Lucio tried to smile, though aware of the irony that Piers had lost the love of his life just as Lucio had found his.
He felt his eyes widen. Is that how he saw Genevieve? Could she be the love of his life? Things had moved alarmingly fast, he knew, but maybe the old preacher woman had been right. Maybe Lucio had been waiting for Genevieve.
Perhaps he’d always been waiting for her.
“You sure you don’t want a beer?” Piers asked, moving back to the computer and hitting the print key. “You look like you could use a drink all of a sudden.”
“Ha! No.” Lucio pulled himself together. “So when will it be convenient for Jason and me to stop by?”
“Tomorrow would be fine. If I’m not here, please let yourself in.” Piers set down his beer and retrieved the pages from the printer. “Here you go.”
“Listen, Piers—” Lucio had already headed to the door but turned back toward his friend. “We are having a get-together Sunday evening at Rick Rousseau’s home in Sonoma. I would love it if you could join us.”
Piers seemed surprised by the invitation. “What’s the occasion? Who’s coming?”
“We’re having a launch party for Petography. You can meet Rick’s wife, Josie. And Genevieve will be there. I’d love for you to meet her. And Genevieve’s friend Roxanne…”
A tiny crinkle formed between Pier’s eyebrows. Lucio immediately regretted mentioning Roxanne, knowing his friend was notoriously uncomfortable in social situations and certainly not ready to meet someone new.
Piers quickly changed the subject. “I haven’t seen Rick since the funeral. Did I tell you he traveled to England for the service?”
No, Piers had never mentioned that, and the subtle dig was not lost on Lucio. “I know Rick would love to see you,” he said.
“I’m leaving for New York on Friday, unfortunately.”
“Really?” Lucio smiled, knowing the trip likely meant a new assignment for Piers. “Anything you want to tell me?”
Piers laughed. “Not quite yet,” he said, grinning. “What I’m saying is that I may not be home by Sunday. But if I am, I will try to make it.”
Lucio thanked him for the e-mails. They shared a hearty embrace and he told Piers he’d see him Sunday, though he knew he wouldn’t show.
Ginger met up with the girls Wednesday morning. As predicted, she’d canceled on Monday. She’d been a disheveled, exhausted wreck, and besides, she really did end up walking kind of funny. The last thing she needed was for eagle-eyed Bea to make an issue of it.
So Ginger spent Wednesday morning getting caught up with everyone. The earthquake had thrown books from the shelves at Bea’s place. Roxie lost a few wine glasses and Lilith had freaked out. But Josie and Rick had felt nothing up in Sonoma.
“Teeny had to take a couple Valiums, though,” Josie said of Rick’s best friend, a former Syracuse cornerback with a big heart and a fear of earthquakes.
“Poor baby,” Bea said. “I’m looking forward to seeing him Sunday. It’s been too long.”
Ginger smiled. It amazed her how her circle of friends had instantly expanded to include Rick and Teeny. She could hardly remember a time when they hadn’t been part of their group. While Josie and Rick were on their honeymoon, Teeny even joined the women for a drink once a week. They’d made him an honorary member of their girls-only club, a distinction Teeny embraced as only an openly gay man could.
“Good news,” Bea announced. “I have at least ten more people from my canine agility organization interested in photos.”
“That’s fabulous!” Ginger said. “Lucio will be thrilled.”
“Rick said he’s talked to a few customers about the pet photography idea and they’ve been enthusiastic,” Josie said. “He’s just waiting on the posters.”
“Excellent!” Ginger said.
“How long have you been sleeping with him?” Roxie asked.
Ginger stopped walking. So did everyone else.
“Seriously, Ginger, you didn’t think we’d miss that development, did you?” Bea gave her a crooked smile. “I’ll try not to be indelicate here, but you have the blissed-out look of a woman who’s just hit the fucking mother lode.”
Roxie shook her head. “Good work, Bea. That wasn’t indelicate at all.”
“My God,” Josie whispered, grabbing Ginger’s arm. “That was fast.”
