SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3
I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Claire said, staring into the full-length mirror in her bedroom, glaring at her reflection. “I thought my blind-date days were behind me.”
“I can’t believe I’m sitting on the bed where you did it with my ex-boyfriend,” Naomi said, giving a little bounce on the light blue duvet.
Claire gave her a look in the mirror. “Seriously?”
“Oh, come on,” Naomi said. “How can we not joke about it? He wasn’t even good, was he?”
“Naomi!”
“What! He wasn’t! Unless it was just me . . .”
Claire reached out and grabbed a mascara wand off the dresser, stepping closer to the mirror to add another coat, before muttering, “It wasn’t just you.”
“Yes! Knew it,” Naomi said, flopping back on the bed. “Come to think of it, I don’t know why I stuck with him so long. He just seemed like the right kind of guy, you know? Nice. Pulled out chairs. Educated. Polite.”
“Yes, I’m aware. I married him,” Claire said, applying the mascara lightly along her bottom lashes.
“Right.”
Claire turned toward Naomi. “If I do this, will you tell me what’s going on with Oliver? I’m between TV shows, I need a couple to ’ship, and I’ve decided you guys are it.”
“Well, sorry, babe, you’ll have to find someone else. There’s nothing to tell.”
“But he kissed you. Twice.”
“Yes, and we agreed that it was better if we were just friends.”
Claire lifted her eyebrows.
“Okay fine . . . I freaked out after his dad called me ‘the help,’ and I had this moment of horror that we were turning into our parents, and I was going to end up on the streets like my mom . . .”
“Whoa, honey,” Claire said, coming to the bed and sitting beside her. “What?”
“I know.” Naomi pressed her fingers to her temples. “It was a real B-list movie moment, let me tell you. I took a step back, figuring I’d get my act together. But in the meantime, he realized he didn’t want someone like his fiancée—”
“Oliver’s engaged?”
“Ex-fiancée. She ditched him when she learned just how rough things were going to get with Walter, and now he’s, like, protecting himself, and his dad probably. And I get it, because Alzheimer’s is the worst, and—”
“Okay, slow down,” Claire said, pressing a hand to Naomi’s knee. “Let’s just back up a minute. What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” Naomi said on a sigh, pulling her legs up onto the bed and resting her elbows on her denim-clad knees. “I don’t know anymore.”
“Well, what did you want at the start of all this?”
“Don’t you have a date to go on?” Naomi asked grumpily.
“I’ve got time for this,” Claire said, glancing at the watch Naomi had given her a few weeks earlier. “Why did you move into the building?”
“Because I promised my mom I’d make the Cunninghams face what they did to us.”
“And have you?”
Naomi wrinkled her nose. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Walter isn’t well enough to understand any of that. And Oliver . . .”
“And Oliver?” Claire nudged patiently when Naomi broke off.
“He’s not the same,” Naomi said, fiddling with an errant string on Claire’s duvet. “He’s not like I remember.”
“Of course not,” Claire said, in a zero-BS tone. “He was ten, Naomi. Most little boys are awful at ten. Girls, too. And no disrespect to your mother, but I don’t know that it worked in your best interest to be poisoning your ears about the Cunninghams all these years. Yes, his dad did an awful thing. Oliver, too. But it was twenty years ago. Maybe it’s time to let it go, even if your mom never could. Like you said, you’re not going to get what you want from Walter. And ask yourself what you’re going to get out of it if you continue to hold it over Oliver’s head.”
“So you don’t think I should tell him?”
“Oh, no. You should definitely tell him,” Claire said.
Naomi wrinkled her nose. “I had a feeling you were going to say that.”
“Because I’m very wise.”
“You are, but you’re also going to be late,” Naomi said, reaching out and twisting Claire’s watch toward her so she could see the time.
“What are we thinking for lipstick? Neutral? Bright?”
Claire shrugged indifferently. “You picked the guy. What do you think?”
Naomi tapped her fingers against her cheek as she thought it over. Her contribution to their trio’s dating pact was a perfectly nice broker she’d gone out with a time or two, and had zero chemistry with. He’d lost his wife several years ago in a car accident, so Naomi figured he’d be respectful of Claire’s need to take it slow.
“I still can’t believe I’m going out on a date this soon after losing my husband. People will think the worst of me.”
“People don’t have to know. And besides, your husband was a cheating snake. Regardless of what happened to him, he doesn’t deserve your loyalty,” Naomi said, climbing off the bed. She was about to go into Claire’s bathroom to assess the lipstick options.
Claire studied her hands, not looking up as she spoke. “Naomi. Do you think . . . do you think . . . am I silly?”
