by Grace Palmer
A weird thrill moves through her at the thought of refusing him. She thinks about doing just that. Finding someone else, and registering Nicolas’s emotions as she does. Would he be angry? Amused? Indifferent? She’s not sure which of those she’d prefer.
But she will never get to discover how Nicolas would react to her dismissal of him, because she finds herself nodding even before she’s consciously decided to do so.
The moment between the nod and his approach feels like crossing an endless gulf. All around her, the bodies of the dancers are pairing off and finding their space in the ronda. Camille slinks into the arms of an impossibly tall fellow with a thick red beard and a glimmer in his eye.
But Toni barely notices all that. You only have eyes for him—that was a teasing thing her mother used to say whenever she caught teenage Toni with a crush on one of the neighborhood boys. It was just a turn of phrase, one of many little quirks her mother had. Toni never paid it much mind.
Now, though, she understands what it means. It’s as if the rest of the world has faded into black and white, and the only thing left in full color is the man making his way through the crowd towards her. She reminds herself that she’s still irritated at him, that being a good dancer does not absolve him of being a rude jerk, but repeating that mantra feels a bit like shouting into the wind of a hurricane, for all the good it does at turning away what is inevitably coming her way.
He pauses at the edge of the dance floor and extends a broad hand towards her. “Toni,” he says. It’s a greeting, an invitation, a recognition, and a million other things less specific, but all the more tantalizing for it, bundled together into one word. No one has ever said her name quite that way. As with everything about this man, she cannot decide whether or not she likes it.
She steps forward and takes his hand. Neither of them takes their eyes off each other as they assume their place in the rotation. Toni is suddenly finding it hard to breathe as Nicolas’s palm slides up and settles in the middle of her back, strong and assured.
Her hand comes to rest lightly on the bunched muscle at the back of his shoulder, as before. And their right hands clasp together, hovering in the air.
Toni studies Nicolas’s face. She wants to find answers. Why did he come here? Was it for her? If so, why? She is a fifty-seven-year-old woman with a life full of stumbles behind her and a very uncertain future ahead of her. What could he see in her?
And what could she see in him? As far as she knows, he is a rude businessman of some kind who walks into every room like he owns it. That’s the beginning and end of their relationship. She tells herself that she’s making much ado about nothing. He liked dancing with her, and she with him, and there’s no need to build a mountain from such an inconsequential little molehill.
But she can see in the clench of his jaw and the curve of his eyebrow that that’s not right. There is more here, though it remains as yet unspoken. And even if she doesn’t know what to make of that, she’s certain it is still true.
She closes her eyes and sighs. This is overwhelming. For a moment, she even considers stepping away, going outside, and just walking until these confusing thoughts are left behind her. But then the music strikes its first chord, and the window of opportunity to do that slams shut.
Nicolas strides once and coaxes her along with him. She steps in time with him, and then they do it again, and again, melded together chest to chest. His eyes never leave hers. She feels the pressure of his hand on her back slowly assert itself. And, as before, his smell invades her nostrils. It is the same scent as it was the first time they danced—sandalwood, leather, and citrus, a smell that has instantly become one and the same as Nicolas himself, such that if she ever smelled it wafting on a breeze, she would turn to try and find him, no matter how many miles or years removed from this moment she might happen to be.
As they move together, Toni feels a deluge of emotions and sensations paired together that make no sense. She feels ethereal and incredibly solid at the exact same time, so raw with an incomprehensible surge of hot feeling that she can feel a blush rising to her cheeks at the thought of other people seeing her do this out here in the open, with this stranger, this man, this—whatever he is becoming to her.
When the tanda ends, the blush lingers. Toni brushes back a strand of hair that has fallen over her forehead and glances down at her feet in something akin to embarrassment. She forces herself to look up again a moment later, as much as she would prefer not to, and meet Nicolas’s eyes once again.
“You have a natural elegance,” he says. The words are nice, but the way he says it is flat and roughshod, as if he doesn’t care one way or the other whether she finds his comment complimentary or not. Again, that familiar half irritation, half flirtation feeling churns in her chest.
“My ex-husband would disagree with you,” she says. She has a sudden memory of Jared’s face, twisted in anger, on a night when she accidentally stumbled and dropped a serving tray with their dinner on it. She was laughing before the plates hit the ground. But Jared didn’t laugh.
“Perhaps that is why he is no longer your husband, then,” Nicolas muses with a wry twinkle in his eye.
Toni chuckles. Though random memories of Jared still flash up like old aches from time to time, she feels for the most part like her life with him was eons ago. He doesn’t have quite the same hold over her heart that he once did. “That among many, many other reasons.”
Nicolas nods knowingly. “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”
“Go tell that to young Toni.”
“Young Nicolas could do with hearing that himself,” the man laughs.
Toni raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I have an ex-wife,” he explains. “I would say it is water under the bridge, but that would be a lie. Children make it hard to say such things.”
“That they do.” Toni isn’t sure where she ought to let Nicolas’s comment settle in her mind. She feels, as she always does, that familiar pang she gets whenever someone mentions children. It’s like the ghost of how badly she wanted a child, back in the Jared days, still haunts her and twists the knife when she least expects it.
