“Dani, I feel like adding water to this scenario would not be in your best interest, considering your attire.”
She quickly spun around to face me, armed with the hose.She squeezed the nozzle and sprayed before I could even make a move toward her.
“You’re going to regret that!” I shouted.
She dropped the hose and ran across the yard toward the door to the house. I chased her, grabbed her arm in the doorway, spun her around, and kissed her, pressing her against the open door. My hands were all over her while she kissed me frantically. I touched her between her legs, over the thin fabric. Her knees buckled. “Alex,” she whispered near my ear.
The memory is heavy and vivid. Too vivid. I take a deep breath and shake my head, trying to get the image out. I pick the needle up off the record and move it to the third song. It’s “Crazy Love.” Just hearing the first three seconds propels me right back to that day again.
We didn’t care if the whole neighborhood saw us. We were against the wall in the kitchen, on the counter, on the floor. All the doors and windows were open. We were loud and unconscious, swept away with each other. Whatever that thing was that Dani and I felt, that passion, lust, infatuation, respect…it was there for so many years. It was unspoken and easy, but once it was gone, we could never get it back. It wasn’t newness, it wasn’t puppy love or crazy love—it was just simply being in love.
My whole body is heating up thinking about that day. I have to stop.
I close my eyes and picture Dani now, her new light hair, her ridiculing expressions, the pain and misery we’ve experienced the last few years. Reality is back. I turn everything off, set up the coffeepot for tomorrow, do the one dish I dirtied, just out of habit, and head for the bedroom.
As I lie in bed, exhausted from my time juggling the boys and work and partially moving into the apartment, I hear my phonebuzz. It’s Brian, my golfing buddy whom I had met through Dani years ago.
BRIAN: Yo! I know I told you this already, but I wanted to remind you that you’re getting me in the divorce.
It was a given. Even though he was a writer friend of Dani’s from a long time ago, they didn’t really talk anymore and were never that close to begin with. Actually, Dani didn’t like him much, thought he was arrogant, but I chalked that up to Dani not wanting me to have single friends.
ME: Better be. T-Time Saturday?
BRIAN: Yeah. Anywhere, anytime. We should go out afterward too.
What do men my age even do when they “go out”? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to show up at a club.
ME: What, like dinner?
BRIAN: Yeah. Why not? What else do you have to do?
That’s true.
ME: Sure. You plan it, I’ll be there.
I set my phone on the nightstand and turn the light off. But I can’t fall asleep. All I can think about is how Dani should dye her hair back to her natural dark brown. How beautiful she’d looked in that white see-through sundress.
16
surprise me for a change
Danielle
“Hold the door!” The elevator is closing. I’m already five minutes late. I didn’t even know this building existed on the Warner Bros. lot. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve come here. I’m off my game. A person in the elevator peeks around the closing doors as I’m running down the hall yelling, “Hold it!”
She’s hitting something frantically. “I’m pressing the button,” she whines. I shove my hand through the doors, stopping them and triggering the mechanism that opens them back up.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I say loudly. It’s Beth Zinn.Where is the hidden camera?“Have you never stopped elevator doors from closing before?” Whatever kind of cosmic glitch is happening right now, it’s not deterring my attention from the fact that she doesn’t know how to stop elevator doors from closing.
“You,” she says in a scolding tone. Her scowl is a canyon between her eyes.
“Me?” I say in the highest voice I’ve ever heard come out ofmy mouth. “Why are you in my magical dream-job opportunity meeting? Why? Why areyouhere?”
“I work here!”
We’re alone in the elevator now. I press the fourth-floor button and notice that 3 is already lit. Good, she’s not going to my meeting.
“Is that what you call it? Do not talk to me,” I say.
