Despite the fuzziness, she thought back and remembered that the only time he had admonished her at all was when she had tangentially criticized the mayor. Jon seemed completely unfazed by the fact that she had been drinking heavily, skirting participation in the outdoor party games and hanging out with another man (aka: “runner guy”) for most of the night.
And, come to think of it, she hadn’t really spared Jon more than a thought or two throughout the entirety of the evening either.
Thoughts of Aaron, by contrast, were registering seventeen out of ten on her emotional Richter scale. She poured herself a second full glass of water and fought her pounding headache long enough to rationalize this away. An absorbing over-interest in another person was the hallmark of infatuation. It made people’s body organs work overtime, their lust hormones kick up a fuss and their imaginations shoot into overdrive. But it always disappeared eventually. Even with Jon, at the beginning, they’d had some happyish moments, although those feelings ended sooner rather than later because Benji came into their lives so early.
She meandered into their sunroom and curled into a ball on Benji’s old brown beanbag chair. They had a nice house. One that had a spacious den, a brick patio, a raised deck. She had a lovely garden and the luxury of time to tend it. She had an expansive kitchen with gorgeous granite countertops. If she had chosen to have her son on her own…if she had insisted on raising him by herself and not testing Jon’s dutifulness…would she live in a house like this? Would she have been able to afford to send her son to a good college out of state?
Possibly but doubtful. And there was really no fooling herself about the reality of single parenthood. It would have been very hard, at least in the beginning. It maybe would have always been hard. So, in a number of ways, she owed Jon for his support of them, even if his reasons for doing it were equally selfish. Even if the appearance of the good life was, for him, synonymous with actually experiencing the good life. The only thing he had to give up was the notion of ever finding true love himself. And, of course, he made her give that up, too.
A pair of squirrels darted across the lawn. How diligent they were. So productive on this humdrum Sunday morning, gathering and storing nuts for the long winter ahead. She finished her glass of water and could have used another but was still too nauseated to want to move, so she kept her eye on the supposedly simpler creatures in nature.
Only, to her, they seemed kind of wise out there. The squirrels—maybe they were a couple?—worked so well together. Human couples were lucky when they could achieve that kind of marital synchronicity. Relationships were so complicated, and the path strewn with thorns, that everybody struggled somewhere down the line. Early in the dating process. Those rough first years of marriage. Later, when midlife crises and doubts rushed in.
Passion waxed and waned across the board, didn’t it? And so many times, people who had dealt with hardships in their relationship at first, grew into mature adults who retained a warm appreciation for each other and for the memories—even the challenges—they had shared. Perhaps their initial fiery ardor evaporated over the years, but a tender respect was forged in its place. Though both parties would have to want that. To be willing to work to reinvent their couplehood.
The threads of these thoughts trailed after her throughout the rest of the day, like loose ends on a fabric, needing to either be tied into a knot or snipped away.
She awoke the next morning with less severe physical symptoms, enabling her to both think and talk more clearly, but Jon had already left for work and the nature of her unanswered questions involved more than just him anyway.
She waited at home for several hours, wondering if Aaron might venture over to retrieve his wristwatch. He did not. Nevertheless, she busied herself by watching a morning talk show, flipping through some dusty old Austen novel, fine-tuning her résumé and e-mailing out a few tester job applications. The employment climate was harsh out there, but she had to start somewhere. And getting feedback of any kind would be useful, whether she ended up working from home or at a company in the city.
Much as she tried to stay active, however, the sensations from Aaron’s kiss still lingered like phantom lips on hers. She couldn’t stop replaying what she thought she remembered. And Tamara, believing introspection could only take a woman so far, decided one real-life encounter was worth five hundred mental simulations.
She snatched the watch from her sock drawer, slipped on her sneakers and strode over to Aaron’s house, the frigid gusts of wind reminding her they were headed into the cold season.
At her knock, he yanked the door open. She almost took a step back when she saw him. Dark smudges under his eyes. Puffy face. Wrinkled sweats. Hair that hadn’t seen shampoo in a few days.
