Angie could feel her mother’s eyes on her as she pushed her eggs around her plate with a fork. She’d been sleeping in her parents’ guest room for three nights—though she’d gotten very little sleep. Giving no explanation, she had showed up on their doorstep and asked if she could stay for a while. Of course they said yes and, god love them, they didn’t pry. They knew Angie would come to them when she was ready, as she’d done since she was a child.
“You know,” her mother said over the rim of her coffee cup, “just because you’re pushing your food around, that doesn’t mean I don’t notice that you’re eating none of it. I’m a mom. Nothing escapes my attention.”
Angie smiled in spite of her mood. “Don’t I know it.”
Alice sipped her coffee.
And Angie knew it was time to tell her.
The story poured out of her like water, along with all the things she’d put together after learning the details. Jillian’s nights out with “the girls,” which Angie now wondered if it was more like “the girl,” her distance and silence lately, the haunted look in her eyes, the weight loss, their fight, the cruel things they said to each other. All of it. Her eyes welled up a couple of times, but she managed to hold it together in front of her mom, even though the combination of remembering, her stress, and the fact that she hadn’t eaten more than a bite of food in the past three days threatened to push her over the edge. She kept a grip on her emotions and took a large gulp of coffee when she finished, wincing as the hot acidity hit her empty stomach.
Alice took it all in, nodding at times, cocking her head at others, but never interrupting. When Angie was finished, silence ruled the kitchen for several long moments as Alice absorbed her daughter’s words. Angie knew she was rolling all the information around in her head. It was how her mother dealt with things. She ingested all the material presented to her, took time to examine it from all angles, and then gave her carefully structured opinion. This was why it was better to talk to Alice than Joe about such matters. Joe was all emotion. He’d have started cursing Jillian after Angie’s second sentence, and that’s not what she needed. Not yet, anyway.
Angie could tell when Alice was ready to talk because she set her coffee down and folded her hands on the table in front of her.
“Have you talked to Jillian since you’ve been here?” she asked.
Angie shook her head. “She’s called my cell and texted about a hundred times. I told her I needed some time.”
“She’s called here a couple times, but always hung up. Her number’s been on the caller ID.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“You didn’t tell me anything,” Alice countered, though gently. Angie grimaced. “I wanted all the information before I got involved in any way.” Alice wet her lips. “It was just those couple weeks?”
Angie’s head snapped up. “What do you mean ‘just those couple weeks’? She slept with somebody else, Ma. I think it’s a little more complicated than ‘just those couple weeks.’”
“But she ended it pretty quickly, and then she told you about it.”
“What?” Angie was incredulous.
Alice made a calming gesture with her hands. “Calm down, Angelina. I’m simply thinking out loud. All right?”
“Fine.”
“Has anything like this happened before?”
Angie shook her head. “I don’t think so. Though who knows? It’s not like I saw this coming. I mean, I knew something was bothering her, but I never expected this.” She swallowed hard, disguised her disgust by sipping her coffee.
“Do you think she’s sorry?” Angie gave her a look and Alice raised her eyebrows in a gesture of what?.
Angie flashed to Jillian’s face that last time. She had been in anguish. Much as Angie wanted to not care, to say that it was the least she deserved for what she’d done, it was hard. She answered her mother honestly. “I think she’s devastated by what she’s done. And yes, I think she’s sorry.”
“Do you still love her?”
It was a question Angie had asked herself many, many times over the past seventy-two hours, and despite her hurt and her anger, she always came back to the same answer: yes. With all her stomped-upon, aching heart, yes. Angie nodded grudgingly.
“All right,” Alice said, sitting up straight with determination. “Good. Then we need to figure out how you go about fixing things.”
Angie stared at her, trying to keep her anger at bay. “Just like that? You think it’s that simple?”
Alice’s voice took on a stern tone, the tone she used when she was pulling rank and being Mom. “No, Angelina, I don’t think it’s simple at all. I think it’s very, very complicated. And I am not happy with your partner at this point in time. Not happy at all. Now. You two have been together how long?”
“Sixteen years.”
Alice blinked as if momentarily taken aback. “Has it been that long?” At Angie’s nod, she added, “Wow. Time really does fly, doesn’t it?” Pulling herself back to the conversation at hand, she continued. “All right. So, you’ve been together for sixteen years. Do you want to flush those sixteen years down the toilet?”
