by Pamela Crane
‘Because I’m stalking you,’ I said after swallowing a mouthful of chips.
‘How romantic. I’ll let you know when it stops being cute and starts getting creepy.’
I enjoyed our repartee more than I should have. We were two live wires that created a volatile spark.
‘Did you just text me?’
‘No, why?’ His voice was raspy and secretive.
‘I’m guessing you’re not alone. Is she in the room?’ I asked, instantly regretting the call. The last thing I wanted was to get him in trouble with the missus. I actually cared about his family, unlike the other married men I fooled around with.
The phone crackled with his movement and the background noise dimmed. ‘Not anymore. What’s up?’
‘I’m bored. I got stood up by Mackenzie. You able to hang out tonight?’ I reached into the empty chips bag, surprised I had eaten them all in one sitting. Apparently I was in a self-destructive mood.
‘I could be. What’s in it for me?’
‘That depends on what you want from me.’ I was playing coy, and he knew it.
‘How about you buy the first round of drinks and we’ll go from there?’
‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’ But I was wrong. It was so very, very bad.
After a few minutes of flirty banter he told me he’d meet me in thirty minutes at our usual place, his voice thick and throaty and sexy as hell. An outfit change and half an hour later I walked into James Street Tavern, as obscure a meeting place as one could get in the suburbs of Monroeville, Pennsylvania, and saw him leaning over a pool table, his ass hugged in denim. I approached from behind, then slipped into his periphery as he nibbled on his lower lip in concentration for the shot.
I picked up his abandoned bottle of beer perched on the corner of the pool table and took a swig. ‘Hey, there. Don’t let me distract you,’ I teased, wiggling up against him.
‘Oh, you always distract me, Lily. How about you help me with this shot?’ He winked. I laughed. Our chemistry sizzled.
Gently grabbing my wrist, he tugged me closer, nesting my body in front of his. He guided me into position to take over the shot while he took over my self-control.
With the pool stick slipped into my palms, I leaned over with an exaggerated butt thrust, aiming the cue ball at a cluster of balls in the corner. I didn’t care about the shot as I felt his hot body against mine. The only balls I thought about at this moment were pressed against my rear.
‘You’re going to miss it if you don’t aim right,’ he whispered in my ear.
‘I’m sure you always hit your mark.’ I licked my lips, fully knowing what I was doing. Taunting him. Teasing him. And yet my hands were bound. He was off-limits.
The line was still intact, dull but existent. I could assure myself it was just harmless flirting up to this point. But once we crossed that thinning border between innocent and guilty, there was no going back. After that, I couldn’t forgive myself. Life would shift and shatter into unrecognizable pieces. I’d never be able to glue the shards back together. We could never be, him and I. Not because he was married with a mortgage. Not even because he had kids.
But because he was my best friend’s husband.
Chapter 6
Mackenzie
SUNDAY EVENING
Trapped between Lily and Robin on an overpriced sofa that Robin scoffed at but really loved, I fingered the friendship bracelet on my wrist, frayed, discolored, rather shabby. Nearly twenty years later I still upheld this youthfully naïve heart-bond, devoted to our friendship and growing old together, regardless of how far Time swept us apart. Our vow made us family; our shared lives mingled our blood.
It hadn’t always been easy keeping the promise while juggling kids and competing work schedules and lacrosse practice and baseball tournaments and PTA meetings. But once a month we sliced out some time together when Robin and Grant hosted a dinner party where the women could gossip over half-empty glasses of Moscato, the men could talk Steelers draft picks over Iron City Beer, and the kids could retreat to the basement game room to binge on chips and pop – the native Pittsburgher’s word for soda. Proving you could take the Southerner out of the South but not the South out of the Southerner, I insisted on calling all soft drinks cokes, and for some reason it cracked everybody up whenever I’d ask for a Co-Cola.
As much as life and jobs and kids and petty fights wedged us apart, we always returned to find our place in the fold.
‘Moooommy!’ a child’s voice cried from the kitchen. This same small voice had just finished crying about his juice spilling on the carpet – where he was forbidden from drinking juice – after wailing about breaking the lamp he shouldn’t have been throwing a ball at. ‘Willow won’t share the cookies with me!’
