by Edie Ramer
Even kittens weren’t perfect, though this one was close.
“I should research and find someplace that will help her.” The words sounded as if they were dragged out of Derek by her silence. “Maybe the Mayo Clinic.”
“Good idea.”
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.
She had an ‘oh shit’ moment. The kitten meowed a complaint, obviously responding to her tension. She reached to pet it, but it jumped off, leaving her lap empty. She sat up straight and crossed her legs tightly. She felt as if she were at an interview. “I’m going out to dinner.”
“With Sarah’s family?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. Too many people had lied to her, and she wasn’t going to do that to Derek. Even if she did, she’d probably get caught. Someone would see her driving out of town with Trey. “I’m going out with someone I knew from high school.”
“Someone in Miracle?”
“He’s from Tomahawk.” The words came out, and it was as if flood banks crumbled and she vomited out more words. “You probably don’t know him. He lived in California for a while, but now he’s back. He’s a picker like Marsh. He specializes in old motorcycles and cars.”
“Oh.”
There was a silence, and she clamped her lips together to keep her mouth from running again, like a computer that wouldn’t shut down. As if her own brain fired up, she remembered Derek was at the board meeting when Earl talked about selling the old Chevy dump truck to Trey.
A hand landed on Becky’s shoulder, and she jumped. Her clamped lips kept her from squeaking. She looked up at Sarah’s sympathetic gaze.
Still Derek? Sarah mouthed.
Becky made a face and nodded, realizing her head was shrinking into her neck like a turtle trying to go into its shell.
Sarah patted her shoulder and mouthed Good luck.
“What about tomorrow?” he asked. “Would you like to go out for dinner tomorrow?”
“Um, I think I should stay home with Sarah tomorrow.”
He didn’t reply right away, and she bit her lower lip. She thought of things she could say about why Sarah needed her. A cleaning project. Helping to paint an old dresser. Even something to do with sewing, though everyone in the village probably knew she was the world’s worst sewer and he’d know she was lying.
“I’ll call you, then,” he said.
She grimaced and said good-bye, then put the phone down and turned to Sarah. “That was awful.”
“I’m so glad I’m not single. Dating sucks.”
Becky wrinkled her nose. “Sometimes being married sucks worse.”
“True. Even when you love ’em. C’mon, let’s get you ready. A quick shower first. You’re covered with bits of leaves and puppy hair.” Sarah sniffed and made a face. “And you smell like puppy pee.”
“Are you sure that’s not an aphrodisiac?”
Sarah wagged her finger. “No joking. Dating is serious business.”
Becky got off the chair and started toward the bathroom. “I thought it was supposed to be fun.”
“Are you kidding?” Sarah surged past her, purpose in every step. “Dating is a form of war. You need all the artillery you can find.”
“What if I’m just on reconnaissance?”
Sarah turned around. “You can’t count on that. You never know when it will turn into the real thing and you’ll need the heavy weapons.”
Becky groaned and put her hand on her head, her fingertips rubbing her scalp, her hair flying over her hands. “Why do we do this?”
“Did you miss the biology class in high school? Now, go clean up. Change into something that doesn’t smell like dog pee and make you look like you’re about to teach Sunday school. You got curves, woman. Show them off!”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Because I’m normal. I know old ladies who dress sexier than you.” Sarah shot her hands in the air. “Have fun for a change. Go a little wild. Have an affair with two men. After being the perfect minister’s wife for so long, you deserve a couple flings.”
“You’re insane. I’m going for that shower now before you get worse.”
She loped up the stairs, but distance didn’t stop the ‘couple of flings’ from running through her mind. The word fling sounded like fun. As if she could fling off her inhibitions. Fling off her morals. Fling off her fear. Like a child with a ball. Just pick it up and throw.
But then she thought of Derek...and her heart warmed a little and she smiled. She hadn’t done a bad thing last night. It had been good for her, and she knew it had been good for him, too.