Ginger winced, wishing she could disappear. She’d thought her best friends wouldn’t notice anything different about her. How stupid could she have been?
“You’re even walking funny,” Bea added.
“All right,” Ginger said, trying to gain control of the conversation. “Can’t I have a smidgen of privacy? I mean, really! I am an adult woman with my own life to live!”
Josie shook her head to the contrary. “Privacy didn’t even enter into the equation when I was getting to know Rick.” She narrowed her eyes at Ginger. “At least %we’re not spying on you!”
Ginger truly regretted doing that to Josie, who had a valid point.
“So?” Roxie asked impatiently. “What’s the story with Rico Suave?”
Oh, boy. Ginger had no idea where she’d begin or how much she’d reveal to her friends. It wasn’t like she was obligated to tell them anything. Just because they’d invaded Josie’s privacy didn’t mean they could turn around and do the same to her—two wrongs and all that.
“I really wish you wouldn’t call him ‘Rico Suave,’” Ginger said. “He’s not a cartoon character. He’s a remarkable man—creative, funny, charming. He just happens to look like a sex god. And the boys love him. And he’s the best damn—” She paused. “Anyway, I think I’m already—”
Ginger stopped herself, suddenly aware of the astonished expressions around her. My God! What had she been about to say? Out loud? For everyone to hear?
“You’re already what?” Bea asked, her neck ratcheting forward. “What? What? What? ”
There had been no closure for Ginger, so she really had no definitive answer for them. Once Lucio and the boys had devoured pancakes, bacon, and eggs, her new boyfriend had helped clean up and made his excuses for a rapid departure. He kissed Ginger on the cheek, right in front of the boys, and told her he’d talk to her later.
Lucio had called that night. They’d talked briefly, mostly tossing around ideas for the photo business, the boys hanging on her every word and making their own suggestions. He phoned once on Monday and again on Tuesday, but Ginger didn’t pick up. She couldn’t help thinking that Lucio was calling so he could say he did, though he was just as conflicted as she was. She sent her ideas for the Web page to him in an e-mail instead. She needed a little time and space to regroup, to let the hormonal chaos subside.
Unfortunately, there had been no subsiding. She would be seeing Lucio on Friday for the photo shoot, if not sooner, and she wasn’t anywhere near her usual clearheaded self.
“Ginger?” Bea was still waiting for an answer.
“You weren’t about to say that you’ve already fallen in love with him, were you?” Roxanne looked worried.
Josie patted Ginger’s shoulder. “I’d be the last person to judge someone for falling in love too fast. I sure could have used your support while it was happening for me, but I just didn’t think I could share it with you guys at the time.”
Ginger nodded. That must have been hard for Josie, falling in love with Rick immediately after their little group had made a solemn vow to be done with men forever and be content with their dogs.
Josie smiled sweetly at Ginger. “But the situation is different now, right?” she asked. “We’ve promised not to hide stuff from one another again. We’re here to help you, Ginger. We are your friends. Right?”
Ginger nodded, the emotion rising up from her chest and into her throat. Maybe her pals really could help her sort out all these contradictory feelings. Maybe she’d be a fool to not take advantage of their collective wisdom.
She looked at the faces of her friends. They had circled her protective
ly as Dolores Park came to life, more dogs and owners showing up as the sun rose in the sky.
“All right,” she said, taking a deep breath for courage. “It’s a long story. Remember the night we went to dinner with Mrs. Needleman? Well, when I got back, Lucio … we … I … well, it started when I went out to sit in the dark and look at the moon. I guess I got a little tipsy.”
“Let me get this straight,” Bea said, looking incredulous. “You went out there—alone’to get drunk and howl at the moon?”
“To look at the moon,” Ginger said. She was about to assure Bea that there’d been no howling that night, but that wouldn’t have been entirely truthful. “And I was only a little, you know, uninhibited at the time.”
“Who cares about the moon?” Roxie said, bugging out her eyes. “What happened with you and Lucio?”
Ginger sighed. “Well, remember the sex buffet Bea talked about?”