Naomi turned back. “You’re a lot of things, Claire, but not silly.”
“I don’t mean like . . . fluff. I mean silly for thinking that I get a redo. A second chance.”
“At marriage?” Naomi asked.
Claire hesitated, then nodded.
“Of course not. I don’t believe in soul mates. Or at least, I believe we each have lots of soul mates. You’ll find someone so much better for you than Brayden.”
Claire twisted her bracelet and didn’t meet Naomi’s eyes.
“What else?” Naomi nudged.
“What if I don’t want it?”
“Any of it. Love. Relationships. Hell, I’m not even sure I miss sex. What if I’m thirty-four years old and done with that part of my life?”
“If you want to be, then you can be,” Naomi said, going to her friend and squeezing her hand. “But until you decide . . . maybe keep your options open?”
Claire lifted her head, gave a tentative smile. “Okay. I’ll try, if . . . you tell Oliver Cunningham who you really are.”
“Pass.”
“Fine. But you at least have to stop seeing Dylan, Naomi. Oliver deserves better.”
Naomi frowned. “What are you talking about? I haven’t seen him since that tepid date, and all of the TV stuff’s been handled over email.”
“But I saw him at your place. The other day when I texted, I was right by your building, asking if you were around and wanted to grab a cup of coffee. You said you were at your new office building, which sounds amazing by the way—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Naomi rolled her finger to move the conversation along. “About Dylan . . .”
“Right! Well, I’m pretty sure it was him. He was talking to an older guy. I thought at first maybe it was Oliver’s dad, but then my head exploded at the thought of one of your boyfriends chatting up the other boyfriend’s dad . . .”
Claire chirped on, oblivious to the slightly queasy feeling that had overtaken Naomi.
“Are you sure it was him?” she interrupted. “Dylan?”
“Well, now that you mentioned it, I sort of waved, and he didn’t wave back but just walked away. So maybe it wasn’t him.”
Or maybe he didn’t want anyone to know he was there.
Naomi reached for her phone. “Give me one sec, ’kay?”
With one arm wrapped around her stomach, the other holding her phone to her ear, Naomi wandered into Claire’s guest room as she waited for Dylan to pick up. She made it only about a foot into the room, it was so full of stuff. Naomi flinched when she realized it was Brayden’s stuff, heaped carelessly across the bed, thrown angrily into boxes.
She flinched again when a man who reminded her far too much of Brayden picked up the phone. “Naomi! Hi! I’ve got to say, I was pretty sure you’d decided to brush me off,” he said with a little laugh.
“Is that why you were at my apartment building?”
She didn’t bother asking if. Her gut told her that he had been there—and that it had been Walter he’d been talking to.
“Ah—” His nervous laughter gave him away. “I stopped by when I was in the neighborhood.”
Naomi rolled her eyes. “And just decided to chat up my neighbors?”
“Is that a crime?” His voice was defensive. A bit like a petulant teen who’d gotten caught smoking. Or in this case, gotten caught snooping.
She inhaled a long breath and then let it out slowly. “You figured it out.”
Dylan gave an irritated sigh. “That you currently live in the same building where your mom worked as a housekeeper? Yeah, our researchers figured that out about five minutes after that meeting with you and your Jersey Shore assistant.”
His tone was snide, and she closed her eyes, wondering how she could have been so blind. Still, she clung to hope . . .
“But you told them to back off. At that meeting . . .”
“Because I didn’t want your filtered version of what happened. I wanted what actually happened. Look, I know it sucks, but good TV happens in the messy stuff. Plus, you signed the contract.”
“Yeah?” she asked sweetly to mask the anger that was building at his betrayal. “And did you find what you were looking for?”
“No,” he admitted after a beat. “I couldn’t get into the building, and the only person who came out was this crackpot old man who didn’t know a person from a lamppost . . .”
Naomi’s gaze went white with rage.
“How do I get a new producer?” she asked, interrupting his petty rambling.
“What?”
“A new producer for Max. How do I get one?”
He gave an incredulous laugh. “You can’t be serious. What sort of self-righteous—”
“I don’t work or associate with people who stab me in the back. I’ll have my lawyer take care of it.” She hung up before he could say another word.
She closed her eyes and set a fist to her forehead, making a conscious effort to slow her breathing despite the sheer anger rolling through her.
“Everything okay?” Claire asked softly from the doorway.
Naomi dropped her hand and opened her eyes. “Actually? Yeah.”
Claire frowned. “You sounded upset. And pissed.”
“Oh, I am. But I also just had an epiphany.”
“Ooh, I love those! What kind?”
Naomi smiled. “The kind where you realize your story has a twist ending. And you had the wrong villain all along.”