On a completely different level, the thought of this gruff, serious-looking man playing with children feels wildly incongruous. If she’d had to guess, she would’ve said he was the kind of man who preferred to ignore children altogether whenever possible. Wrong on that count, she supposes.
“How many children do you have?” she asks politely. Around them, the hubbub of folks looking for their next partners provides an easy backdrop to their conversation, like listening to a little brook in the woods chortle as it rounds the bend.
“Just one. A girl. That was more than enough, I assure you.”
“Girls are tough.”
“You don’t even know the half of it. Do you have a daughter as well?”
Toni gnaws at her lip. “No,” she answers finally. “I don’t have any children.” The ghost twists the knife another notch.
“Well, they are tough. She is why I am here, actually. She’s getting married soon, and I cannot embarrass myself with a poor tango at her wedding.”
Toni arches an eyebrow quizzically. “You don’t seem like you need much practice.”
He grins, and for a moment, Toni would’ve almost called it a sheepish grin before it shifts into the familiar taunting, almost arrogant grin she is used to seeing on him. “I needed the practice last week. I confess, I came here this week with somewhat of a different agenda.”
“What’s that?”
“To dance with you again, of course. And then to ask if you would like to get a drink with me.”
Toni is flabbergasted, to say the least. Sure, their quasi-adversarial relationship has had some flirtatious back-and-forthness to it. And sure, she’s noted to herself on numerous occasions that Nicolas is quite attractive. But the open-faced directness with which he just asked the question has taken her by surprise. She’s been quick to assume th
at he’s just a jerk, and any passing spark between them is accidental at best. Perhaps, though, it has just been that she forgot a simple truth about human nature that even children know: sometimes the meanest boy on the playground, the one who pulls your pigtails the hardest, is really the one who likes you the most.
“I…I…”
“Have I overstepped?” Nicolas asks, with that same twinkle glistening in his eye. He’s half daring, half concerned that she might actually turn him down. He is clearly not a man who is used to being told no.
“No,” Toni answers in the end. “I…Yes, I would be happy to get a drink with you.”
“Fantastic. I have to travel for work this week. Perhaps next weekend, then?”
“Yes,” Toni says, nodding distantly as if she’s in a dream, “that sounds good.”
He pulls a business card from his pocket and hands it to her with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders. “I’m sorry if this seems oddly formal,” he says, “but it is all I have.”
Toni takes it from him, not failing to notice that their fingers brush past each other as Nicolas hands the card over, and looks down at it. Nicolas Perez, it says. Owner/Dueño, Perez Internacional. “Did you just give this to me so I’d see that you were the boss?”
To her surprise, Nicolas blanches. “Of course not,” he says in horror.
“I’m kidding,” she interjects before he has a conniption. She realizes suddenly that she’s reached out and laid her fingertips to rest reassuringly on his forearm. They linger for longer than they ought to, and when she pulls them away, they tingle.
“Oh,” he says. Then his face splits in a genuine smile. “I thought you might…never mind.”
The sudden modesty is unexpected, but cute, in its own way. They stand still for a second and look anywhere but at each other, as eye contact would suddenly be too much to bear.
What Toni can’t get over is that her stomach is suddenly filled with the kind of nervous, excited butterflies she thought she’d experienced the last of more than thirty years prior. Women her age aren’t supposed to go on first dates. Women her age aren’t supposed to flirt with strange men. Right?
Wrong.
Because women her age also aren’t supposed to wear gorgeous red dresses and go dance the way she and Nicolas just did. Women her age don’t board planes to foreign countries on one-way tickets, sequestering away hope that the world is both bigger and more beautiful than they might’ve dared to dream of before.
But Toni has done those things, and then some. So maybe she can do other things that women her age are not supposed to do.
Her heart still hurts. It may never stop hurting. But perhaps she is more than the woman she thought she was. And perhaps this is the universe’s way of shoving that truth in her face.
“I’ll see you next week, Nicolas,” she says with a smile. She winks and turns, still holding his business card in her hand. This time, she is the one who leaves him standing speechless.
It feels good.
7
Atlanta, Georgia—July 1, 2000
By the time Toni pulled into the long-term parking section of the Atlanta airport, she was feeling far better than she might have expected.
This was the real her—a doer, an action-taker. Antonia Evelyn Benson did not wallow in her self-pity. Her mother would roll over in her grave if she’d ever caught Toni doing something so pathetic as crying over a man who surely did not deserve her.
That thought was the first thing that had made Toni smile. Angeline, her mom, was a tour de force if ever there was one. She was the source of much of Toni and Henry’s fiery elements. Their dad had provided more of the calming, mellow influence on their personalities.
It was funny how, even nearly a decade since her passing, Toni could hear her mother’s voice in her ear. Antonia Benson, you quit that crying right now, young lady! she would’ve barked. Mom had a husky, raspy voice that she always hated, but Toni had loved it. It felt musty, familiar, like the smell of a blanket you’d had your whole life. She would’ve committed acts of treason right now in exchange for one more cup of tea with Mom at the kitchen table. That table was Mom’s domain—bills and papers stacked everywhere, legal pads filled to the margins with her elegant longhand, and an ever-present cup of tea at her side.