Bea’s eyes widened.
“Day-um,” Roxanne whispered.
“No!” Josie yelled, clearly confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about! What sex buffet? I don’t even know what a sex buffet is! Somebody fill me in!”
At that moment, a guy walked by with his border collie, chuckling to himself.
“Keep it down, will you?” Ginger groaned, flipping her hair away from her face. “Maybe we should just go get a cup of coffee. That way the entire San Francisco dog-walking community won’t have to hear the lurid details of my outrageous sex life.”
“I’ll meet you at Starbucks,” Bea said, who clucked for Martina to heel and turned to leave the park.
“But you hate Starbucks!” Roxanne called after her. “What happened to the whole ‘global enslavement through caffeine intoxication’ theory?”
Bea shook her head but didn’t look back. “Fuck that,” she mumbled. “I’m going to need to alter my brain chemistry in some way before I hear the rest of Ginger’s story.”
The other women gathered their dogs and followed after Bea.
“It’s not really that bad, is it?” Josie’s hopeful face scanned Ginger’s as they headed to the park exit.
Ginger tried valiantly to smile, but gave up. “God, Joze. I can’t lie. It’s pretty bad. Or good. However you want to look at it.”
Roxie frowned at her. “On a scale of one to—”
“Sixteen,” Ginger interrupted.
“But the scale only goes to ten.”
“Sixteen,” Ginger said.
“Day -um,” Roxie repeated.
“But what do I know about sex, really?” Ginger let loose with a desperate laugh. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now that I’ve had sex like that! I have no frame of reference for what’s happened to me in the last few weeks! I’m realizing that I’ve been cheated my whole life, that I didn’t know the first thing about sex or love while married to Larry. I had no idea it could be the way it is with Lucio!”
“Whoa,” Josie said, bringing Ginger to a stop. “Take a breath, sweetie.”
Ginger waved her hands around frantically, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t want to breathe! I want to scream! For twenty years Larry’s been telling me I was dining on chateaubriand and now I find out that it was freakin’ Spam the whole time!”
Roxie and Josie stiffened and leaned backward, as though they were being hit with gale-force winds.
“You know who I feel like?” Ginger continued to wave her hands around, a lump of desperation growing in her chest. “I feel like that woman in the vegetable juice commercial, you know, the one who smacks herself in the forehead and says, ‘I coulda had a V8!’ only I’m a lot more pissed off about it than she was!”
Roxanne and Josie exchanged glances. “Day-um!” they said in stereo.
“I’m going home to take an extremely cold shower now,” Roxie said, sighing.
“I really need to call Rick,” Josie said, squirming.
“I should go to work,” Bea said, checking her cell phone for the tenth time.
Because Ginger’s friends were trying to avoid eye contact as they sat around the sidewalk table, she knew she’d been smart to leave out most of the details from her and Lucio’s sexual smackdown. The general overview had left them plenty uncomfortable.
It wasn’t as if the group didn’t discuss sex—they did. Often. But Ginger knew her story of lust on the lawn and panties in the pocket and getting naked on the foyer floor and bubbles and candles and earthquakes had left them a little shaky. She knew how they felt.
Ginger sighed, noticing how Roxanne had started wiping her overheated forehead with a Starbucks napkin. Josie was fidgeting in her chair and stroking her neck. Bea just looked smug, no doubt mulling over the information Ginger had shared about Lucio’s steady diet of world travel and brief encounters.
“Don’t even think of saying it, Bea,” Ginger warned, pointing in her direction.
“What? You mean I shouldn’t say ‘I told you so’?”
“Lucio is not the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life,” Ginger said. “I don’t know what he is—yet. He might turn out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Or, not.” Bea shrugged.
The four women sat in silence for a while, their dogs asleep at their feet. They’d been talking for nearly two hours. The conversation may have been hot, but Ginger’s latte had long ago gone cold.
“Well, what does everybody think?” Ginger asked. “You now have a pretty good idea what I’m dealing with here. What do you think I should do?”
Everyone looked blank.
