless?” I begin, and there’s nothing quite like the old cats-have-no-collarbones factoid to take the sting out of divorcing the woman you fucked on her desk last week. In fact, collarboneless cats are pure gold when you need a conversational lubricant. I also work in a little tidbit about domesticated turkeys (they can’t fly), facts about elephants (with forty thousand muscles in their trunks, they can use them to pick up tiny objects including a small coin), and a bit of insight into fish (they drink water through osmosis rather than their mouths).

Natalie smiles and laughs through my lesson, as she calls it. “Your fascination with animal facts—where did that come from?”

“I used to read National Geographic as a kid. Which probably sounds weird, since everyone thinks Nick and Josie are the smart ones.”