“Oh, no,” my friend begins, but I wave her to silence.
“Shush. If ever there was a day when we needed chocolate lava cake and a shot of Bailey’s in our coffee, it’s today. And lunch is my treat.”
She protests, but I insist. I’ve missed her so much, it’s terrible and unbelievable we let it go so long. Over cake and coffee, she tells me about her job, boring but with great benefits, and how she could get a promotion if she applied for it, but there’d be too much travel to Europe involved.
“Wha-a-at?” I let the word drag out, the Bailey’s and laughter giving me a little boost. “Are you crazy? How cool would it be to get paid to visit Italy? Andrea, c’mon! Your kids are grown. What’s stopping you?”
Her look tells me everything. I feel awkward. She shrugs.
“I just don’t like to be away from him,” she says. “Even with the problems. I know you’ll probably think I’m crazy for that, too. But I hate it when I have to go to sleep without him. When he’s gone on business, I miss him like crazy, and that’s me being in my own house. I can’t imagine what it would be like to miss him and be homesick, too.”
I wish I could say I understand, but I don’t. I nod anyway, because how can I say out loud that I don’t miss my husband when he goes away? That, in fact, I’ve come to prefer it when he’s gone?
“But you,” Andrea says suddenly. “We’ve talked all about me. What about you? What’s going on with you? How were the girls’ graduations?”
“Both of them told us not to come. And they didn’t want a big party, either, since both of them had to be at work right away after graduation.” I’d wanted to have them both come home for a weekend, but it hadn’t worked out.
Andrea’s kids are a few years younger, still in college. She shakes her head. “I can’t believe they’re old enough to be out of college.”
“That means we’re old,” I tell her, though sitting here I feel as if we’re both still sixteen, scribbling notes to each other in class. “Remember our code?”
For a second she looks blank, then slaps a hand to her forehead. “Oh. Wow. Yes. Holy cow, that was so long ago. How did you remember it?”
“I guess I’ve been remembering a lot of things.” I can’t keep myself from sounding sad.
Andrea gestures for the waiter. “Bring wine.”
We sit in that restaurant for another few hours while I tell her about my frustrations with Ross. They are stupid things. I know it. Dishes in the sink, boots in the wrong size.
“I couldn’t even exchange or return them,” I tell her. The wine has made me eloquent with my hands, if not my words. “He got them on clearance!”
“He tried,” she offers helpfully.
“He tried,” I agree. “But he did not listen.”
Andrea is silent for a moment or so. Then she reaches to squeeze my hand. “It will get better, Elisabeth. You’re just in a rut. Maybe you should go away together, the two of you. Or try a date night...?”
I would have to plan a trip. A night out. With his schedule it’s practically impossible to do either, and when it comes right down to it, I realize something I won’t admit to her—I don’t want to. I do not want to go away for the weekend with Ross. I do not want a date night.
I want to tell her about Will so much. I want to unburden myself, not of the guilt I still don’t feel, but of the anguish over not having listened to his message. I want to tell her everything, not to lift it from my shoulders, but so that I can remember and relive it. But because Andrea is my friend and I love her, because I don’t want to put her in a position where she’d feel uncomfortable, I seal my mouth on my secret.
“Yes,” I tell her. “A date night. Sounds good.”
We part with hugs and promises to get together soon, though I think we both know it will probably be another six months before we do. In the last moment before we walk in opposite directions to catch our separate trains, my best friend since forever grabs me in a last-minute hug.
“Thanks,” she says against my cheek. “For listening.”
“Anytime.” I squeeze her hard. “Of course.”
Andrea pulls away with her eyes bright again, and I hate that she’s so sad. For that matter, I hate that I am. “You know I’m there for you, right? If you need to talk about anything, ever.”
“I know.” And my mouth opens again to spill out everything that happened with Will, how I can’t stop thinking about him. But I remember what she said in the restaurant, and I know there are some things even best friends can’t share. “Same here. If you need to talk, keep me updated, whatever. I’ll be thinking about you. It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, in a burst of optimism that feels utterly fake.
She makes that tasting-tequila face again. “It’s just sex, Elisabeth. Nobody ever died without it.”
It’s not the lack of sex that’s killing her, it’s feeling unloved and unattractive and unfuckable, and I’m so angry at her husband that I’d gladly kick him right in his inoperative junk right now.
“We take our cars to the shop when they need the tires rotated. We get our hair done when we want to look nice, get massages when our muscles are sore, and go to the chiropractor when our backs hurt. Why the hell can’t we go somewhere and just get laid when we need it?” I say, suddenly vehement without meaning to sound so harsh. “I mean, it’s just sex.”
“But it never would be,” Andrea says. “Just sex, I mean. It would always become something else.”
“Why?” I demand. “Why does it have to?”
Andrea makes that face again. “I don’t know. But it would. For me, I know it would.”
“Maybe not.”
She laughs and hugs me again, shaking her head. “It would be disaster.”
“Maybe,” I tell her, “it would be a beautiful disaster.”
