“What?” he asks.
“No, nothing. Thank you. That’s super nice of you.” Shit, she is letting the real Paige slip into the character Paige, and she’s gonna blow it. “Really,” she adds.
As they drive and he flips through channels and sings along to a Goo Goo Dolls song from the ’90s, his arm brushes her thigh. He lets it linger there a moment. Then, as if noticing her for the first time he says, “You look really nice tonight.” She gives an involuntary little laugh, and then...
“Um, thanks.” Usually she’d sayShut upand punch him in the arm, as she is uncomfortable with compliments. Also, he could just be offering this kindness because he just realized it’s been a long time since anyone has seen her out of a housecoat and yelling at UPS guys and newsboys. It probably wasn’t a flirt. She hasn’t been as good at this as she thought.
“So do you,” she adds, painfully. She feels him staring at her as she pulls into her dark driveway in the back of the house.
“What?” she asks, shifting into Park and looking back at him, smiling.
“Eh, nothing. You’re a hot chick is all. Happy looks good on you, Paige Moretti,” he says and then clicks to release his seat belt and moves to open his door. She suddenly panics because she’s about to lose this opportunity, so she moves her hand to his inner thigh.
“You don’t have to go yet, if you don’t want,” she says, shocking herself. He seems completely shocked, too. His eyes widen, and then he starts laughing. Laughing! Fucking laughing, which really pisses her off.
“What?” she says, defensively.
“No, nothing, it’s just... You’re...”
“A hot chick,” she says, trying to joke, pulling him to her and kissing him. He kisses her back, passionately, and they grope one another across the console until he abruptly stops it and, to her horror, laughs again.
“Whoa. Okay, maybe you had a few more than you thought and we should have taken a cab,” he says. She is perfectly sober and exceedingly annoyed.
“I’m not drunk.” She starts to kiss him again, and he allows it for just a moment before pulling away and adjusting his shirt. He flips down the mirror on the back of the visor in front of him and checks his face for lipstick marks. Something he is practiced at, no doubt.
“You’re my wife’s best friend. This—I don’t know what we were thinking. This can’t happen.”
“Who’s gonna tell her?” Paige asks.
“Daymmn,” he responds and the frat-boy language coming from a fortysomething, accomplished man sounds ridiculous. She tries not to let her annoyance show.
“Well, it’s not safe. She’d find out,” he says.
A slip, Paige thinks. It seemed so easy for him to almost admit he’d do it if Paige were someone else—someone not too close to home.
“I mean, not that I would, anyway,” he adds quickly. “I know you and Grant are, you know, separated, and I guess that makes you single, but...”
Before she lets him say any other stupid thing, she cuts him off by slipping down the spaghetti straps of her cami and letting them drop, pulling down the front of the shirt and exposing her breasts.
“Oh, my God,” he says, exaggeratedly, squeezing his eyes closed and then open. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“Offer’s open is all,” she says, pulling her top back up quickly and gesturing him permission to go, keeping a modicum of integrity at least by being the one to dismiss him, but he decides to talk.
“Paige,” he says, softly, “I think you’re...” Then he stops. Holy shit. Is he about to reject her and give her a shittyI think you’re really...whateverspeech?
“You’re amazing, but I think you’re just lonely right now and you’d really regret this,” he says self-righteously. She doesn’t know if her mouth is gaping open at the shock of this, as he opens the passenger door and gives a little wave before walking across the street to his house.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she says out loud after he’s gone—the sudden silence of the radio and car creating a ringing in her ears. He slept with a prostitute wearing giant hoop earrings and animal print, and he rejected her?
She put herself on the line, she bought new makeup and suffered through a pub full of complete Neanderthals—she gave up all dignity, and she made sure she looked smoking hot doing it, and this is what he does?
Oh, no, Finn Holmon. This is not how this will go.She will not take no for an answer.
7
CORA
Moretti’s is nestled under a canopy of red alder and big-leaf maple trees. A cottony fog threads through the treetops, and it seems out of place against the seaside cliffs, but from inside it has always reminded me of an Italian restaurant out of a movie. The brick walls and featured pizza oven give it a rustic feel, but the oversize wineglasses on each table and the strings of white lights crisscrossing the ceiling give it a sophisticated air. Tonight, each table is filled with people who paid two hundred dollars a head with most of the proceeds going to the local Hunger Project.
