I waited a few seconds, then a few more, as they watched me with bated breath. Then I finally . . . reached out for a cookie.
Which I never got, because Logan was so excited that he threw his hands over his head with a roar of victory, forgetting that he was holding the shortbread.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I exclaimed, cookies raining down everywhere. “You guys need some new gossip around here!”
“You have no idea how long we have watched that poor boy slouch around this town, speaking only in grunts and occasional one-word answers—”
“But you don’t care, because he’s so much fun to look at,” Chad interrupted as Logan nodded vigorously.
“He is fun to look at,” I admitted. “I’m still getting the one-word answers, although he’s opening up. Some.”
“Met the ex yet?” Chad asked.
“Yes,” I said, now leaning forward in my chair. “Let’s talk about that. What’s going on there?”
Chad and Logan told me everything they could, which wasn’t much. They’d only been married a short time when they moved into town, and they divorced within a year of that. Still appeared to be on friendly terms, based on the few times they’d been seen out in public together. And because he was as untalkative as he was nonsocial, no one knew much at all about Missy, or their past, or why they’d divorced. She lived in the next town over, was very sweet and nice and kind and quiet, and that was literally all they knew.
“So you’ve seen her?” Logan asked.
“You could say that. She came over a few Sundays back when we were there on the porch, and . . . she saw some things she probably shouldn’t have.”
“Details are not only appreciated, they are coveted, revered, and possibly typed up and framed. So go slow, and make it worth it,” Chad instructed as they sat back to listen.
“Sorry.” I liked to talk a good game in the abstract, but I rarely gave up the goods on anyone I was involved with beyond a one-nighter. And even then, names were usually changed to protect the satisfied . . .
“Okay, if you’re not going to give us any tawdry tidbits about you and the dairy god, then at least tell us more about you,” Logan said, determined to glean some information.
“Me? What do you want to know?”
“Start with how you got to be so fabulous, and go from there,” Chad said.
“Honey, we don’t have nearly enough time for how I got to be so fabulous. And even then, my story isn’t really the kind you tell over tea, for God’s sake.”
A frosty bottle of vodka quickly appeared from the freezer, along with a pitcher of Bloody Mary mix and a jar of olives.
“You’re like the cocktail Boy Scouts, always prepared.” I chuckled, watching as three drinks were quickly assembled.
“And they’ll actually let us lead a troop now!” Chad quipped, then pointed at me. “Fabulous. Go.”
“I’m fabulous now, it’s true.” I paused to take a long sip of my cocktail. “But the perfectly pulled-together awesomeness that you see here today was not always the case. Not even remotely the case in junior high.”
“We were all in bad shape back then,” Chad said.
“Not true. Roxie has shown me her yearbooks, and you were ridiculously good-looking,” I corrected.
His cheeks colored slightly. “I might have made it look easy, but believe me, there was some shit going on inside.”
“It was junior high. We all had shit going on inside, and most of us were assholes sometimes.” Logan moved closer on the couch to Chad.
“I don’t know if I was an asshole, but I sure went to school with a bunch of them.”
“Bullies?” Chad asked sympathetically.
“No, just normal kids picking on each other. Imagine this lush body”—I slid my hands down my ample frame—“on a thirteen-year-old. Now add braces, a healthy sprinkling of acne, and this smart-ass mouth.”
“Recipe for junior high disaster,” Logan said.
“Yes, one that extended all through high school. Though I had friends, I certainly didn’t have any boyfriends.”
“Me, neither,” they said in tandem, making me smile.
Then my smile faded. “I’d never kissed a boy until I met Thomas.” I closed my eyes, thinking back to the first time I saw him, how beautiful he was. I was waiting outside St. Francis, the private school I attended up on Seventy-fourth. My parents had hired a driver to pick me up after school, even though by my senior year I was tugging at that leash, wanting more freedom, like all teenagers do. I’d grown up in the city and knew the subway system like the back of my hand, but families like mine didn’t let their kids travel around unattended—so I sat in the back of a town car like everyone else in my class, to and from school.
But traffic that day had slowed everything to an almost standstill, and as I waited around the corner, I saw him across the street, coming out of the park.
Tall, and a little bit on the gangly side, he was dressed in that simple carefree way that guys can get away with sometimes, open button-down, white undershirt, jeans that sat low on his hips, scuffed sneakers. It was the hipster beanie that got me. I had a soft spot for guys in those knit caps, their hair all messy and casual and sticking out from under like they’d just come from a warm bed.
He stood on one corner, and I on the other, and just like in the movies, our eyes met. And I couldn’t pull away, even though everything about me at that time in my life was looking down, or looking away, or pulling my hair lower across my face. I rarely made eye contact with anyone for long, unless I knew them well, and even then I tended to duck and cover. But there was something about this guy; I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
And then, wonder of all wonders, he actually crossed the street. Toward me! One foot in front of the other, eyes still locked with mine, and all I was aware of was that face and my heart, which was pounding in my ears. Sometime between him crossing the street at arriving at my figurative doorstep, a furtive grin crept across his face, as though he could hardly believe it himself, that this was happening, that this was occurring, that this moment was real.
“Hi,” he said.
I gulped. He grinned and made it okay, made it seem perfectly natural that someone that looked like him would be talking to someone who looked like me. I tugged at my shirt, pulling at it in that way I was always forever tugging at it, to cover, to hide, to somehow trick myself into thinking that if I had an extra half inch of cotton Lycra blend pulled down lower on my hips I’d magically be pretty, instantly be thinner, finally be less than. Because I was always more than enough, and not in the good way.