Into the Quiet

by Beth C. Greenberg

  “You do?” She looked up at him with too much hope in her eyes.

  Damn, sometimes Pan really hated being the bearer of bad news. “I think so. I think you’re meant to spread your mirth down here.”

  An ugly laugh came out of Euphrosyne. “What mirth?” Right.

  The idea hit Pan like a neon sign—the one hanging off the comedy club across the street, to be precise. “The Episode hosts an open mic night once a week. Maybe you could pull together a routine?”

  “What? How? I’m a goddess, not a comedian.”

  Pan shook his head and chuckled. “And I’m a hunter, not a . . . well, not everything I’ve become in the last two thousand years. We do what we have to do.”

  “I don’t have a clue what earthlings would find amusing.”

  “You could start with that line about not being a comedian.” At least the Star Trek fans would have a chuckle. “Watch some TV. Use that laptop in your apartment to study earth culture. You’ll figure it out.” Pan gave her an encouraging smile she did not return. “I have to run. You have my number if you need me.”

  There was no need for Pan to feel guilty for rushing home to Cupid. After all, he was a job, too. Yep, just another active file demanding Pan’s attention.

  The garage door screeched its way up the tracks, revealing Cupid’s brand-new work boots first, followed by his dust-covered overalls and safety goggles. Pan was much relieved to see Cupid adhering to the precautions they’d discussed. Bent over the sawhorse, tightening a clamp as if his life depended on it, Cupid didn’t even flinch as Pan’s truck approached.

  Pan hopped out of his truck and delivered the containers of stain to the supply shelf. He had been gone less than two hours, and Cupid had already assembled the outer casing.

  “Wow, you work fast.”

  “As do you,” Cupid shot back without taking his eyes off his work. “I can smell that salesman on you.”

  Pan hardly needed to apologize for blowing off a little Cupid-induced steam. He could have brought up Cupid’s roll in the hay with Ruthie’s BFF but dismissed the accusation with a light chuckle instead. “Rayne was quite passionate about his stain colors.”

  Cupid lifted his eyes past the clamp to give Pan a harsh glower. “Can’t wait to see what you two decided on.”

  With an irritated huff he immediately regretted, Pan acknowledged the obvious, at least to himself. We decided we’d both rather have been with you.

  12

  Ladies’ Lunch

  I’m happy for my friend. I’m happy for my friend. Repetition wasn’t helping all that much, and Ruth feared that Gail would see right through her fake smile. Why hadn’t she bowed out of this ladies’ lunch when she had the chance? Surely she could’ve faked a cough.

  “Don’t ever turn to a life of crime,” Zach loved to tease his wife. “You’d be caught in a heartbeat.” Up until quite recently, Ruth’s inability to fib hadn’t held her back in life; she was a woman with nothing to hide. Honest and fair in her dealings with friends and the legion of subcontractors they employed, Ruth laid her head on the pillow each night with a clear conscience.

  But lately, there had been a shift, it was only fair to acknowledge, a mental meandering she wouldn’t go so far as to classify as infidelity—nothing nearly that drastic—but Ruth was, at a minimum, skating a slippery slope. Conversations had occurred around topics more appropriately discussed with her husband than the men she’d “met” online. They’re just words: the biggest treason for a woman enamored with words. Her lame excuse held up less and less as the frequency of those intimate chats increased, and the subject matter spiraled deeper into taboo.

  In her heart of hearts, Ruth felt guilty of coveting many things she could not have—babies, obviously, but at least that longing was justifiable. The other yearnings were not just unreasonable; they were downright reckless—the firm body of her youth, the excruciatingly tantalizing boys that filled her newsfeed, the spark of outrageously romantic new beginnings. Life would be so much easier if she’d just stop wanting those things, but there was an undeniable thrill in the fantasy she knew she’d never act on.

  Thus far, the banter alone had been enough to sustain her, the hot fudge topping drizzled over her vanilla ice cream. The problem was, this Quentin was no virtual acquaintance; he was real, and he was here in Tarra. Worse yet, he seemed to want her, too. Why, she could not fathom, but even Ruth had to admit there was a definite something in the way he’d looked at her. She’d been wise to toss him to Gail; it was the right thing to do.

