“Navigating around the cars can be tricky. A little nerve-wracking at first. How about I pick you up tomorrow, and we can go for a trial ride together? I could protect you from all the big bad cars.”
I wanted to be protected from all of the big bad cars. I wanted to have an appointment to do something fun with a kind, attractive man. But with his invitation, the air in the room changed. The atoms rearranged themselves, and on some deep level, I realized that my life had just made an unalterable detour. Or maybe it had been going in that direction all along and I didn’t want to accept it. In any case, if I said yes to going on a bike ride with Joe, I was reasonably sure that that would mean that there was no turning back and that my life was changed forever.
“My life is… complicated,” I said, focusing on the plate of donut holes so that I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye.
“That’s the crazy thing about life, right? We keep trying to keep it simple, but it’s a little like turning back the tide.”
Right there and then, I almost told Joe about my plan to win back my husband. It was on the tip of my tongue to give him the whole, sordid story about Tight Tammy and my bank accounts, about the lost cruise around the world, and the truth about my car and my bedroom set. I was dying to tell him about my strategy to make my high school sweetheart love me again, about how I was eating egg whites and running, in order to be happy again.
My lips quivered from the pressure of the words struggling to get out. But like ordering kale and broccoli to compensate for my junk food bonanza, I kept the hideous details to myself. Joe didn’t press me about why my life was complicated, and he didn’t say another word about the bike ride. The television got louder, as a commercial ended and an old movie started.
“Bringing Up Babywith Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant,” I said, thankful for the change of subject. “This is one of my favorites.”
“Mine, too,” he said, standing. He dusted himself off, obviously getting ready to leave, and I didn’t want that to happen. I wasn’t sure about braving a ten-mile bike ride with him, but I was quite certain I was happier when he was around.
“Well, if you have time, maybe you’d like to sit and watch it with me. I could make popcorn.” It came out like a question, like I had doubts about my ability to microwave a bag of popcorn. I almost slapped my hands on my mouth to shove the words back in, but it was too late.
Had I just asked Joe out on a date? I had blown him off about bike riding and then invited him to sit with me to watch a movie? What was I doing? I was a married woman, and as far as I knew, Joe was a married man. I scanned his left hand for a ring, but his fingers were bare. That didn’t prove anything. As far as I knew, artists didn’t wear wedding rings. They wore skull rings or fairy rings. I looked down again at Joe’s hand. Nope. No skulls or fairies. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to disappear. I had become an adulterer. I had become Tight Tammy without the Tight. Self-hatred ate me up and shame washed over me. I was about to take the offer back when Joe surprised me and agreed to stay.
“Sounds just about perfect. Butter on the popcorn?” he asked, making my shame and self-hatred disappear just as quickly as they had appeared.
I popped the popcorn and added extra butter. I scooted my blanket and pillow aside, and we sat close together on the couch with our feet up on the coffee table. The movie was even better than I had remembered, and it felt great to laugh out loud with Joe. I had been nervous about spending so much time alone with him, but he was so easy and open that he took the awkwardness out of the room.
Afterward, I walked Joe to the door. “How about I pick you up at one tomorrow?” he asked.
“Pick me up?”
“The bike ride. I’ll take you up to my place. Half of the ride is on a protected path, away from traffic. Real pretty.”
“Uh,” I said because I couldn’t figure out what else to say.
CHAPTER 7
“Peer Pressure and Blow Jobs”
I woke up, disoriented. A glimmer of light peeked through the curtains, and my face was smooshed into my pillow with dried drool on my chin and the corners of my eyes encrusted with goo. Grabbing my phone off the coffee table, I checked the time. Six-thirty. I had slept a full six hours without moving. It was a record since my life had turned upside down. I almost felt refreshed, almost happy.
I shouldn’t have slept so well. In fact, I should have been paralyzed with anxiety. Somehow, I had agreed to go on a bike ride with a man who wasn’t my husband, and that should have sent my blood pressure through the roof. Not only that, but we were going to his place.
His place.
What didhis placemean? It could be his home or it could be his penis. It could mean both.
I was pretty surehis placewas a euphemism for monkey sex. Or at least some kind of animal sex. Or just plain old ordinary sex, which I hadn’t experienced in over a year. Even when I was having plain old ordinary sex, it was married-for-twenty-five-years kind of sex, which was pretty much not sex.
In other words, I wasn’t prepared forhis place.
I couldn’t have sex with Joe. He would probably want to do something kinky, like keep the lights on while we were naked. I couldn’t let that happen. The designer mirror that Steve had insisted on installing in our walk-in closet was witness to the horror that was happening to my butt. Terrible things were happening to my ass. It didn’t even look like an ass, anymore. It looked more and more like Nixon, to be frank. That’s why I walked backward for a week during our beach vacation last year. There was no way I was going to let anybody see back there. I definitely couldn’t let Joe see back there.
What was I thinking? Joe wasn’t going to see my butt. Joe wasn’t going to have sex with me. I was a middle-aged married woman who slept on her couch. He was a nice guy who delivered junk food to my house and wanted to teach me to ride a bike. There’s nothing sexual about a bike. It was a G-rated date. In fact, it was not a date at all. Perfectly platonic.
That’s what I kept telling myself while I folded my blanket and went upstairs to take a shower. As I let the hot water rain down on me, I got inspired to shave my legs. Afterward, they looked shiny and new and inspired me to blow dry my hair and put on mascara.
“Hello, there,” I told my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “You have mascara on.” I didn’t look half bad, not as young and thin as Tight Tammy, but passable. I only had eight days to win back my husband, but for the first time since he drove away from my life, I was truly optimistic that I could make it happen. Steve would come back to me. With twenty minutes before Hudson was due to show up, I skipped downstairs and made myself a cup of coffee with extra cream, and finished off the donut holes from the night before. Remembering my assignment, I opened the notebook. Without thinking too much, I wrote, “I want to go bike riding with Joe,” which was cheating since that was a done deal. As an afterthought, I wrote, “I want my husband back” and circled it. Hudson said writing down my goals would be difficult, but it was a piece of cake. What I wanted hadn’t changed, and now I was so motivated that I wasn’t even worried about what Hudson had in store for me today. Bring it on, handsome torturer.
He arrived right on time. I opened the door to him standing and texting on his phone. He was wearing his usual shorts and a tight t-shirt, but he was distracted by whatever was happening on his phone. I waved him in, and it took him a second to notice me.
“Do you mind if we go on an errand before our workout?” he asked, slipping his phone into his pocket. I loved how he said, “our workout,” as if he was actually working out with me instead of just standing by in case I needed CPR.