“Should I listen to my heart and not my fear, like Mrs. Needleman said? Or should I just chalk this up as a once-in-a-lifetime bit of insanity and get out before my heart gets flattened—like Bea thinks it will?”
“I never said that.” Bea folded her hands on the tabletop.
“But you want to,” Ginger said.
Roxie shook her head slowly. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, but I’ll tell you one thing—I’m not getting within a hundred yards of that crazy old Mrs. Needleman again. She’s put some kind of weird mojo on you and Josie, and I want none of it.”
“Let me ask you this,” Bea said to Ginger, her voice quite serious. “What exactly is your biggest fear about Lucio?”
Ginger fiddled with the cardboard coffee sleeve on her cup while she thought that through. “Oh, you know—that he’ll leave,” she said with a shrug. “That one day he’ll fly off somewhere, the way he’s done all his life, and I’ll be left here insanely in love with a man I can never have.” Ginger looked around the table. “That scares the hell out of me.”
“And rightly so,” Bea said with a nod.
“But he made a promise to you, didn’t he?” Josie bit her lip before she went on. “He promised he’d stay here long enough for the two of you to get to know each other. He said he wouldn’t go unless he talked it over with you.”
“He did,” Ginger said with a bitter laugh. “But all that means is he’s willing to give me a heads-up before he disappears!”
Bea laughed, too. In an overexaggerated Spanish accent she said, “Adios, señoreeeta. I will be sure to send a postcard from Arr-ghhhhhen-teena.”
Ginger rolled her eyes.
“But do you trust him?” Josie asked.
“With what?”
“With everything—your kids, your dog, your heart? Do you trust him?”
“Actually, yes,” Ginger said. “That’s another scary thing—there’s no real reason for me to trust him, but I do. I don’t even know his whole story yet. But somehow, trusting him feels right. He feels right. I can’t explain it.”
“I think that’s what Mrs. Needleman was getting at,” Josie said, smiling wistfully. “It was the same for Rick and me. I had to decide if I trusted him. I had to listen to what my gut was telling me.”
“I hate to be the one to add some reality into this conversation, but someone has to do it,” Roxanne said, ending a long stretch of silence. “Here’s the deal, Ginge
r. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between gut feelings and below-the-belt crazy-monkey-lust, do you know what I’m saying? So just be sure that when you’re listening to your gut, it isn’t some other organ doing the talking.”
Bea wagged an eyebrow and chuckled.
Roxanne continued. “In my experience, the hotter the sex, the harder the fall.” She tilted her head to study Ginger. “And sooner or later there’s going to be a fall. Trust me on this one—you can’t have great sex and a great relationship with the same man. You’re going to have to settle for one or the other. It’s a universal law.”
Bea nodded in approval.
Ginger burst out with a laugh. “Or, you can be married to Larry Garrison and have neither! Woo-hoo!”
“That’s complete garbage!” Josie’s sharp reprimand was directed toward Roxanne, and the two friends stared at each other in silence. After an awkward moment, Josie turned her attention to Ginger. “Listen to me when I tell you that you really can get it all in one place. I’m living proof. And if it could happen to me, it can happen for you or Roxie or any woman.”
“That’s exactly what Mrs. Needleman said!” Ginger sat up taller in her chair.
“I’ve had all the Mrs. Noodle-brain I can take for one morning.” Roxie rose from her chair and pulled a sleepy Lilith to her feet. “I won’t be able to make it Friday—I have an early appointment with my Web designer—so I’ll see you guys at Josie’s on Sunday. Want to drive up with me, Bea?”
“Sure.”
Roxie’s eyes flashed briefly at Josie and then moved on to Ginger. “Just protect yourself.”
Ginger nodded soberly. “We’re using condoms.”
Roxie laughed, but a sadness crept into her eyes. “I was referring to the emotional kind of protection, but condoms are always a swell idea.” She fiddled with Lilith’s leash, her gaze softening. “The only thing worse than having a guy abandon you has got to be having a guy abandon you when you’re pregnant with his kid. Nobody wants that.”