Claire Cook

by Seven Year Switch (v5)

  We drove past the ball field, and Billy put on the blinker. We took a right onto the dead-end street that led to the back entrance to the state park.

  Billy pulled into the wooded parking lot. He put the truck into park and turned off the engine. I pushed the release button on my seat belt and reached for my door handle.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  I turned.

  He leaned across the long black leather seat. He put one hand firmly on each of my shoulders. “I just wanted to say I’ve been thinking about you all week,” he said.

  I leaned back. The door opened. I screamed.

  He grabbed me by the wrists and yanked me back just before I fell out.

  “Whoa,” he said. “That was close.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  He was still holding my wrists.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Listen,” I said. “I can’t do this.”

  He let go of my wrists. He took off his sunglasses and placed them on the dashboard. He looked at me with his raccoon eyes. “What’s up?”

  I buried my face in my hands and shook my head back and forth. “I’m a mess. I don’t know what I want. I’m not even sure I know who I am. And I think I might have, I mean, I. I. I.”

  I looked up.

  Billy smiled. “Ay yi yi?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” He had a great smile. He was such a nice guy. Why hadn’t I remembered that before I jumped into bed with Seth?

  “Come on, it can’t be that bad.”

  “Ha,” I said.

  Billy reached over and took the keys out of the ignition. “Then how about we ride first and talk later. Things always look better once you get a few miles in.”

  He handed the bikes down to me, and then the helmets. He swung himself over the side of the truck with an easy athleticism that was hard not to admire.

  I strapped on my helmet. When I straddled my metallic red Akira, its eerie eyelike handlebars peered up at me.

  “What are you looking at?” I whispered.

  Billy let me set the pace. I rode as hard as I could along the smooth, wide surface. The shady trail was cool and comforting, a welcome relief from the bright light of day.

  The growth on either side of the path seemed greener and lusher than even a week before. I breathed in the rich smells of pine and what I thought might be honeysuckle in bloom. I pushed my pedals harder and welcomed the burning sensation in the center of my thighs.

  I had this crazy thought that maybe I could keep riding, for a few months, even years, until my life sorted itself out. Anastasia could ride with me when she wasn’t at school, or sleeping or eating or doing her homework, but the rest of the time I’d just keep pedaling solo.

  Maybe I could set up a stationary bike to make it more practical. I’d just keep pedaling and pedaling all day, like a hamster on its wheel. If I put the bike in the middle of the kitchen, it would make it even more practical, since I could just reach over and cook dinner at the same time. And answering my GGG calls would be a piece of cake. Lunch Around the World might be a little more problematic, but I’d think of something.

  My T-shirt was sticking to my back, and I could feel beads of sweat on my forehead. My lungs were starting to burn, and my right knee made a little clicking sound about every third rotation. The bicycle seat was getting harder by the minute, and the center of each cheek of my buttocks had a burning spot to match the ones in my lungs. The muscles in my forearms were feeling overworked and underappreciated.

  Billy rode up beside me. “Up to you, but you might want to take it down a notch or two,” he yelled. “Or you could regret it in the morning.”

  It wouldn’t be the first thing I’d regretted in the morning.

  I turned to him. I took a ragged, fiery breath.

  “I slept with my husband,” I yelled.

  And then I crashed.

  27

  WE WERE SITTING AT THE OUTDOOR CAFÉ, AND I HAD MY leg propped up on an extra chair. A cloth napkin wrapped around a Baggie filled with ice was resting on my knee, which felt frozen and flaming at the same time, like it might turn into Baked Alaska just in time for dessert.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t even see it,” I said.

  “Those branches come at you like that sometimes.” He leaned over and repositioned the ice before I even realized it was starting to fall off. “You fell like a pro though. The trick is to tuck your chin down, bend your arms at the elbows, and try to land on your side. And to stay relaxed. You’re much more likely to get hurt if you’re tense.”

  “Ha,” I said. “That’s the first time anyone has ever accused me of not getting hurt because I was relaxed.” I took a bite of baby greens mixed with thinly sliced pear and goat cheese, and sprinkled with balsamic vinaigrette. “Mmm, this is delicious.”

  Billy broke off another piece of bread. “Isn’t this restaurant great? It’s like being in another place and time.”

  I looked past the herb garden to the fountain in the center of the patio to the perfectly aged stucco walls surrounding us. “They did a great job with all the stonework. It looks like a country cottage somewhere in Europe.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go rent one for a month. Maybe in England or France or something.”

  I nodded. “I know. In France the cottages are called gîtes, and there are lots of them on all these picturesque little side streets. I’ve always dreamed of renting one, too, maybe in Giverny.”

  Billy took a sip of his iced coffee. “So, where do things stand between you and your ex?”

  “You mean, besides the fact that he’s not technically my ex?”

  “You’re not divorced?”

  I took a slow sip of my iced tea. “Not to my knowledge,” I said.

  Billy tilted his head. “That tends to be something one knows about.”

  When I put my glass back down on the wrought iron table, it tilted sideways. I grabbed for it. My ice fell off. I bent down to pick it up.