He looked like hell with a hangover.
Then, again, she wasn’t exactly a ray of perkiness and sunshine, was she? But she knew she looked better today than she had yesterday. If this was his better, she had a hard time imagining the rotten shape he must have been in the morning after the party.
“Hi,” she said. “May I come in for a moment?”
He nodded and held open the screen door for her. Once she was inside, though, he closed it, locked it and leaned against it as if he wouldn’t be able to stay upright without support.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He broke into a cautious grin. “Not so much. Are you?”
“Hmm. I’ve been better. Um, Aaron—I have something of yours.” As she dug into her pocket for the watch, an apology for her part in the party debacle was fashioning itself on her tongue, but she wasn’t quite sure yet how to phrase it. First step was getting the watch out of her pocket, which was harder because her hands were inexplicably trembling. Finally, she was able to hold it out to him. “You…you’d, uh, given this to me on Saturday night. You were right about the Wieners’ clocks being off, by the way. Yours was the accurate one.”
His gaze flickered between her eyes and his watch. He reached for it and his fingers grazed hers. Oh, God.
He inhaled, then exhaled in a rush. “Tamara, I’m so sorry. You were a good sport to put up with me Saturday night. I was really drunk, as I’m sure you gathered, and not behaving at all as I should have—” His speech faltered and she thought, Wait. I was a good sport? What the fuck kind of comment is that?
“You kissed me,” she blurted instead.
“Yeah,” he said with a heavy nod. “I did. And I’m very, very sorry.” He shoved his watch into his sweatpants’ pocket, as if needing to keep the offending timepiece out of sight. “I can’t even express to you my degree of bad judgment. The only responsible thing I did that night was to walk, not drive, home. It was a helluva long way, but I was actually kinda sober by the time I got here. Sharky took care of me.”
She glanced around the room and listened for the distinctive sound of the dog’s yaps. “Where is Sharky?”
“He earned himself a couple of big bones, so he’s out in the backyard gnawing on one now.” Aaron studied her for a moment. “So, am I forgiven? Can we,” he paused, “put this behind us?”
Tamara smothered a laugh, but she couldn’t help wanting to throw her hands up in the air and to start giggling like a brainless teenager. What did a woman say to something like that? No, you’re not forgiven because you made me want you. No, we can’t put this behind us because I need you to kiss me again, just so I’ll know my feelings weren’t a complete fluke of the night. These were not ideal answers.
So, instead she shrugged and said, “Sure.”
“Great.” He shot a rueful look at her face and a pensive one at the door. “I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but I think it probably will, so I might have to ask you to forgive me for something else in a minute.” He swallowed and wet his lips before speaking again. “Have you shared these talks we’ve had with your husband? I mean, does he know you and I get together sometimes? That we…chat? Would he, for instance, be surprised if he found out you were here, at my house, vi
siting me right now?”
“Oh, um, well—” She thought about it. Had she ever told Jon she’d visited Aaron at his home? Or that Aaron had dropped by their house a few times when Jon wasn’t there? Nope. She’d kept those moments to herself. Precious, jeweled memories that were for her alone. Not that she was going to tell Aaron that. Besides, she had a reasonable excuse, and she figured now was the time to use it. “Jon’s not home that much. Lots of out of town business trips and long hours at the firm downtown. Several days might go by between one of our long chats about gardening or something and the next time I have a chance to catch up with Jon about our week. So, the conversations we have”—she motioned between her and Aaron—“don’t usually come up with him.”
“Don’t usually, Tamara, or don’t ever?”
She didn’t like the sharpness of his mind at the moment or the gentle firmness with which he was talking to her. She tried to wave it off, but he waited for an answer and, eventually, she was forced to concede that Jon probably had never heard about one of their long conversations, aside from seeing them talking in the loft on Saturday night. “But I’ll tell him what a dork you are about growing broccoli, if it makes you feel better,” she said.
