She swung open the door and stomped outside, flinging herself into her car and starting the motor immediately in case he followed her out, which of course he didn’t.
“Nice job,” she told herself. Now she had to get a sex life since she’d threatened him with it. And she had no hair. And her father was living with her and using Nick’s toothbrush. “The hell with it,” she said and went back to school.
Max poked his head out of the office. “She gone?”
“Yes.” Nick stared into Eli Strauss’s Honda. “Permanently gone.”
Max nodded, still safe in the office. “Is that good?”
“That’s perfect,” Nick said savagely.
“Well, good.” Max shook his head. “Why’d she cut her hair like that?”
“I have no idea,” Nick lied.
“I hate short hair on women,” Max said. “Makes ’em look tough.”
“Yep,” Nick said, planning on killing Max if he didn’t shut the fuck up and leave him alone.
“So you made a move on Quinn, huh?”
Nick swung around and glared at his little brother.
“I’ll just be here in the office,” Max said and went back in.
Nick worked for another hour on the Honda without paying much attention to what he was doing. Mostly, he was fuming at Quinn. What an overreaction, big deal, a couple of kisses—his mind slid away from the mind-blowing heaviness of her breast in his hand—and she was acting like they’d—his mind ricocheted off what she was acting like they’d done, the things he hadn’t gotten to do, the way that soft flannel would have parted under his hands, the way Quinn would have rolled hot in his arms—he put his hands on the edge of the Honda and thought, I am such a hypocrite, and she was not overreacting.
Suppose they hadn’t stopped, suppose he’d pulled that shirt off her, those jeans, suppose they’d had sex—
He’d never be able to leave her. Life without Quinn wasn’t possible. She was one of the people he loved, like Max and Darla and the boys. She stayed.
But life with Quinn in his bed on a permanent basis wasn’t possible, either. He liked living alone. And if he slept with Quinn, she’d want to move in or want him to move in with her, and he’d never be alone again, and she’d definitely want to talk about the relationship. Nightmare time. He had the perfect life, the perfect apartment, he’d done the right thing. He wasn’t the type to take care of people, he didn’t want responsibilities, he wanted to do what he wanted when he wanted, free to sleep with anybody and wake up alone—
He straightened at that thought. He hadn’t slept with anybody since Lisa. That was before Christmas. He’d been alone and Quinn was alone, and they’d just lost their heads. As soon as they both dated somebody else, slept with somebody else, the problem would be solved.
Except he didn’t want anybody else, and if she really made good on that dumb threat to have sex with another guy—
The back door slammed again, and he turned so fast he bruised his shoulder on the hood of the Honda, but it wasn’t Quinn, it was Darla, and her hair was gone. It was short, like Quinn’s, only shorter.
“Jesus,” he said. “What did you guys do, join a cult? Max is going to throw a fit.”
“Screw Max,” she said, and he put his head back under the hood of the Honda because life outside of auto mechanics was just too damn emotional.
“What did you do to your hair?” Max said.
“I cut it off.” Darla closed the office door behind her. “I wanted something different so—”
“Well, I don’t.” Max folded his arms across his chest and glared at her. “I can’t believe this. What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Darla said, holding on to her temper with every cell in her body. “I just think we’re stagnating. We’re the same—”
“I want us the same,” Max said, still seething. “I worked my butt off to get us here—”
“Hey, I worked, too,” Darla said.
“—and now we’ve got life just the way we want it—”
“The way you want it.”
“—and you want to change things?” Max was so mad he looked away from her. “Just for the sake of change, you want to screw up a perfect life.”
“It’s not perfect for me,” Darla said, and then Max did look at her. “It’s been the same old thing for years, Max, we need to keep growing or we’ll just—”
“You mean I’m not perfect for you,” Max said.
“No.” Darla shook her head, her heart beating faster. “No, you’re the perfect man for me, you always have been, I love you—”
“Then why this?” Max said. “Why all that stupid sex stuff?”
Darla went cold. “I wanted some excitement. Evidently you don’t.”
“We’re exciting enough,” Max said.
“No,” Darla said through her teeth. “We’re not.”
Max stared her down, as mulish as only Max could be. “You mean I’m not exciting enough.”
“Yes,” Darla said.
Max nodded, too mad to talk.
“I want something different for us,” Darla said.
“Well, I don’t.” Max uncrossed his arms and turned away. “So I guess you’re going to have to find something different on your own.”
“Guess so,” Darla said, and stomped out of the office. On her way she passed Nick bent over the Honda and said, “And you’re a jackass, too,” and then she went out and slammed the door.
“What’s with the haircut?” Thea asked Quinn later that afternoon, and Quinn said, “Sometimes you have to do radical things to make people really see you and realize you’re not who they thought you were.” When Thea turned thoughtful, Quinn added, “Which does not mean you should cut your hair.”
“I know,” Thea said. “I like my hair long. But you’re right about people not seeing you. I mean, the whole school probably thinks you’re just the coach’s girlfriend and the art teacher who fixes things. They don’t see you’re a real person at all.”
“Thank you,” Quinn said. “That’s enormously cheering.”