  I just missed crashing heads with Billy.

  “Sorry,” I said. I picked up the napkin-wrapped ice and placed it on my knee again.

  He leaned back in his chair. “Wow,” he said. “You’re fairly dangerous.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said.

  We looked at each other.

  “Here’s the thing,” Billy said. “If you can work things out with your husband, what’s not to like? Nothing beats keeping one big happy original family intact.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “except for the fact that he abandoned us. How could I ever really forgive that? And, I mean, every time he’s five minutes late, I’m going to think he’s gone again.”

  Billy shrugged. “People work through a lot of stuff.”

  I tried to read his eyes through his sunglasses. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  He laughed. “No. It’s just that one thing I’ve learned is you can’t want someone enough for both of you. You’ll get back with your husband or you won’t. Keep me posted. I mean, what else is there to say?”

  The more he talked, the more I didn’t want to lose him. “But what are you going to do in the meantime?”

  We waited while the waiter took our salads and delivered our salmon. We were so compatible we’d even ordered the same entrée.

  “Thanks,” Billy said to the waiter. He picked up his fork. “Just keep on keepin’ on, I guess. The way I look at it, life’s a marathon and not a sprint.”

  “God,” I said. “You’re so well adjusted.” I was actually starting to think it was a tiny bit irritating.

  Billy finished chewing a bite of salmon, then wiped his mouth with his napkin. He even had good table manners. “I just don’t need the drama, that’s all.” A shadow of hurt crossed his face. “My ex-wife fed on drama. Everything was always a big scene.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  We ate quietly for a while, thinking our separate thoughts.

  “Di
d you ever sleep with her?” I blurted out. “You know, after you were separated?”

  He shrugged. Then he lifted one eyebrow.

  “Oh, I’m so relieved,” I said. “I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. The whole thing just came out of nowhere.”

  “It happens,” he said.

  “It was like what was between Seth and me didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the world.”

  Billy shrugged. “You had your own little world for a lot of years.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  His eyes met mine. “And sometimes it seems safer to slide backward than to move forward.”

  “Was it, I mean, did you like sleeping with your ex?”

  He reached for his water glass. “If all it took was good sex, a marriage would be a lot easier to keep together,” he said finally. “I think eventually it comes down to choosing the life you want, and the person you want to share it with. I don’t think it’s a choice you can take lightly.”

  “Clearly, I’m not the best judge of these things,” I said. “I thought my husband and I had it all.”

  Billy picked up his fork. “Maybe you did.”

  “I don’t know. Looking back, he was kind of immature, and maybe a little bit too idealistic.”

  “Ha. I can remember saying I’d starve before I went into the family business. A few years later, spending my day with bikes was looking pretty good.”

  I swallowed a bite of perfectly cooked mustard-coated salmon. It felt good to have someone to talk to. I fished a slice of lemon out of my water with a spoon and squeezed it against the side of my glass. “I’m not sure what he’s doing since he came back. It’s a tough economy, so my guess is he grabbed the first job he found that would give him a steady paycheck. I think eventually most of us get to that point. If you ever told me I’d end up answering phone calls for a travel agency and teaching cooking classes at a community center, I never would have believed you.”

  28

  BILLY HELD THE TRUCK DOOR OPEN FOR ME AND PUT HIS hand under my elbow. “Can you make it?” he asked.

  I turned to face him and stepped up with the heel of my good foot to sit sideways on the edge of the long leather seat. I took a moment to bend and straighten my knee a few times. “It actually feels pretty good,” I said.

  “RICE right away usually does it,” Billy said.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Rest, ice, compression, and elevation.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You really know your stuff.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve logged a lot of long, hard hours in the bike biz.”

  I opened my eyes wide. “Right,” I said. “Late morning bike rides, leisurely lunches in courtyard cafés…Sounds like the life to me.”

  He grinned. “Especially if you factor out getting up at four-thirty so I could finish what I had to do first. But, yeah, it’s a nice life, no question about that.”

  He looked at his watch, then held out his wrist to me. “How’re you doing for time?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll beat the bus with minutes to spare.” I put my hand on his forearm. “Thanks for the great lunch. And company.”

  We looked at each other. He leaned down to kiss me on the cheek.

  I turned my head.

  “Shit,” I said when we finished kissing. I wasn’t sure if I meant shit that I couldn’t keep kissing Billy all day or shit that I could feel my life getting complicated.

  “Don’t blame me,” he said. He traced one finger along my cheek, then reached down and lifted my legs into the truck. It was a chivalrous gesture somehow, maybe a suggestion of being carried over some distant threshold.

  I hoped he was busy enough closing my door that he didn’t hear me sigh.

  Billy was quiet as we drove along the pretty, tree-lined streets. I was quiet, too, because I was concentrating on trying not to think. I mean, what was the point? What ever happened would happen, and in the meantime, the best thing to do was to stay in the moment. Or maybe to drift back just a little, to the moment before the moment, so I could relive that kiss. If only I could freeze time right there, knowing I could go back and push Play again whenever I was ready.

