WaterFire hits you before you see it. It hits you in the ears first — loud, sweeping Italian opera strings bouncing off every brick wall, every glass tower, every puddle in downtown Providence like the city had hired the world’s most dramatic soundtrack and then told it to follow you. Your chest hums along whether it wants to or not. I swear I caught myself humming, too, and I can’t even carry a tune. By the canal, the crowd had already claimed their spots. Blankets, folding chairs, couples leaning in close enough that I half expected them to fuse into single entities. People weren’t wandering — they’d hunkered down. The kind of hunkered down that makes you look around and realize, oh, this is serious. Providence does this big. And there I was, trying to wedge myself in without looking like the guy who came alone and doesn’t know where to put his hands. Because I missed Jamie. Not just a little, either. I missed her laugh, her running commentary on how ridiculous it is to scr...

There’s a line from an old Eagles song—something about how you can spend all your time making money, or all your money making time. I don’t remember it exactly, but I know what it means. You blink, and five years have gone by. You’ve worked, raised kids, paid bills, cleaned floors, and maybe you even squeezed in a family vacation or two. But somewhere in all that chaos, you forgot to take each other somewhere. Just the two of you. That was us. Me and Jamie realized one day—probably in the kitchen, over lukewarm coffee—that we hadn’t been alone in years. I don’t mean just date nights. I mean away. Gone. Phones ignored, dogs with someone else, no kids asking what’s for dinner or who took the charger. Alone. So she said, “Go ahead. Plan something.” I asked her what she wanted, and all she said was, “I’d like to be by the ocean.” That girl loves the ocean. The Plan (and the Breakdown) I had it all mapped out. I remembered a National Geographic article I saw once in a waiting room...