Toni closed her eyes and pictured settling into a seat at the table across from her. Mom would’ve fixed her with a glare over those glasses she wore to read—“my old-lady glasses,” as she called them. It wasn’t an unkindly glare, per se, but rather the kind of glare that says, You already know what I’m going to tell you.
“My heart hurts, Mom,” Toni would’ve told her.
“For what?!” would’ve been the immediate response, bordering on indignant. “For a man who stole twelve years of your life?”
“For the marriage that fell apart. For the kids I don’t have. For the life I thought I was supposed to be living. I don’t know. All of it, I guess.”
And then, that wise cackle. The you-don’t-know-a-darn-thing cackle. Mom was always the best at that.
“Child, if you think your life is over now, then I have some news about the next forty to fifty years. Your time isn’t up, honeysuckle, not by a long shot.”
That felt absurd. Who starts over at thirty-nine? No fairy tales start with a woman who’s already had a hot flash or two.
But in her mind’s eye, Toni saw her mother’s all-knowing grin, and it was impossible to argue with.
And so, as she put her ticket on the dashboard and turned her eyesight towards the terminal, she felt her chin rising a little higher with every step. Her breath came easier. It didn’t feel quite so much anymore like someone was pressing down on her chest with a heavy fist, squeezing the air out of her.
She was going home to Nantucket. She was going to see Mae and Henry and the kids; that was always a shot of life. Smelling the ocean breeze and basking in the sunshine that she knew and loved—how could this not be a good thing?
While she was home, she would take the time to take stock of her life, her past and future alike. Maybe there was a chance at saving everything with Jared. If he apologized and explained himself, she could find a way to move past things, right? All she’d ever wanted was for him to love her. All she’d ever wanted was to make him happy. That hadn’t changed yet, had it? It was impossible to say, and she was still far too close to it. Going home would give her the distance she needed to make decisions.
She passed through security and moved down the massive corridors. She found a seat outside her gate and settled in, feeling ready for—well, ready for whatever was next. Then that feeling came to an abrupt halt.
“Toni?” someone gushed from behind her.
Toni turned around in her seat and saw a familiar face ogling her. “Hello, Lisa.”
Lisa Garvey came around the row of seats and enveloped Toni in a big, mushy hug. She was a lot of woman in every sense of the word. Wide, tall, with huge, bottle-blonde Southern curls, acres of gaudy jewelry on her ears and wrists, and enough perfume to knock out a buffalo. But she had the personality to match—sweet as pie with a booming laugh, and bubbly enough to talk your ear off if you gave her the runway. She was the kind of woman you were glad to see at a party if you didn’t know anyone else there.
“Hon, you look trim! Have you been working out? I bet you’re one for hot yoga; that’s got Toni Benson written all over it.”
Toni blushed. “A little of this, a little of that,” she mumbled, caught off guard.
Lisa gave her a playful swat on the shoulder. “What’re you doing at an airport when I don’t know about it?”
Lisa was a travel agent, and she’d been booking trips for Jared and Toni for almost six years now. Barbados a few years back for a winter getaway, a ski trip to Vail, a weekend escape to the Grand Canyon so Toni could check it off her bucket list. The job suited her—she liked knowing what people were doing, circulating folks around the country and around the world and living vicariously through them
.
“A little trip home,” Toni said briefly, hoping Lisa wouldn’t press further, even as she knew that it was inevitable.
“Bringing that scoundrel husband of yours to see the family, then? Where is that ragamuffin?” She made a show of looking around. No doubt she expected Jared to come around the corner any minute.
But when he didn’t show, her eyes settled back on Toni, and she frowned a bit.
“Jared is, uh…” Toni began awkwardly. She didn’t know where to start or what to share. She just knew that she felt foolish for ever feeling like things were going to be okay. Here she was at the first hurdle in her newly single life, and she was making a fool of herself already. Surely she should’ve expected that she would have to explain to someone sooner or later what had happened? Perhaps it was the suddenness of this encounter that was throwing her for a loop, or maybe she really had been praying that everyone would magically forget that Jared had ever existed and she’d never have to explain his whereabouts to anyone.
“I’m asking because I wouldn’t have thought you’d book two trips so close together!” Lisa exclaimed, chuckling her way out of the uncomfortable moment.
Toni wrinkled her nose. “Two trips? What do you mean?”
Lisa spread her arms wide. Her jewelry clacked together as she said, “Paris, love! He told me it wasn’t a surprise, so I don’t feel guilty sharing it with you, but that hubby of yours just booked a trip for two to Paris. Next weekend, as a matter of fact, assuming I don’t have my wires crossed.”
No one’s heart had ever plummeted as quickly or as cruelly as Toni’s did just then. It felt like it dropped straight into the pit of her stomach and imploded on contact.
A trip for two to Paris.
Jared was never going to bring her on that trip. It was for him and Heather. Toni felt nauseous, dizzy, and slightly crazed, like she was maybe about to tear her hair out and start running around the airport terminal, screaming nonsense at the top of her lungs. This wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a casual fling gone wrong. This was a planned betrayal.