“No matter how pretty it is,” Andrea says, “it would still be disaster,” and then we both have to run to catch our trains.
On the way home, I stare at the passing scenery and wish I hadn’t had so much to drink. My stomach is upset now. My head aches. My mouth is dry. I close my eyes but that makes it worse.
I pull my phone from my purse and thumb open Will’s contact information. I don’t have a picture stored for him. Just his number.
And then, because I’m stupid, I type in a text. My brain’s too fuzzy to make a sentence out of nonsense words. All I can manage is three letters, one for each word I want to say.
I M Y
And though I wait and wait, Will doesn’t text me back.
Chapter Eighteen
Other friendships had come and gone in college, but the one I’d forged with Naveen that first day always stayed. He drove me crazy. We fought, sometimes like brother and sister. Sometimes like the lovers we’d never quite managed to become. He told me he loved me one night while he was drunk and sick, in between heaves. I told him I loved him over the phone, when we were apart for the summer and the boy I’d been dating dumped me without warning.
Tempestuous. That was the best way to describe our relationship. Up and down, love and hate, lust and affection. Yet it endured through boyfriends and girlfriends, breakups and makeups.
He’d begun college a year ahead of me but had failed a few classes, which meant we were slated to graduate the same year. It was a tough one for me because I was determined to graduate “on time” even though it meant carrying an extra-large class load, including a killer accounting class that threatened to destroy my GPA. I was constantly on edge about my grades and also about my relationship with Ross, which had been steady for close to a year, but which had recently gone “on a break.” Naveen, for the first time in all the four years I’d known him, was without a girlfriend of any kind.
We’d kissed a few times over the years, usually after we’d been drinking. We’d shared a bed
more than once, though we’d never even come close to having sex. He was my best friend, my rock, the one man I could count on to make me feel beautiful when I needed to. And finally, after four years of on-and-off flirting and drama, Naveen asked me to be his girlfriend.
We had been drinking, but weren’t drunk. We were in Naveen’s room with the lights off, squeezed into his narrow bed with The Cure playing on repeat. Finals loomed on the horizon. Then graduation. And after that...neither of us was quite sure.
“But I want to be with you, Betts,” he’d said. The cotton-candy of his voice soothed me. His hand had been warm in mine. “At least try it, right? Give it a shot.”
I was anxious about my grades and my future. I’d been waiting forever, it seemed, for Naveen to ask me for something more than the hookups I’d always managed to turn down. And now that he’d asked me...
“I don’t know what to say.”
His mouth had brushed my ear, then my lips. The kiss got deeper as he put his hand flat on my belly, but poised to move lower. “What is there to say? We’re meant to be together. C’mon, Betts. Let’s do it.”
“Be together?”
“Yes.” There was a short silence. “Let’s fuck. Please. I want you.”
The thought of it was exciting and scary, the end of something I’d come to cherish. Even if it meant the beginning of something else, I couldn’t say yes. So instead, I told him I needed time to think. I got out of bed and left him there, and a week later he greeted me at the door of his room with another girl behind him and a smirk on his face that to this day I haven’t truly been able to forgive.
We never talked about that night in his room when he told me he wanted us to be together. Naveen flirts with me all the time. He’s good to my kids and polite to Ross. He’s made me a part of his family, given me a job. He’s still my best friend.
And he still hasn’t forgiven me for what I’d said to him about Francesca.
It’s been months now since his confession, and he has barely talked to me about anything but work. Today he’s meeting with a small group of women who all seem to be related. They want “something sexy but not trashy” for someone’s apartment. They all look a little trashy to me—lots of makeup and jewelry, high heels with designer jeans. Fake nails. Naveen, of course, is in his glory. Practically preening. I wonder what the love of his life would think if she could see him flirting and trying to upsell these women who wouldn’t know art if it gave them a boob job. Then I remember he told me that was how they’d met, when Francesca came in to buy something. Maybe he’s auditioning a replacement.
I’ve been used to my friend’s flirting for so many years that it had stopped bothering me, but today it sets my teeth on edge. It could be hormones, my body hurtling me without brakes toward menopause, and in the meantime turning me upside down in a maelstrom of what Ross liked to call “lady emotions.” It could be the lack of sleep I’ve had for the past week or so. I haven’t been able to fall asleep, and when I do, my dreams have been bad.
Or, I admit uneasily, as I watch Naveen drop a wink to one of the women and let his hand rest way too low on another’s back, his fingertips skimming the top of her low-slung jeans, it could be jealousy.
He leans too close to murmur something in an ear, and I can’t watch anymore. I get up from the desk to close my door. Hard. I need my friend, but I know that makes me nothing more than selfish. If I didn’t have my own burdens, I’d still be letting him stew without a second thought.
He’s the only person in my life who would understand this, though. The only one I’d tell. I couldn’t even reveal this to Andrea, my best friend since forever.
I don’t answer the knock on my door, but Naveen opens it, anyway. He holds out a thick envelope and a package tied with brown string. “Can you deliver this for me?”
“Don’t you have a service for that?”