“Well, now they will,” Thea said. “You dumped the coach and cut your hair. They’re going to have to look at you differently now.”
“We can only hope,” Quinn said.
“I think that was very smart of you,” Thea said. “The getting people to look at you differently part, anyway. I gotta admit I really liked your hair long.”
Thea was up to something, and Quinn didn’t feel any more reassured when Jason came up to sign out an X-Acto knife fifteen minutes later, and Thea said sweetly, “I owe you an apology.”
Jason gave her the same nervous look he’d been giving her ever since the movie fiasco.
“You know, for when I asked you to the movies.” Thea radiated earnestness. “I was really using you, trying to make my life different.”
“Oh,” Jason said, clearly not following at all.
“I just wanted something more exciting than studying all the time. And I figured if I went out with you, there’d be parties, drinking, sex in the backseat, that kind of stuff.”
“What?” Jason said.
“It wasn’t fair.” Thea smiled her apology. “I mean, imagine if you’d asked me out to use me for sex. That would make you a real creep, and here I was doing it to you. So I’m really sorry.”
“Wait a minute,” Jason said.
“It won’t happen again,” Thea said soothingly and went into the storeroom.
“She’s yanking my chain, isn’t she?” Jason said to Quinn.
“I’m sure she’s truly sorry,” Quinn said.
“She shouldn’t say that stuff about looking for sex,” Jason said. “She’ll have every creep in the school on her butt.”
Quinn tried to look as innocent as Thea. “Why do you care?”
“Look, she’s a nice kid.” Jason sounded exasperated. “She’s not my type, but she’s a good person. Tell her to knock off that sex talk or she’s goi
ng to get in trouble.”
“I’ll pass that along,” Quinn said, and when Jason finally went back to his table, she went into the storeroom. “That was an incredibly evil thing to do,” she told Thea.
“Paybacks are a bitch,” Thea said. “Besides, it’s not going to keep him awake nights, thinking about what he missed. He’s not interested.”
“He seems concerned,” Quinn said. “And he’s right, you probably shouldn’t spread that bit about the sex around.”
“Like I would.” Thea grinned. “But he did look at me differently for a minute, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Quinn said. “He was appalled.”
“Beats bored,” Thea said. “And I didn’t have to cut my hair, either.”
The last bell rang fifteen minutes later, and Quinn grabbed her coat and ran, trying to avoid Bill and the BP, only to run into Edie instead. They hadn’t had much chance to talk at lunch with Marjorie loudly expressing her opinion that people knew who to blame for the team’s three losses, and Petra darkly muttering about the evil that lived in students’ hearts, especially the pervert boy students, and where had Quinn gotten that lovely blouse?
“Sometimes I think everybody in this school is crazy,” Edie said as they went out the back door.
Quinn nodded. “The BP is driving me there. Every damn day he’s on me for something else. It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks. Ducks in letter sweaters.”
“He doesn’t have a life,” Edie said soothingly. “You do. Your hair looks great, by the way.”
“I don’t have a life that I’ve noticed,” Quinn said. “Pretty much the same old thing as far as I can see. Except for you and Mom.”
“Quinn—” Edie began, and Quinn said, “No, it’s okay. As long as you’re both happy, I’m happy for you. And I’m sure I’ll grow to like living with Daddy. He seems fairly simple in his needs.”
“I’m so sorry,” Edie said.
“Don’t be,” Quinn said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
But at five-thirty that night, in the middle of making brats and sauerkraut for her father before heading off for play practice, Quinn heard the doorbell and opened the door to find Darla with a suitcase, a pixie cut that took about ten years off her age, and a strained expression on her face that put the years right back on.
“Love the hair,” Quinn said as she stepped back to let her in.
“I’m moving in for a little while,” Darla said. “If that’s all right.”
“Uh, sure.” Quinn searched for something tactful to say and finally settled for directness. “What happened?”
“He didn’t like my hair.” Darla put the suitcase down where Katie could sniff it. “He said, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ and I said, ‘I want something different,’ and he said, ‘Well, I don’t,’ so I left for a while. That’s different.”
The old Darla would have said it with a glint in her eye, but this one just stood there, looking as tense as Lois. Maybe this was the kind of tension you got when you separated from a husband. Not that Quinn would ever know.
Darla wasn’t saying anything else, so Quinn said, “Yes, it is different,” to encourage her. Nothing. “Well, come on upstairs and we’ll move one of the twin beds into the office.”
“Why?” Darla picked up her suitcase again, making Katie skip back a step.
“Dad moved in last night. I’m assuming you don’t want to share a bedroom.”
“Your mom and dad have a fight?”
“No. She’s in love with Edie. We haven’t mentioned this to Dad yet.”
Darla blinked at her. “Right. And you and Nick?”
“I’m annoyed and he’s in denial.”
“Well, at least we’re all out of our ruts,” Darla said and headed for the stairs.
Looking back later on the next two weeks, Quinn wondered how any of them survived.
Darla stubbornly refused to go home and Max just as stubbornly refused to admit there was anything wrong. “She’s being unreasonable,” he told Quinn. “She knows I’d never cheat.” “This isn’t about Barbara, Max,” Quinn said, and then Max got that mule look on his face and refused to talk any more.