‘You’ve got to be friggin’ kidding me. He never stops,’ Robin mumbled, frustration and exhaustion sharpening her words. ‘Mommy’s coming, Lucas!’
Robin rose from her seat, leaving me and Lily alone with our wine and appetizers.
‘She makes parenthood look like a nightmare,’ Lily said, draining half a glass of wine in one swig. It was an unfair observation, because any child looked like a nightmare to Lily. ‘Maybe I should start hosting our get-togethers – except no kids allowed.’
‘Oh, Lil, it’s not as hellish as it looks. You might be surprised how fun kids can be. Aria’s my world. I couldn’t imagine life without her.’
Collette crawled along the floor, gripping Lily’s socked toe in her chubby fingers.
‘She wants you to hold her.’ I reached down and tickled the eight-month-old at Lily’s feet.
Lily winced and waved away what she saw as a drooling rug rat. I saw cooing perfection. ‘No thanks. You know I’m not a baby person. I’m always worried I’ll drop her.’
‘What is wrong with you?’ I shook my head at Lily and picked up Collette. ‘How can you see this cute little ball of fat rolls and turn down a chance to hold her?’
‘All she does is slobber and fuss and poop. I don’t get the appeal.’
‘It’s the heart explosion that you’re missing. When you have a baby, Lil, there’s nothing like it – the sheer force of love filling and breaking and mending your heart all at once. It’s life-altering how much you can feel for one tiny little human.’
‘Sounds exhausting,’ Lily said.
‘Sounds like you have baby fever,’ Robin interjected as she breathlessly trotted into the living room, dropping onto the sofa. She squeezed my knee and grinned.
‘Unfortunately that ship has sailed, but I’ll relish being Auntie Mac to this widdle cutie. Pretty as a Georgia peach, you are.’ I planted kisses along Collette’s forehead, cheeks, and neck as she giggled and squirmed. I longed for it again, that baby stage.
‘Anytime you want to babysit, she’s all yours.’
On one auburn top-grain leather sofa I sat between Robin and Lily, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, not a sliver of daylight between us. (I often said we were a three-headed critter with one heart, which made Lily gag.) On the opposite matching sofa were Grant and Owen, an empty down-blend cushion gaping between them. Grant’s legs stretched out under the handcrafted petrified wood coffee table, and one elbow casually rested on the rolled arm of the sofa, fingers rubbing the brass nailhead trim, while the other animatedly gestured as he talked about sports that I didn’t follow. Owen, sipping lager from a chilled pilsner glass, wore a bored expression that said kill me now.
‘Did Lucas go downstairs like I told him to?’ Robin asked the room, glancing over her shoulder. ‘I hope he’s not annoying Aria to no end with his toy dinosaur collection.’
At age five, Lucas was a budding paleontologist, whose yen for anything dinosaurian put the similarly obsessed boy in Jurassic Park to shame. He could talk your ear off for hours, rattling off facts without taking a breath. The precocious kid was like a walking, talking kindergartener-sized Wikipedia.
‘Don’t worry, Aria adores him. I’m sure she doesn’t mind humoring him,
’ I assured her.
‘I think I saw Fizz dragging Willow upstairs,’ Grant said. Lucas had earned the nickname Fizz as a baby during his first sip of Sprite at a dinner outing together. The fizz from the carbonation gave him the most shocked expression as soda trickled out of one nostril, sending our entire table and waitstaff into hysterics. It stuck right then and there – Fizz. ‘I heard him mention something about finding his velociraptor.’
Lucas’s footsteps rumbled above us, followed by Willow’s loud warning to stay out of her room.
‘Any moment now I’ll be refereeing whatever argument those two are going to get into.’ Robin glanced at the ceiling. Willow’s threats were growing impatient and loud.
‘Congratulations, you’ll have your first teenage girl in a couple months.’ I patted Robin’s shoulder with a welcome-to-the-club shrug.
Robin returned a weary glare.