“Of course not, but I’m not the one who—”
Alice cut her off with an upheld hand. “No, we’re not laying blame right now. We’re answering questions. Important questions. Do you want to flush the past sixteen years down the toilet? Yes or no?”
“No.”
“Good. Are you willing to listen to Jillian with an open mind?” At Angie’s silence, she studied her daughter. “What?”
“She blames me. She says I didn’t pay enough attention to her.”
“Did you?”
Resentment began to bubble up. “Seriously, Ma? I am not the one who went looking for somebody else, and I can’t believe you’re going to side with her and make her straying my fault. She made the mistake, not me.”
“That’s right.” Alice slapped a hand on the table and leaned toward her daughter. “She made a mistake. She made a mistake. I’m not saying it was right. I am certainly not excusing her. But we all make mistakes, and if the person who loves us the most in the world won’t give us a chance to explain—and hopefully forgive us—who will?”
Angie scoffed. “So I’m supposed to just go to her all ‘Okay, so you took off your clothes for somebody besides me. No biggie. All is forgiven. Let’s go out to eat’?”
Alice tilted her head and her expression showed just how ridiculous she thought her daughter was being. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, if there’s a reason that Jillian made her mistake, you’d better deal with it if you have any shot of moving forward together.”
“So I take the blame?”
Alice sighed. “Did I say that?”
“You said maybe there’s a reason Jillian made a mistake.”
“Is there?”
Angie’s eyes filled. “This is so unfair,” she said softly. “I didn’t do anything.”
Reaching across the table, Alice closed her hand over her daughter’s. “Oh, sweetie, I know. I know you didn’t. My point is that people screw up. We do stupid things. We do things we immediately regret. And somebody like Jillian is going to beat herself up over it for years, mark my words. I know it, and you know it. So if you don’t forgive her and she can’t forgive herself, where’s she going? Where are the two of you going together? That’s the big question for you: can you forgive her?”
“I don’t know,” Angie whispered.
This was extra stress that Jillian feared she was ill-equipped to handle, but she had no choice. She sat in Starbucks across the table from Shay and blinked at her as she ran possible responses to Shay’s question through her brain in an attempt to come up with a good lie.
You look like death warmed over. What the hell is going on, Jill? Is everything okay? Are you okay?
She’d never lied to Shay. Their friendship was too important. She was always upfront with Shay, even when she didn’t want to be; that’s why she was sitting here instead of thinking of a little white lie that would’ve gotten her out of this meeting. At the same time, Jillian thought maybe it would be good to talk to somebody. She’d been rattling around the house alone for days. Maybe talking to somebody who knew her well would help. But this situation, this was not going to sit well with Shay. How could it possibly seem nearly as hard to tell her what had happened as it had been to tell Angie?
“Jillian.” Shay’s voice was firm, her eyes lined with concern. She reached across the small, round table and covered Jillian’s hands with her own. “You’re scaring me. Talk to me.”
“I cheated on Angie.” It just came blurting out of her mouth. Not the way she’d intended to present it, but there it was, and she was slightly relieved.
Shay stared at her, her mouth working, but no sound coming out. She let go of Jillian’s hands and sat back in her chair as if all her energy had suddenly left her body. Slowly, she began to shake her head from side to side, disbelief, shock, and disappointment all clearly written on her face.
Jillian swallowed, wondered momentarily if she might get sick. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
“Wow.” Jillian could see that Shay had more to say, but she just uttered that one word and continued to shake her head, as if doing so would change the words Jillian had said.
“It was a mistake,” Jillian said. “It was a mistake. It didn’t last long, and I told Angie about it right away. She’s at her parents’ for a little bit. I’m hoping . . .” She let her voice trail off, suddenly understanding that no explanation was going to remove that look from Shay’s eyes. That look of judgment. That look of disillusionment. That look of disgust. “Shay, please.”
“How could you?” Shay said, her voice low. “You saw what I went through. You know how awful it was. How could you do that to Angie?”
Jillian wet her lips, focused on the table top. “I was just…weak. She looked at me like I was gorgeous, Shay, and I was weak. It didn’t mean anything; I never even touched her, it was always her touching me. I just…I melted. It had been so long since I felt like that. I couldn’t help it. It just happened.”