  Doing the right thing sucked sometimes.

  With Gail’s post-date text Friday night—I owe you BIG time!—Ruth could no longer lie to herself. She cared way too much about this Quentin, and not in an altruistic way.

  She’d achieved exactly what she’d set out to do, pawning off her own little problem while helping out a friend. Ruth had no business being angry with Gail, and she hated herself for her uncharitable reaction, but there it was. And there Gail sat, waiting for her.

  Of course Gail was already seated when Ruth arrived. She’d be champing at the bit to “share.” Wendy would be her typical fifteen minutes, can-you-buh-LEEVE-the-traffic late. In the meantime, it would be up to Ruth to put on her best performance. She plastered on a smile and prayed Gail wouldn’t see what a shit friend she truly was.

  Gail turned toward Ruth’s approaching footsteps. Jesus, the woman was glowing. For real.

  Could’ve been you.

  Gail popped out of her seat and wrapped Ruth in a giant, swaying hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Fortunately, Gail couldn’t see Ruth rolling her eyes.

  “Welcome,” Ruth mumbled, carefully rearranging her features.

  Ruth’s ass had barely touched the chair when Gail took off like a horse out of the gate. “Ohmygod, Ruthie, he’s positively divine. You’d think someone so young and so hot would be callous or conceited, but he was just so . . . gah!” Gail fell back into her chair with a dramatic sigh. “I cannot thank you enough.”

  Ruth bit her tongue and forced her lips into a smile though she imagined it had to be twisted and ugly. “Actually, you have.” Now please, for the love of all that is holy, stop.

  “Well, I insist on buying lunch today. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Fine. I’ll have the”—Ruth perused her menu and slapped it closed with a flourish—“twin lobster plate.”

  Gail was undeterred. “Deal.”

  Wendy floated in on a wave of apologies and slid into the chair on Ruth’s other side. “What did I miss? What deal?”

  Here we go again.

  “Ruthie’s hot, young suitor from the other night asked her for her number.”

  Wendy’s jaw dropped open, and she punched Ruth in the arm. “Look at you go, cougar mama.”

  Ruth blew out an exasperated breath while Gail plowed ahead with the punch line. “And she, being married and all, much like yourself, slipped him my number instead. By the way, Ruthie, that was kind of a cruel trick you played on the boy. But damn, girl, I love you to the moon for it.”

  Wendy turned her astonished face to Ruth. “Wow. You did that?”

  Ruth shrugged. She could have just turned him down, she supposed, but then he would’ve been lost forever. At least this way, there was a chance of . . . Of what, exactly? Oh Ruth, there you go again, mistaking yourself for one of the heroines in your romance stories. How was that fair to any of them? A twinge of guilt clouded Ruth’s envy as she imagined Quentin’s face at the instant of discovery. But then, he’d gone right ahead and arranged a date with Gail, hadn’t he? Probably never wanted Ruth in the first place, just picked off the most vulnerable sheep in the flock like any smart wolf would do.

  Impatient for more dish, Wendy turned to Gail. “So how was he?”

  “Exactly how you’d think.” Delighted to have an appreciative audience, Gail ooz
ed and gushed anew. “The boy is seriously gifted. And his stamina . . .”

  “Lordy, Gail. How many times have you two gone out?”

  “Just one.”

  Wendy’s jaw dropped. “You fuck strange men on the first date now?”

  Gail turned bright red at the waitress’s untimely arrival. A sweet girl around Quentin’s age, she had the good sense to pretend she hadn’t heard. “May I get you ladies something to drink?”

  “Yes,” Ruth answered swiftly. “A glass of your most expensive prosecco.” She flashed a smile at Gail, who ordered the same.

  “Make it three,” Wendy said, waiting for the girl to scurry away before chastising Gail again. “What if he was an ax murderer?”

  Gail choked out a laugh. “Honey, if that was murder, please let me die a thousand more deaths. At a minimum, give me assault with that deadly tongue.”