And then she thought of Trey...and her body warmed hotter and she could’ve sworn her vagina smiled.
This...predicament... Could be her body saying this might be her last chance to have the thing she really wanted?
She put her hand over her stomach...over her empty womb.
A sudden stab of sorrow hit her and she bent forward. Her breaths rasped as she stared at the carpeted floor and tried to suck in deeper breaths. Tried to push the sorrow away, as if it were a physical thing.
Finally the sadness eased. She straightened, and her pounding heart slowed and her breaths returned to normal. She went on to the bathroom to take her shower. Because that’s what people did – they adjusted and went on with their lives. Hoped for the best...
And feared the worst.
Chapter Twenty
“Save leftovers for me,” Marsh was saying as Becky went down the stairs to see if Sarah would give a nod of approval for a black top and pants. “I’m making good time. If I don’t run into traffic problems, I’ll be home after seven, so don’t hold dinner for me. If I’m not home before Cody goes to bed, give him a hug and a kiss for me. Love ya, babe.”
Coming around the corner into the kitchen, Becky heard Marsh repeat the message. Sarah was leaning over the counter, her back to Becky, listening to Marsh’s voice on the answering machine.
At the kitchen entrance, Becky stopped in mid step and held her hands over her mouth as emotion swelled up inside her. Becky waited ‘till the message stopped for the second time, then moved forward, clearing her throat. Her chest and throat felt tight. In that moment, witnessing the kind of love she’d always wanted, she was happy and at the same time sad.
Happy for Sarah. Sad for herself. She’d spent too many years pitying Sarah when she was the one whose veneer of happiness was so thin and so fake that she was surprised it took this long to crack into tiny pieces.
“Hey,” she said, and Sarah snapped around.
“Hey, back at ya. You caught me being a dork.” She made a face. “Marsh called while I was walking Cody across the street. You must’ve been in the shower. Cody’s having a sleepover with Kenny tonight.”
“Too bad Marsh won’t be home for dinner. Maybe you’ll get lucky when he gets home.”
“I plan on getting very lucky.” Sarah grinned, then her gaze raked Becky up and down. “Are you wearing that?”
Becky immediately felt defensive, and she sucked in her belly. Then let it out. Too late to fool Sarah on that. “I was.” She could hear the doubt in her voice. “What do you think?”
“All black, huh?”
“I thought of draping a scarf around my neck, but that looks matronly on me.”
“Never do that. You don’t want to take attention away from your moneymaker.”
“My what?”
“Come on, you know. You got the breasts.” Sarah gestured at Becky’s chest then slapped her own butt. “And I got the booty.”
“My booty is perfectly rounded and perfectly fine.”
“We all have our delusions.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “You need some color. Do you have any jewelry that isn’t silver or gold?”
“Jim liked silver and gold. He thought they were classy.” Becky’s cheeks heated. How did she let Jim’s tastes dictate the jewelry and clothes that she wore?
“Typical. He had a classy wife and a slutty mistress.”
Becky smiled weakly. She wasn’t quite at the stage where she could make jokes about Jim and Diana. In her mind, her jokes all tended to end in Jim getting run over by a truck or something out of a Road Runner cartoon.
She didn’t really want him dead. But the animated image made her smile.
“Classy never worked for me anyway,” she said.
“Classy is boring. Right now you look like a biker chick.”
Becky looked down at herself. She wasn’t wearing boots, but otherwise... “I could change. I have a yellow top—”
“Are you nuts? The biker chick look is hot.”
“Right. It’s on all the high fashion runways.”
“Just the smart ones.”
Becky laughed and Sarah stepped away from the counter. “I’ll get the turquoise necklace Marsh gave me for our anniversary.”
“I don’t want to wear your anniversary present.”
“Don’t be silly. And with you and Cody out of the house tonight, Marsh is going to be putty in my hands.” Heading out of the kitchen, she waggled her fingers above her head.