‘It’s not so bad. They can get mouthy, but Willow’s a sweet girl.’ Although Aria rarely got mouthy, and when she did, it was aimed at her father.
‘You can’t talk, Mac. You got it easy with Aria. She’s the perfect teen. With the psychotic girls Willow’s been hanging out with from her lacrosse team, I’m scared she’ll become a serial killer. You should hear the hazing these kids do to each other. Twelve years old and throwing water balloons with pebbles in them at the new girls. Then dousing them in syrup and making them roll in feathers. It’s barbaric!’
Maybe Willow wasn’t as sweet as I thought.
‘What? No, I’m sure Willow’s not doing that stuff,’ Lily interjected.
‘She says it’s not her, but that’s what she’s surrounded by. I wish they could stay innocent like this forever.’ Robin brushed her finger against Collette’s cheek, then handed me a plush toy, which I rattled in front of her. Her chubby hand gripped it then waved it wildly. I inhaled the scent of baby powder as I repositioned her on my lap.
‘Willow is a strong-willed girl who can stand up to peer pressure. She knows who she is – and she’s not like them.’ At least I hoped not.
An earsplitting screech bounced down the stairwell from Willow’s room, and Robin rolled her eyes. ‘Tell that to the junior Annie Wilkes upstairs.’
Grant laughed at the Kathy Bates Misery reference. ‘You want me to intervene?’ he offered. It was the first time he’d dealt with the kids all evening.
‘No, they need to learn to work it out on their own.’ Robin exhaled, her fatigue evident in the sagging eyes that her concealer couldn’t camouflage.
‘Anyone need anything while I run to the kitchen?’ Grant stood up and smoothed the wrinkles from his Calvin Klein flat-front khakis. He looked every part the sophisticated pediatrician, even in his casual wear.
Lily gulped the last of her wine, casually delivered an unlady-like burp, and lifted her empty glass. ‘I could use a refill.’
While Lily trailed after Grant toward the kitchen, Owen, Robin, and I sat alone, with only Collette’s babbling poking holes in the stifling silence. With her eyes fixed on Owen, Robin primly crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. She was searching for something to say; I could always tell when Robin stiffened like that.
‘How was Friday night’s poker game, Owen?’ Robin asked.
‘What poker game?’ Owen’s face was a blank slate.
‘I thought the guys had a poker game. Grant went. You didn’t go?’
‘I didn’t hear about it. I guess I wasn’t invited.’ Owen’s nonchalance showed just how little he cared about such things. Time with the guys had always been more an obligation than a pleasure. If Owen had his way, we’d be living in the boonies on acres of sprawling land and not another house in sight. Buddies were for needy pussies, as far as he was concerned. But humoring me was part of the marital package, so he attended the trite events that I dragged him to and maintained the status quo with obligatory poker games and suffering through boring dinners like this one.
‘Oh. Well, I’ll let Grant know next time not to forget you.’ Robin reached for her wine glass, bumping mine with her knuckle. The crystal tipped and broke on the coffee table, sending wine across the table and onto Robin’s lap. ‘Eff my life!’
As Robin jumped up in a fluster, I grabbed a napkin and tossed it on the rosy puddle. ‘No big deal, Robin. It’s cleaned up. Sit down and relax.’
But Robin could never relax. I understood, always living on the edge with Owen. As Robin rushed to the bathroom, I sensed something darker going on beyond her usual worry. She was hiding something behind this dinner theatre that she was an actress in. Everything felt fake tonight, and I knew this because I was faking too, playing my role in the happy family performance. When Robin returned with her lips stuck in a grim line, Collette was already done with me, reaching for her mamma.
‘So did you hear about that college coach who was caught diddlin’ his cheerleaders?’ As an unapologetic devotee of supermarket tabloids, I sought to distract my best friend the only way I knew how.
‘Can we not talk about perverts and cheaters?’ Robin cast a glare at the kitchen toward Grant’s wake. ‘Men are selfish pigs. What else is there to say? They take what they want, no matter who they hurt.’
Apparently Robin had a lot to say, but I knew this wasn’t about a national scandal. A bigger question nagged me: was a scandal happening right in Robin’s own home?