  Ruth could taste the bile licking at the back of her throat. There was only so much she could take. “Okay, I think we can do without the details.”

  “Speak for yourself there, missy,” Wendy interjected. “I want all the details.”

  Gail shot Ruth a sheepish smile. “He’d like to have that job at your house.”

  “What job?”

  “Your building project.”

  The nursery. A prickle rushed across Ruth’s skin. She could have her nook and a little eye candy, too. “How does he even know about my building project?”

  “Please. You didn’t think your name would come up in conversation?”

  Wendy leaned into the center of the table and grabbed each of her friends’ hands. “Of course it did, in the heat of the moment . . . ‘Oh, Ruthie, oh, oh, come with me . . .’”

  Ruth yanked her hand away. “Ugh, Wen. Could you be any tackier?”

  Wendy glanced at Gail for encouragement but found herself at the business end of an evil glare. “Oh, fine. Whatever. She’s the one who reads that crap,” Wendy said, jutting her chin at Ruth. If they knew she wrote “that crap” too, Ruth would never hear the end of it.

  Pivoting toward Gail, she asked, “He brought me up?” For the first time since she’d walked through the door of the bistro, Ruth’s smile was genuine.

  “Come on, honey,” Gail answered quietly, “we both know it’s you he really wanted, not me.”

  Ruth had a dozen follow-up questions, but she couldn’t figure a way to ask without sounding like a teenager with a crush. “He’s a builder?”

  Made sense, the sculpted body, muscles swollen from a day’s hard labor. Ruth swooned a bit as she inserted Quentin’s face and body into the hot, horny handyman story she’d written last year. Yes, Quentin would make a very fine Henry, sawing and nailing things down in a pair of worn jeans, sweating through his ribbed, white tank.

  Wendy snapped her out of her daydream. “Who cares what he is? Honey, if that man showed up at my house with a tool belt strapped around his waist, I’d let him pound whatever the hell he wanted.”

  “Classy,” Gail said, sharing a giggle with Wendy. “Look, Ruthie, I promised Quentin I’d give you his number, so I will honor that promise. The rest is up to you. You can finally get your study built.” Gail dug her phone out of her purse and tapped on it for a minute before stuffing it back inside. “Just call him.”

  Ruth had been talking about the project for almost a year now. Her phone buzzed with the incoming text message. There it was, Quentin’s phone number waiting for her.

  “You really think I should call him?”

  Surely one of her friends should talk her out of this, and it certainly wouldn’t be anyone from Ruth’s online community. No, they’d be shaking their pompoms and cheering her on. Quentin was the brass ring, the living, breathing fairy tale knight in tight denim, and one didn’t throw away that once-in-a-lifetime chance when it slammed into you in a nightclub.

  Gail leaned into the table and used her “confidential” voice. “Look, I was hoping not to have to mention this, but Quentin said he could really use the work. You’d be doing a mitzvah.”

  “Oh.” Ruth was all in favor of providing jobs. She gazed into the smiling, nodding faces of her two closest friends and realized she was doing the same.

  Their prosecco arrived, and the waitress took their lunch orders. Wendy offered a toast before Ruth had a chance to head her off at the pass. “To Quentin!”

  Ruth’s gaze shifted to Gail as she tipped back her wine. Did Gail honestly want Ruth horning in on her little arrangement with her new young stud? An ugly thought followed—the kind that would fill Ruth with deep shame when she reflected on this moment later: Misery loves company.

  Gail had been hinting not too subtly for weeks now about Zach and Joan, but Ruth wasn’t biting, at least not to any of the people who inhabited her “real life.” Had she voiced a suspicion or two to her online friends? Maybe. There was no harm in venting; they all did it. Ruth’s marriage was Morticia and Gomez Addams compared to most. Still, Ruth had been cautious about expressing even the slightest doubt to Gail.

  Ruth took a gulp of her prosecco, reorganizing all the dialogue in her head until she could configure something that made sense. There was only one possible course of action to pursue, and it seemed both extraordinarily simple and exasperatingly unlikely. Her marriage being the unbreakable bond she willed it to be, she would hire Quentin to do the work in her home, and he would complete said work without receiving more than the occasional appreciative glance from Ruth. At the end of the day, she would have both the reading nook she always wanted and the conviction that her commitment to Zach surpassed any inappropriate urge that might have briefly tempted her.

