The Guardian by Nicholas Sparks

gone. Not from her. Instead, he found out about it from people he barely knew, in bits and pieces overheard here and there around town: at the grocery store, at the diner, and even while working in the garage. Suddenly, it seemed that even casual acquaintances of Julie's, people she'd happened to visit with for a few minutes on Sunday afternoon, knew a lot more than he did. By Monday morning, it took him almost twenty minutes to summon the energy to get out of bed.
    Richard, it seemed, had picked Julie up in a limousine that had been stocked with champagne; they'd gone to Raleigh for dinner. Afterward, at the civic center in front-row seats, they'd watched a live performance of Phantom of the Opera.
    If that wasn't enough, if that wasn't quite special enough to impress her, it turned out that Richard and Julie had spent Saturday together as well, down near Wilmington.
    There they'd taken a hot-air balloon ride before picnicking at the beach.
    How the hell was he supposed to compete with a guy who did things like that?

Chapter Nine.
    Now that was a weekend, Julie thought to herself. Richard, she decided, could give Bob a few pointers on how to impress a lady. Hell, Richard could give seminars on the subject.Staring at her reflection in the mirror on Sunday morning, she still found it hard to believe. She hadn't spent a weekend like that in . . . well, she'd never spent a weekend like that. The theater was a new experience for her, and when he'd finally told her in the limousine where they were going, she figured she'd probably enjoy it but wasn't absolutely sure. Her concept of musicals was rooted in those that had been adapted into films a generation ago, like The Music Man and Oklahoma!; somewhere in the back of her mind, she supposed that seeing a performance in Raleigh as opposed to New York City would be something akin to watching a pretty good high school play.
    Boy, was she ever wrong.
    She was entranced by it all: couples dressed in evening wear as they sipped wine in the courtyard before the play started; the silencing of the crowd as the lights began to dim; the orchestra's first energetic notes, which made her jump in her seat; the romance and tragedy of the story; the virtuoso performances and the songs, some of which were so beautiful that they'd brought tears to her eyes. And the colors! The props and wildly hued costumes, the use of gleaming spotlights and haunting shadows, had all combined to create a world on stage both strangely surreal and vividly alive.
    The whole evening had seemed like a fantasy, she decided. None of it was familiar, and for a few hours she'd felt as if she'd suddenly slipped into an alternate universe in which she wasn't a hairdresser in a small southern town, the kind of gal whose highlight of the week was usually something as mundane as removing a stubborn ring from around the tub. No, this was another world, a place occupied by inhabitants of exclusive, gated communities who studied the stock quotes in the morning newspaper while the nanny got the kids ready for school. Afterward, when she and Richard had stepped outside and looked upward, she wouldn't have felt any stranger had she seen two moons hovering in the downtown sky.
    But hey, she wasn't complaining. In the limousine on the way home, while inhaling the musky smell of leather as champagne bubbles tickled her nose, she remembered thinking, So this is how the other half lives. I can see exactly how people can get used to this.
    The next day, too, had been a surprise. Not just because of the entertainment, but because it stood in such stark contrast with the evening before: day instead of night, a hot-air balloon ride instead of a show, a walk along carnival-like streets instead of a limousine ride, a picnic on the beach instead of dinner at a restaurant. An entire repertoire of dates in just a couple of days, like newlyweds squeezing everything they could into the last hours of their honeymoon.
    Though the balloon ride was