  As we turned onto my street, I saw Seth’s car in my driveway. My heart started beating like crazy. I was pretty sure I actually gulped.

  My mind raced, trying to catch up with my heart. I wondered if I could get away with asking Billy to stop and drop me off right here. Maybe I could say I needed to walk off my lunch, or give my knee a post-RICE workout.

  It was a really short street. “Um,” I said.

  Billy pulled into my driveway. Seth was leaning over my new railings. He looked up. He was holding a paintbrush and a can of paint.

  Billy put the truck into park.

  “Wow,” I said. “What a coincidence. My ex—”

  Billy opened the truck door.

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “I can let myself out.”

  He pushed the door open and climbed out. Seth placed the brush in the paint can and put it down on the ground. He wiped his hands on his jeans. I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, Billy and Seth were shaking hands. Then they went in for a guy hug, still holding the handshake but coming together for a quick mutual pat on the back. The shake made sense, but the guy hug seemed awfully civilized, given the circumstances.

  But wait.

  What were the circumstances? For all Billy knew, Seth was just the painter. I mean, how many guys go right up and hug the painter?

  There didn’t seem to be a choice, so I opened my door and climbed out. My knee didn’t really hurt anymore, but I had to fight the urge to limp anyway, like a wild animal who knows that if it acts injured, it might stand a better chance of surviving an attack.

  Seth turned to me with a big smile on his face. Billy’s face was a little bit harder to read.

  “What a small world,” Seth said.

  “How small?” I said.

  “You know that go-between I was telling you about?” Billy said.

  I looked at Seth. I looked at Billy.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Seth said. “Isn’t it great? I’ve started consulting for a few companies, including one of the fair trade companies I dealt with from West Africa, but wow, the chance to go to Japan again is pretty amazing. How do you two know each other anyway?”

  It was immature. It was beneath me. I did it anyway.

  “I hate you both,” I said. And then I limped my way into the house.

  HERE’S THE THING ABOUT LIFE: men have all the breaks. I spend the last seven years trying to be a good mom, and where does it get me? Home. Home while my ex-husband, who was probably technically not even an ex, and my possible boyfriend-to-be go away together. Home with my daughter, who even though I loved her more than life itself, would spend the whole time they were off gallivanting around Japan wishing her father was here and I wasn’t.

  What gave Seth the right to waltz right in, spend a little time with Anastasia and me, then abandon us again to jet off to Japan? It was an easy answer: he was a penis-carrying member of the official worldwide male club, and the perks meant he got all the travel I longed for.

  I tried to picture Seth and Billy spending, what, ten days together? Bonding while sharing stories about me over a few drinks. I shivered at the thought. After comparing notes, they’d turn into best friends, and here I’d sit, odd woman out.

  I must have dozed off after I finished crying, because a knock on the door jolted me awake.

  “Mom?” Anastasia’s voice said from the other side of the door.

  “Hi, honey,” I said in a fake cheery voice.

  “Dad wants to know if you want to come out and have some dinner.”

  “No thanks,” I said, as if this were a perfectly ordinary situation. “I had a late lunch.”

  There was silence on the other side of the door.

  “I’m just going to read for a while, honey, and give you some time to
hang out with your dad, okay?”

  The doorknob turned. I wiggled into a sitting position and fluffed up my hair fast. I hoped my eyes weren’t so puffy they’d scare Anastasia.

  She poked her head in and reached up to adjust her pink headband. “You don’t have a book,” she said. “Or a magazine.”

  “I was just trying to decide what to read. How was school?”

  “Okay. Matthew gave Mitchell a black eye so we only got a short recess.”

  “Men,” I said.

  Anastasia reached for her headband again. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I pulled a pillow out from behind me and hugged it. “Sorry I didn’t meet your bus today, honey.”

  “That’s okay. Dad was there.” Anastasia started disappearing back into the hallway.

  “What’s for dinner?” I asked, just to keep her there a little longer.

  Her head came back in and her hazel eyes met mine.

  “Sushi. Dad’s going to Japan, so we’re practicing. He’s going to bring me video games and some Japanese T-shirts. And next time he says I can go with him.”

  I patted the bed beside me. “Sit for a minute.”

  “I can’t,” Anastasia said. “I have to go check on my new hamster.”

  “What?” I said, but my daughter was already gone.

  I followed her out to the kitchen. My entire body was getting stiffer by the minute, but I was too furious to care.

  Seth was rolling rice, shredded carrots, and cucumber slices into rectangles of seaweed at my kitchen counter. “Hey,” he said, without quite looking up.

  “You bought her a hamster without discussing it with me first?” I said.

  “He’s allowed to do that,” Anastasia said.

  Seth kept rolling.

  “Her name is Cammy,” Anastasia said. “I’ll take care of her. You won’t have to do anything.”

  “She wanted a cat,” Seth finally said. “This was a compromise.”

  I willed my stiff knees to bend and aimed my sore butt at one of the kitchen chairs. “Sit,” I said once I’d landed.

  They sat.

  I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Okay, here’s the thing. From now on, any decision that impacts all three of us is first discussed by the two grown-ups in the family.”