Chapter 7
Lily
SUNDAY EVENING
Today was the day my life began and Robin’s ended.
Grant stood on one side of the kitchen island while I lingered on the other, reaching for the wine bottle.
‘Santoro, you’re such a lush.’ Grant wagged his finger at me as I topped off my third glass of wine for the evening. I’d always liked how he referred to me by my last name. It felt so empowering, somehow. Like I was one of the guys.
That was my first mistake, believing I was innocent. Because women held the power too. I just hadn’t harnessed it yet.
‘I think you like me a little tipsy.’
‘Why do you think that?’ His hazel eyes bore into me, singeing me with their intensity as he crept along the counter toward me. Even separated by space and granite, I felt his heat.
‘Because I know what you want, and you can’t have it. You’re thinking maybe if I’m drunk I’ll lose my head. Do something foolish. Typical guy.’ I cocked my head, daring him to prove me wrong.
‘Typical guy, huh? What exactly is it that you think I want?’
‘To get in my pants,’ I said as I headed into the walk-in pantry where food items were lined in neat rows – snacks, canned goods, various pastas, spices. Robin’s obsessiveness knew no bounds. Grant followed behind me, pausing in front of the canned soup section.
‘That’s pretty presumptuous of you.’
‘So you don’t find me attractive?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘And you don’t want me?’
‘I didn’t say that either.’
‘Well, then it stands to reason that everything you’re not saying says everything I need to know.’
Grant shook his head, his lips turning up in an irresistible grin that I wanted to kiss. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. Not in his own home – Robin’s home. With her sitting a few paces away in the living room.
His hand rested on my shoulder, his thumb brushing against my neck. ‘You’ve lost me.’
The tension between us sizzled as his fingertip lingered too long. One small step forward. I lifted my chin. He was a forbidden gasp away. I felt more than saw him lean down slightly, the air between us thick and heavy. I arched into him, my eyes closing, as if I could magic us into another world where this was okay. Where I wasn’t betraying my best friend, seducing her husband, wrecking a family.
Swept up in selfish desire, I let it happen. Egged it on, even. Teased and invited and welcomed Grant’s passionate lips on mine. I wanted the intrusion.
It was a greedy kiss, as if it could never be enough. Grant’s agile tongue
tasted spicy; I fantasized about putting it to good use in certain other places. He grabbed my ass, drawing me against the bulge in his uptight, old-man khakis. He wasn’t my usual type. Too clean-cut, Mr Preppy. Not a rebel like Tony, tattoos snaking over his skin in tribal glory, ripped jeans and a Korn T-shirt his standard uniform. And yet I was recklessly attracted to Grant. Maybe I wanted to find out if he was a bad boy wearing choirboy clothes.
I slid my fingers through his thick hair, the dark brown waves mingling between my fingers. I pulled back breathlessly, alarmed by a sudden sensation of being watched. I turned, catching a glimpse of a blond phantom disappearing around the doorframe.
‘Merda. Did you see that?’
Grant glanced back at the pantry door where my eyes were locked. ‘No. Why? Was someone there?’ His voice cracked.
‘I think it was Willow.’
‘Did she see us?’ he said angrily, and roughly pushed me away.
‘I don’t know, Grant! I’m not even sure it was her. It could have been Mackenzie or Aria, for all I know.’
‘Should I go talk to Willow?’ Grant pressed.
‘She’s your kid, not mine. I have no idea what to do. Maybe she didn’t see anything. I mean, what would you even say?’
Grant stalked into the kitchen, pacing feverishly. I followed. ‘All right, I’ll see if she acts weird at bedtime,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can explain it if she saw us.’
And maybe he couldn’t. Willow was twelve years old, not a little child who’d believe it was normal for her dad to be groping and locking lips with a woman who wasn’t her mom.
‘Just don’t say anything,’ he added, waving his hands at me. ‘I can’t let Robin find out … not like this.’
That was my second mistake – believing this secret could stay hidden.
This was bad. Marriage-destroying, friendship-crushing, end-of-the-world bad.
Chapter 8
Aria