He granted her a strained smile. “You do that. And, until then, maybe you shouldn’t be here without…your husband knowing. That’s kind of a dangerous game.”
“I’m not playing a game, Aaron.”
He chuckled to himself and shook his head ever so slightly. “C’mon.” He led her to the door, his manner not insulting, exactly, just highly principled and annoyingly responsible. Just before she stepped outside, he squeezed her arm lightly and said, “Marriage is hard enough when there are just two people involved. Trust me on this one.”
She shot a look at him over her shoulder as she left, wondering what he meant. Had his ex-wife cheated on him? Had he cheated on her? They did get divorced, after all, for some purportedly good reason. Maybe there was more to their problems than the working-at-home thing. Or, maybe, he was talking about another marriage just now—a couple close to him, like his parents.
She didn’t have a chance to ask, not that it was any of her business anyway, because he’d already shut the door behind her. Couldn’t get rid of her fast enough, could he? Well, he’d certainly left her with a few things to think about, starting with the fact that she hadn’t managed to keep her heart rate under 150 for the past half hour and, except for taking back his watch and squeezing her arm just before she had left, he hadn’t touched her at all.
It was hard to stop thinking about his kiss.
An act, she reminded herself (repeatedly) on her chilly walk home, he had apologized for and was clearly embarrassed about. And—just to keep a sense of goddamn perspective—she also reminded herself (repeatedly) that Aaron was not Cupid’s gift to women. He wasn’t involved in a current relationship—must be a reason for that, eh? He had somehow screwed up his marriage—although, to be fair, she was sure Isabelle hadn’t been a little doll the whole time either. And he had all but rebuffed Tamara and their friendship until she came clean about their talks to Jon. What kind of a freakin’ fantasy man was he?
The cold November wind wafted through her like a ghost through a brick wall. The silliness of Halloween was over, the abundance of autumn gone for another year. Her garden lay fallow now, just a collection of brown twigs and stems in need of clearing. She didn’t look forward to the coming months. Nothing grew in winter in this part of the country. Nothing at all.
18
The Trio
Wednesday, November 3
The trio that gathered at the Indigo Moon Café on Wednesday possessed an unseen sizzle of energy, which surrounded them much like an electric fence and was just as likely to cause a shock if a breach were attempted. But whether this protective measure had been established to keep their secrets contained or to keep others from entering into their sacred circle was, as yet, unclear.
The XM radio songs of the day featured seventies selections from the group Chicago, England Dan & John Ford Coley, a couple of distressingly tender tunes by Michael Johnson (“Bluer Than Blue” and “This Night Won’t Last Forever”—Jennifer rolled her eyes when those came on) and then, when they least expected it, a terribly upbeat number from singer Shaun Cassidy. But even Tamara was too frazzled to make any disparaging comments about “Da Doo Ron Ron” that morning.
“That was some event on Saturday,” Tamara began, taking a couple of hearty gulps from the triple-shot mocha espresso she ordered. After what she’d been dealing with lately, lattes were for children.
Bridget laughed. “Yeah, it was pretty wild.” She, however, was the only one of the three who could laugh with any measure of sincerity about the Hallowiener Party. Not that it hadn’t been a source of trauma for her on that night. Simply that it had not branded her marriage with the lingering negative effects her friends were experiencing. Indeed, in Bridget’s case, the opposite appeared to be true, although she wasn’t yet sure if she should trust Graham’s transformation, or if she should even discuss it with anyone.
Jennifer merely nodded. She’d consented to getting together earlier in the week, on Wednesday morning rather than Friday, because Tamara—who’d claimed to have questions about Jennifer’s work-from-home experiences—had requested it. But there was really no reason Jennifer could imagine that would entice her to jabber about the text messages from David or the marital freeze-out from Michael.
“Did either of you feel a little, I don’t know…ill after drinking those Appletinis?” Tamara asked. “I don’t think they agreed with me.”
Jennifer shrugged. “I didn’t try one.”