Becky put her hands over her eyes. “Don’t leave me with that image.”
Sarah cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West. “Worry about what you’re going to put in your hands,” she called, out of Becky’s sight. Then her steps pounded up the stairs to her bedroom.
Becky checked the clock above the sink, and excitement built up inside her. It was a date, she told herself. Just a date.
And Trey was just a man.
A really hot one. She groaned and put her head in her hands. She was acting like a schoolgirl again. When was she going to get over this? It was all new and scary – and happening faster than she’d thought. Like traveling on a jet plane when she was used to driving thirty-five miles-per-hour in her Chevy Camaro.
Sarah rattled down the steps a few minutes later and pounded into the kitchen, as usual, living life at top speed and with a whole heart.
She wouldn’t be afraid of being on a jet plane.
“Here’s the...” Sarah stared at her, her forehead puckering. “What’s the matter?”
“I was just wondering whether I was to blame for what happened.” She gestured toward the direction of her former home.
“No.”
“I can’t blame it all on Jim. My nature is to be...reserved. I was like an—”
“You didn’t have a chance.” Sarah bit out the words, her tone severe. “You were Daddy’s good little girl, and then you became Jim’s good little wife. You were practically trained from birth to be someone’s good little wife.”
“But—”
“Don’t agonize over this. Thinking you might be responsible for the carnage is one of the early stages of grief. The pain and guilt part. You should be over it.”
“The stages aren’t always in sequence,” Becky said, feeling as if she were on automatic. She knew the stages of grief. When Jim wasn’t available, parishioners had come to her with their problems. She’d counseled them and consoled them. “Sometimes we bounce around.”
“Well, bounce out of it.” Sarah put her hands on her hips and gave Becky the same fierce stare she aimed at Cody when he didn’t want to go to bed on time. “Now, get over here and let me put on the necklace.”
Becky trotted over to Sarah, feeling like the little sister instead of the big one. Once the necklace was on, she looked in the bathroom mirror and agreed that the turquoise necklace and matching earrings were the perfect touch.
The sound of a truck rolling to a stop came in through the open front windows. “It’s either your guy or mine,” Sarah said. “Since my guy’s traveling from another state, I’m guessing it’s yours.”
“He’s not mine.”
“Not yet.” Sarah grinned then hurried toward the front room before Becky could think of a comeback. Not that she could have even with more time. Her tongue seemed to have blown up, taking more room in her mouth than it should.
Oh God, she was dating...for the first time since she and Jim became a couple in high school. Derek didn’t count because she hadn’t thought it was a date. She’d told herself she was going to dinner with a friend. She’d even taken money along to pay for her half of the dinner, making sure she had extra one-dollar bills, in case it wasn’t a free meal from Derek’s website client.
Her hands grew sweaty. Following Sarah, she wiped her palms on the sides of the pants and hoped they didn’t leave damp spots. At the front window, Sarah looked around at her with a big clown smile.
“It’s your guy, big sister.”
“Keep saying that and I’m going to hit you.”
“Oooh, I’m so scared.” Looking back at the street, she added, “His cab is only a two-seater.”
“There’re just the two of us.” Becky stood next to Sarah. With a front window view, she watched Trey stride around the front of his truck to the sidewalk. He wore black jeans and a blue long-sleeved shirt tucked into his belted pants. He looked yummy in a dark chocolate way – sweet with a bite.
“You don’t get what that means,” Sarah said.
Becky was glad to transfer her attention back to Sarah. “Of course, I know what you mean. That we can’t have sex in the backseat.”
“Exactly. But you know what the storage part of the truck is?”
Becky shook her head.
Sarah’s smile widened, and Becky’s dread deepened. “A bed. They call it a bed.”
“I thought that was just for pickups.”
“Call it what you want, but I have the feeling you’re in for an interesting evening.”