“It’s hopeless,” Darla told her later. “But at least I’m not living the same damn life I was before. I’ve stopped thinking about screaming all the time. You don’t mind if I stay here, do you?”
“No,” Quinn said. “It’s kind of fun. And it’s not like I have a life, anyway. I’m turning into my mother after all; she had Edie and I have you. Not in the same way, of course.”
“You never know,” Darla said. “We live together for ten or twenty years, we may see the light.”
Not that Edie and Meggy’s life was perfect.
“Edie’s so quiet,” Meggy told Quinn when she dropped Edie off at play practice. She checked to make sure that Edie was across the stage out of earshot, and then she said, “She keeps going in the bedroom and closing the door, and when I go in there, she’s reading.”
“She’s an English teacher,” Quinn said. “They do that.”
“She’s just used to being alone too much,” Meggy said. “Poor Edie.”
Quinn thought about her own house, full of ESPN now that Joe had the cable hooked up, and Darla’s boys who came to dinner every night, and Darla’s mother who stopped by every night, too, to see if Darla had come to her senses yet and gone back to Max who was a good provider. “Yeah, poor Edie.”
Later that night, Edie cornered her and said, “Your mother is driving me crazy. She keeps bringing me things, asking me what I want for dinner, telling me to put down my book and come watch TV with her.”
“I’m sure it just takes a little getting used to,” Quinn said. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. She spent almost forty years with Daddy and you’ve always lived alone. There’s bound to be some adjustments.” She thought of Joe, settling into life on Apple Street because he thought it was going to be temporary, sure he’d be moving home to his big TV before the World Series started.
“I loved living alone,” Edie said.
“Well, then, why did you move in?” Quinn said, feeling exasperated and then feeling guilty for feeling exasperated.
“Because she was so excited about it.” Edie looked rueful. “She kept saying how we could finally be together and how could I say, ‘I like living alone’? That would have been terrible.”
Quinn thought about her mother’s face, beaming at them all that night in the kitchen. “You’re right. I couldn’t have said no to her, either.”
“I’ll get used to it,” Edie said. “Heck, I’m spending so much time on this play, I won’t be around much anyway.”
Bill, on the other hand, was around all the time, dropping by Quinn’s room to discuss Jason’s participation, even though she’d told him over and over she wasn’t interested in talking to him. “I’m just worried he may be over-extended,” Bill said, inviting her to worry with him.
“That’s Jason’s business,” Quinn said, and turned her back on him to teach.
The BP wasn’t nearly as tactful as Bill. “You’re ruining the team,” he told her when he called her in the last Wednesday in March, the fifth summons he’d given her that month. “Jason Barnes’s discipline has gone to hell, and Corey Mossert’s getting to be just as bad. You tell them they’re off that crew, or I will.”
“Then you will,” Quinn said. “They’re eighteen, Robert. They’re capable of making their own decisions about extracurricular activities.”
“Baseball is not an extracurricular activity.” Bobby’s eyes were lit from within by religious fervor.
“Right,” Quinn said and escaped to the outer office. “Is he getting loonier or is it just me?” she asked Greta.
“It’s just you,” Greta said, without looking up from her typing. “He’s always been a bedbug.”
And if that wasn’t enough, somebody kept reporting her to the housing authorities and she had to put up with one inspection after another—water,
foundation, pest control, gas leak, fence, on and on—until she was so worn down by the hassle that she almost wished she’d never bought the house.
“Somebody is out to get you,” Darla said.
“The thought occurred to me,” Quinn told her. “I asked Bill to stop calling the city on me, and he said he wasn’t. What do you do when they stonewall you like that?”
“I moved out,” Darla said. “But you’ve already done that so you’re stuck. Which reminds me, the mail came. You have another notice from the city.”
Bill wasn’t the only one stonewalling her: Nick dropped off the face of the earth. They’d talked every day for years, and now, suddenly, he just wasn’t there. Quinn was mad, then hurt, and finally just lonely, missing the huge part of her life he’d occupied. This was what he’d meant by risking their friendship, and she tried to regret the night on the couch and then gave up. She’d wanted exciting and he’d given it to her; how could she regret that when she wanted more? She fought the urge to confront him and decided to wait him out. Tibbett wasn’t that big, he couldn’t ignore her forever. Sooner or later he’d have to come back or at least acknowledge in some way that she existed.
She hoped.
The same two weeks weren’t any better for Nick.
He’d talked his way out of jail by paying the fines for trespassing and for Katie. The pound was really not interested in pressing charges since the phantom caller never showed up to pursue the dog bite report, so Katie was put on probation after Quinn promised never to let the dog out of her sight outside the house again and took out a license in her own name this time.
But if the Katie problem was solved, the Quinn problem wasn’t. No matter how virtuous he tried to feel about walking away from the couch, he couldn’t help thinking about what would have happened if he hadn’t. His libido was showing Technicolor movies with SurroundSound of What Might Have Been, and the knowledge that Quinn was exasperated but willing did not make his life easier. Just once, his id would whisper. Just once, to get it over with, so you can stop thinking about it. She’ll be like all the rest then. Do it just once.