It sounds familiar, but right now I don’t have the patience to search my memory. I threw out the invitation when Natalie said she would respond for us.
She takes in my blank face and keeps going. “Tell your mom I said yes. Saves me from having to get a hotel.” Natalie is back to being Natalie, like her question in the tub never happened.
She opens the front door and gazes at me. “I’m sorry I kept you out so late. Good thing it wasn’t on a school night.”
“You get a detention,” I say, trying for a joke, but it’s forced and not at all funny. Still, Natalie laughs because she knows she is supposed to.
I cross the apartment and pass her, praying I don’t succumb to the amazing scent coming off her skin.
“See you soon,” I say once I’m safely in the hall and no longer trapped by whatever that amazing bubble bath was. Now it smells like stale air and all the different dinners people cooked tonight. I drag in a deep breath of it in an attempt to clear my senses.
“Lunch?” she offers. She knows this is weird.
“Lunch,” I echo, then turn and leave. She closes the door before I get to the elevator.
While the elevator takes its sweet time, I look up at the ceiling and take a deep breath.
What the hell happened in there?
9
Natalie
My hands shakeas I type. Maybe I should quit chugging caffeine.
Or maybe they’re only performing a perfectly synchronized dance with what’s going on inside my body.
Why not us, Aidan?
What possessed me to say that? Not drunkenness, because I was mostly sober by then.
I haven’t heard from Aidan in three days. For us, that’s a lot of time. Too much. I’ve spooked him. We had an unspoken but mutually understood deal, and I broke it. I brought upus, as though the possibility of such even existed, and I don’t even know why.
My bad date sounds like a good place to lay the blame. Matthew Robertson was not six foot two, like his profile said. He stood two inches taller than my five foot five height. I didn’t like his hands. Sausage-like fingers and hairy knuckles flew through the air as he described his job and why he believed he was too good for it.
My first gin and tonic was meant to loosen my screwed-up shoulders.
My second was to quell my growing irritation with my date.
My third was becausewhy the hell not?I was on a bad date. My very first bad date, in fact. A third drink seemed like a good way to celebrate. I sipped from my glass, the ice fell against my upper lip, and I silently toasted two men: my date, for giving me the experience, and Henry, for making it possible in the first place.
There were no good reasons for drinks four and five. I was drunk, and that’s that. Matthew left during drink four, immediately after I told him I’m recently divorced. Apparently ape hands are acceptable to him, but a divorce is a non-starter. It was probably the tears that spooked him, but how was I supposed to not get a little misty-eyed? I’m not a robot.
Drink five hardly graces my memory. One second I was getting up to go to the bathroom, the next I was walking into the chilly night with Aidan by my side.
He’d cared for me, the same way he always does. My rock, my steady, my best friend. Heaven help me if he ever gets a girlfriend. Not being number one in his life just might kill me. I know how unfair that is. He watched me get married. He stood on the other side of Henry, a groomsman only because that was back when Henry still cared about making me happy.
Why not us, Aidan?
Regret fills me. I want to lay my head on my keyboard and let the side of my face fill in this spreadsheet.
Years of knowing Aidan has taught me that he really, truly doesn’t want anything to do with relationships. We work because I’m safe, and three nights ago, just by saying those four words, I turned myself into a risk. I want to apologize, but I don’t know how. A small part of me feels indignant and wants the question answered.Why? Why not us?
Aidan has never tried. Not once, not even that first day when I foolishly brought him home and he discovered the ugly secret lying beneath the shiny, virtuous veneer of my life.
Savannah’s voice is suddenly near my ear, her accent thick from her visit home. She arrived back in NYC three days ago, sayingy’allanddarlin’in a voice thicker than molasses. As time passes, she will slowly lose the twang, like water dripping from a slow leak. I’d hugged her tightly when she walked in the door. Her appearance made me realize I’d been lonely.
“Spin tonight?” Her whispered question tickles my ear. We work in a quiet office, and all conversation takes place in hushed tones. Savannah smacks her backside and immediately we’re the recipients of two interested gazes. “My mama is an angel, but I swear she has a little bit of devil hidden down deep. The woman fries everything and force feeds me.”