His dark eyes glint, but he doesn’t smile. “It’s some things for Will. Prints that didn’t sell, and a couple of framed shots he’s decided to keep.”
Does Naveen know? I say nothing. He puts the packages on my desk.
“I’ll give you his address,” Naveen says. He could be pretending he doesn’t know I’ve been there.
I decide I don’t care. I’ve been his secret keeper, his enabler, his alibi. I stand to grab my coat. Naveen hasn’t moved. In order to get past him, I will have to push. We stand that way for what seems like a long time until at last he sighs.
I put my arms around him without thinking. Hold him close. I stroke a hand down his hair, the curls at the base of his neck. It takes him a few seconds to put his arms around me, but when he does, he turns his face to bury it against my neck.
“Why did I ever let you go?” he murmurs against my skin.
“You never had me, remember?” Sometimes, even old and oft-repeated conversations never become too familiar.
“I should have.”
“We’d have killed each other, and you know it.”
We stand that way for another minute. His fingers squeeze my hips. I rub his back in small circles, much the way I used to comfort my daughters when they were upset.
Naveen pulls away to look into my face. “I love you, Betts. You know that?”
“I know you do. I love you, too. Can I go deliver these packages, or are you going to sob all over me?” I tug gently at his hair and let him go.
He takes another few seconds before he moves away with a small, quirking smile. I could ask him if he knows, or guesses, but I don’t want to know if Naveen thinks Will and I are having an affair. He kisses my cheek.
“Don’t bother coming back to work,” he says magnanimously, as if he’s my boss or something. “Take the rest of the day off.”
A raise of my brows is all the answer I give. He chuckles, glancing over his shoulder at the tinkle of laughter coming from the women in the other room.
“No, really,” he says, looking at me. “Don’t come back to the office.”
Chapter Nineteen
I’ve brought pastries and coffee, and the packages are growing heavy while I wait in front of Will’s door. I haven’t been able to convince myself to knock. If I don’t do it soon, I’m going to have to put something down to ease the ache in my muscles.
He might not even be home. I purposefully didn’t call—I didn’t want him to tell me not to come. I’m so stupid.
At last I knock, faintly because of my full hands. So softly he might not even hear it, and I can turn around and walk away. I can have a service deliver the packages, or Naveen can take care of it, after all. I’m not his errand girl....
The door opens.
“Hi,” Will says, not looking at all surprised to see me.
I hold up everything in my hands. “Naveen sent me. But I brought goodies.”
He steps aside to let me in, and closes the door behind me. He isn’t alone. Sitting at the large island in the kitchen is a small boy about three or four years old, his legs swinging from the stool as he finishes a plate of something chocolaty. Beside him is the blonde from the Connex picture.
“Thanks for bringing this.” Will takes the packages, peeking into the top of the envelope. “I can do something with these. Better than having them sit around the gallery, right?”
“Right.” I clear my throat, unbalanced now that I’m holding only the bakery bag and paper holder of coffee cups.
“Come on, Misha,” the blonde says brusquely, barely giving me a glance. She has a hint of an accent I don’t recognize, and her voice is colorless and without flavor. “I’ve an appointment.”
Her voice is low and husky. She tugs the little boy’s shirtsleeve, and he reluctantly slides down from the stool. His mouth is outlined with crumbs.
“Can I come next week, Daddy?”
The word stuns me. Will ruffles the kid??
?s hair and reaches to pick up a small backpack I hadn’t noticed, one emblazoned with robots. He presses it into the blonde’s hand. She slings it over her shoulder and finally gives me a tight nod.
“I’m Elisabeth,” I feel compelled to say. “I work with Will. Rather, at one of the galleries that feature his art.”
She couldn’t care less, that’s clear enough. Maybe I don’t rate. Maybe she’s stopped caring about women in Will’s apartment. Whatever it is, she gives me a tight nod and him a grim face.
“Next week I’m out of town,” she says. “Misha will be with me.”
“Okay, so when you get back, buddy.” Will bends down to the kid’s level, holding him by the shoulders. “I’ll see you then. You can come for the whole weekend, okay?”
It’s not enough—I can see it in Misha’s face—but he nods. Much like his mom. He looks like her far more than he resembles Will, though there is something of him in the shape of his brows. It could be the flavor of his voice, an echo of Will’s, though Misha’s is more like a placid lake than the ocean.
“We’ll see.” She doesn’t offer her name. She takes her son by the hand and leads him to the door, glancing once more at me without expression or seeming interest. She pauses to give Will a harder look. “Je vais le faire appeler. N’oubliez pas que vous me devez l’argent pour son école.”
There are a few beats of silence when he closes the door behind her. He stands for a second or so, palm flat against the panel, shoulders a little hunched, before turning to me with a wry grin. Will shrugs and edges toward me. For the first time in my presence, he looks as if he’s wishing for a cigarette.
“I thought...you didn’t speak French.”
He smiles faintly, takes the pastry bag and coffee from me and puts it on the island. Peeks inside. “Yum.”
“I should’ve called first,” I offer, and hesitate, my words fading. I feel stupid.