Bridget squinted into the distance. “Those pinkish drinks? I only had half of mine. But, really, none of the food at their home agreed with me.” And, while she didn’t state this aloud, she’d been proud of herself for tasting only tiny portions of the items available on the table at the Wieners’ house. It’d been quite a spread, but she’d shown surprising willpower. Even later, when she and Graham were discussing Dr. Luke and Witch Nina’s nasty comments, she hadn’t lapsed into her usual bad habit of emotional eating. She was really making progress! Maybe this time she’d trim those extra pounds off for good.
She consciously divided her low-fat blueberry muffin into four sections, determined to only eat two parts of it that morning.
Tamara blew out a slow stream of air, ostensibly so as to cool her already lukewarm coffee, but she somehow had to give vent to the frustration brewing within her. She remained unsure how to ask what she wanted to know, which basically came down to questions pertaining to her growing attraction toward Aaron. Was the man himself responsible for her increasing interest? Or were the drinks the culprit, and the fact that she had been grateful to him for easing the tedium of an otherwise lonely evening?
Bridget, whom she had thought too busy with the dissection of her muffin to be particularly perceptive, was the first to actually hint at the direction of Tamara’s thoughts.
“When I was getting grilled by the dance instructors, I saw you talking with some guy,” Bridget said. “It wasn’t long after Leah and Kip brought out those Appletini things. I remember he was dressed as a prince. Tall. Blondish. Pretty good-looking.” She looked up from her plate, butter knife gripped like a scalpel in her hand. “Who was he? A friend of Jon’s?”
For a split second, Tamara considered trying to feign lack of certainty as to whom Bridget might be referring. She hesitated a beat too long, though, because Bridget smiled and set down her knife, and Jennifer’s thin eyebrows rose to midforehead.
“That was Aaron,” she stated. “My neighbor.”
“The neighbor?” Bridget asked gleefully.
Tamara nodded.
“Why didn’t I get to meet him?” Jennifer asked, her tone amused.
“Right place, wrong time?” Tamara suggested, going for flippancy but not at all sure she achieved it, especially given her friends’ watchfulness of her. “I didn’t k
now he was going to be there.”
“Did you two spend a lot of time together?” Bridget asked. “I didn’t see you after that for the rest of the night.”
Tamara nodded again. “The Wieners have a library, nestled in a loft on the second floor. Aaron discovered it, and it had a nice view of the yard, so we stayed up there and chatted.”
“What an opportune location,” Jennifer commented.
Tamara shot her a sharp look. Had she guessed? “What do you mean?” she managed to ask.
“Just that it must’ve been convenient to see all the nonsense going on outside from a nice, safe distance. Why?” Jennifer said slyly. “Was there another reason?”
“Uh, no. Not really.” Tamara could finally feel the espresso zipping through her veins. About goddamn time. Of course, caffeine made her more fidgety than usual. “He kissed me up there,” she blurted before she could stop herself, and she had the satisfaction of seeing the jaws of both her friends drop and their eyes widen to tennis-ball-sized orbs. Well, she had to tell somebody. Might as well be them. “Although I was kind of drunk then.”
“Was he drunk?” Jennifer asked at the same time that Bridget said, “Was he any good?”
“Yes,” Tamara replied. “Very.”
“To which question?” Bridget asked, holding her breath.
“To both.”
Her friends exchanged a look.
Jennifer set down her calming chai on a brown paper napkin. “Did Jon find out about this? Did he see you, or did you tell him?”
Tamara shook her head. “This really doesn’t concern him.”
Jennifer, unable to stop ruminating about her own marital crisis or keep herself from playing a compare-and-contrast game between her situation and Tamara’s, still could not bring herself to agree with her friend on this one. “I think it does. But I’m not saying you have to take Jon’s opinion into consideration, or even that you have to confess what happened to him. Just that, from a logical standpoint, he’s involved. Whether or not he knows it.”
Friday Mornings at Nine Page 27