  With each sip of boozy insight, this decision earned more and more merit. By the time she’d reached the bottom of her glass, she’d even managed to attribute only positive motives to her BFF: Gail had called Ruth’s bluff to help her move past her dithering on the nursery project and to help Ruth see that her marriage was strong enough to handle the temptation.

  “It’s settled.” Two pairs of eyebrows lifted in response to Ruth’s announcement. “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  13

  Getting Hired

  Cupid wanted to snap something in half. Pan’s neck would have been his first choice, but with murder possibly permanent down here, he’d settle for the shelving he’d assembled while Pan was out screwing the tool salesman. Pan hadn’t even made up an excuse when he left to meet Rayne for a repeat performance on Sunday. Luckily, the clamps prevented Cupid from harming both himself and his project. He would have hated to waste three solid days of work.

  The buzzing phone in his pocket provided Cupid a much-needed distraction. He didn’t recognize the caller’s number, but the skip of his heart told him it was Ruthie. “Hello?”

  “Hi. Uh, hello . . . Quentin?” Her voice sounded as shaky as Cupid felt. It made him want to wrap his arms around her and tell her everything would be okay even if he hadn’t worked out the how part yet.

  “Yes,” he answered. “It’s me.”

  “Right. This is Ruth. From the club?”

  “I know.” Cupid cradled the phone against his neck.

  “Oh. I wasn’t sure . . .”

  He closed his eyes to sharpen his fuzzy memories of lips and eyes and hair into a vivid picture. “How are you, Ruthie?”

  “I’m all right. Actually, to be honest, I’m a little nervous. I owe you an apology.”

  Cupid couldn’t read her body language through the phone, but he could certainly hear the apprehension. “Please, don’t worry about it. I totally understand. The last thing on Earth I meant to do was make you uncomfortable.”

  “Thank you, but it wasn’t your fault. I think I was probably sending out signals.”

  Signals. If she only knew her heartbeat was bouncing off Mount Olympus and straight into Cupid’s chest!

  “You’re fine, Ruthie.” Her
name was a torture he could not stop inflicting on himself, and so were the questions begging to be answered: Why had she called? What had Gail told her about their date? Was Ruthie completely disgusted by him now?

  Ruthie had worked up the nerve to call; Cupid needed to trust her to finish the job. Waiting, as Cupid had learned with Mia, was not his strong suit.

  He sank into the couch, throwing off puffs of sawdust all around him. At least the image of Pan dragging out his long vacuum hose and cursing at Cupid all the while provided some measure of pleasure. Cupid pressed the phone against his head so as not to miss a syllable. Ruthie’s next words were like sweetly plucked harp strings to Cupid’s ears.

  “Gail tells me you might be interested in converting our, uh, spare room to an office?”

  “Yes!” Cupid answered with all the enthusiasm coursing through him. Too late, he remembered how that dancing girl, Rho, had played hard to get and nearly driven Cupid insane with desire. He’d already tried the direct approach with Ruthie, only to end up in a hotel room with her best friend. A new tactic couldn’t hurt. “I mean, yes, I might be interested.”

  Ruthie kept him waiting again, heart pounding in his throat, wondering if this game-playing strategy was all wrong, too. Must every girl be so different and confusing? Perhaps his perspective was skewed because he’d only recently begun this falling in love business, but it seemed that the deities were far less complicated than these Earth dwellers.

  “Maybe we could meet somewhere to discuss it,” she said, then hastily added, “for coffee?”

  At least she’d given him a fighting chance. This time, Cupid settled on a middle-of-the-road tone, a sort of impassive interest in earning a little money. “Sure, that would be great.”

  “Would you, by chance, be free today?” She backpedaled so quickly, Cupid began to believe she was as confused and flustered by all this as he was. “I mean, Gail mentioned you were probably not in the middle of, uh . . .”

  “No problem. Today is fine. I just need to take a shower.”