Becky turned back to the window. Trey headed for the front door, striding up the sidewalk. Watching him, Becky felt her legs wobble and her heart beat faster. He glanced at the window and nodded at her and Sarah.
Her stomach twisted. She hadn’t known he could see her, otherwise she would’ve been less obvious.
Sarah didn’t turn from the window. “Looks like he’s eager to see you.”
Becky’s hands grew suddenly cold. She had a weird feeling about this evening.
The bell rang. Goldie barked. The puppies whimpered. The kitten disappeared.
Sarah grinned at Becky. “Go get ’im, girl.”
Becky crossed the three steps to the door, feeling cold on the outside and hot inside.
Life was moving fast for a woman who drove the speed limit.
She needed to learn to run faster. Starting tonight.
Chapter Twenty-one
Becky felt oddly calm talking to Trey as they ate at the Thai restaurant in Tomahawk. There were no unexplained twinkles of lights. No weird feelings. If her laughter had a nervous edge, if she fluffed up her hair like a teenager and if her skin had goose bumps, it was probably the same thing that happened to Eve when she first met Adam.
A few times they made eye contact with each other. Once his foot brushed her ankle. She was talking and her voice faltered. He smiled as if he knew he’d affected her.
When she tried to finish her sentence, she couldn’t remember what she’d been saying. All she could think of was the way his brown eyes warmed, as if there were a fire smoldering inside him.
Matching the blaze that was heating up inside her.
He picked up the conversation, and she remembered then that they’d been talking about favorite desserts. Usually a safe topic. But his husky voice wasn’t safe. And the way he looked at her – as if she were a triple chocolate fudge cake and he was a chocoholic and couldn’t wait to dig in – made her want to melt like butter in the hot sun.
She put her fork down. Not hungry for food anymore. Instead of picking up her tea, she took a slug of ice water. She needed cooling.
The waitress came and asked if they wanted dessert. Becky shook her head and asked the waitress to box her leftover seafood curry. As soon as she requested it, she wondered if that wasn’t a cool thing to do on a date. Then she realized no one had ever thought she was cool, and it was too late to worry about that now.
Whi
le the waitress was wrapping her leftovers, she hurried to the bathroom. Inside the empty one-stall bathroom, she speed-dialed Sarah. “I feel like I have a fever,” she said.
Sarah laughed. “I still get that fever with Marsh.”
Becky looked at herself in the mirror. Her face glowed. She put her hand to her cheek and felt the heat of her skin. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Then Jim must’ve been a really bad lover.”
“Or I was.”
“Jim was a selfish one,” Sarah said, her tone firm. “Him and his blow jobs.”
Becky laughed and heard the nervousness in her voice. “I’d better go. This is not what I’m used to.”
“Because it’s not boring? Or predictable? Or safe?”
“I think Trey is safe.”
“No man is safe when they’re in heat.”
“It’s the female who goes into heat.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Sarah’s voice was sympathetic. “If you don’t know men go into heat, too, Jim really was a lousy lover.”
The color in Becky’s cheeks deepened, and she turned away from her reflection.
“I’m going.”
“If you don’t come home tonight, I’ll understand,” Sarah said.
“I’ll be home.” Becky made her tone positive. She was not going to have sex with a man, especially a different man, for the second night in a row. “I’m bringing back leftovers. You can have mine.”
“Can you stop off and bring me milk? I tried to call Marsh, and he’s not answering.”
“Maybe he’s in a dead zone.” As Becky said it, a sudden chill ran down her spine. As if the air from the far north gusted over her. “I’ll get the milk. See you soon.”
When she returned to the table, she felt less flustered than when she left. She saw her bag of leftovers ready for her and money was already on a small black tray. On a white plate were two fortune cookies.
She avoided looking at the money, uncertain whether she should have offered to pay. Tonight, she was questioning everything. Dating was...odd. One minute it was exciting. The next...it was horrible. She couldn’t remember that from her teenage years. Just a crushing shyness that she tried to hide with a smile.