“Bullshit.” Shay spat the word at her, interrupting her with a sneer. “That is a giant load of bullshit. Cheating doesn’t ‘happen.’” She made air quotes to stress her sarcasm. “It didn’t ‘happen,’ Jillian. You did it. You. You did it. You are responsible. All the pain and anguish Angie is going through right now? You caused it.”
Jillian swallowed, no response forthcoming. Really, what could she say? She didn’t think she was making excuses for what had happened, it wasn’t her intention, but maybe that’s exactly what she was doing.
“I can’t believe you’d do that to somebody you profess to love.”
“I do love her.” Jillian was feeling defensive, and she didn’t want that, didn’t feel she had the right to it. She’d expected disappointment from Shay, but not this kind of anger. It squeezed her heart. “I do.”
“Right,” Shay snorted. “I can see that.” She stood suddenly. “You know what? I can’t even look at you right now.”
“Shay . . .” Jillian watched as Shay gathered her things and left the building, not looking back, not saying goodbye. Jillian’s eyes filled with tears. Two best friends in one week: gone. It was no less than she deserved. Right?
She wanted to lay her head down on the table and cry.
For the past few evenings, Jillian had wandered the house looking at photos of family and souvenirs from trips she and Angie had taken. The hallway from the foyer was covered with framed pictures. Jillian’s mother. Angie’s parents. The four Righetti kids before they hit their teens. Dom, Pam, and their daughter Gia just weeks after her birth. The five Righetti nieces and nephews. When Jillian had met Angie, there were no nieces or nephews. Now Angie’s brothers had five kids between them and Jillian’s brother Brian had two. Seven new lives had come into being while Jillian and Angie were together. It amazed her. And the thought of losing some of them, of losing the entire Righetti clan, squeezed her heart painfully.
She sat down on the living room floor with the big glass jar of corks that Angie had been collecting since they first got together. Some of the events had completely slipped her mind, and when she read them off—moving days, promotions, births, finished projects, trips—she was both laughing and crying over the life they had together.
God, she was stupid. Worse: she was a walking cliché. How could she have just given in like that? When had she completely lost her mind? Lindsey had texted her a few times to see how things were going, but Jillian knew talking to her about it would be yet another mistake in the long line she’d made. She deleted every text and even erased Lindsey from her contacts. She didn’t see any other option, and a part of her felt terrible about that. A bigger part of her was relieved beyond words.
The text from Angie late last night had come as a surprise.
I’m ready to talk. Are you?
Jillian was so thrilled to have any contact at all that she gave a happy little squeal, and sprang up out of bed as if yanked by invisible strings.
Yes! she typed back. Can I call you?
No. 2morrow. Starbucks on Jefferson at 9am.
Tamping down the disappointment and trying to look on the bright side, she answered. I’ll be there.
OK.
After a minute or two went by with nothing further, Jillian couldn’t help herself. Angie, I’m so sorry. I just want you to know that. I was stupid and I’m so, so sorry. And I miss you.
Jillian paced around the room as she waited for a response. The ticking of the clock in the hallway seemed inordinately loud as she waited for a text notification. Just when she was sure Angie wasn’t going to answer, the phone beeped in her hand.
2morrow. We’ll talk.
It had taken every ounce of strength she had not to call Angie.
She sat in Starbucks, at 8:40, nursing a Chai that churned and bubbled like sour milk in her very empty stomach. Eating had been next to impossible—when she made the attempt, she felt nauseous—and the irony was not lost on her that the only way she’d been able to lose any weight in her adult life was to have Angie move out on her. Jen, the cute barista, gave her the usual flirty wink when Jillian paid for her Chai, and the thought of Angie seeing anything even close to that filled Jillian with a sense of dread and worry that made her stomach give a sour churn. She took a seat at the table farthest from the counter, hoping to avoid Jen’s gaze all together, and waited.
When she saw Angie walking across the parking lot, Jillian was immediately filled with a longing and a love so deep and intense it brought tears to her eyes. Those long legs that made for long, purposeful strides. All that dark hair blowing in the wind. The dark, soulful eyes—accented by shadowy half-circles underneath. Apparently, Angie was getting as little sleep as she was. Jillian wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.
Entering the store, Angie caught her eyes, then gestured to the counter, indicating she’d get her coffee and be right there. As Angie stood in line, Jillian’s stomach increased its roiling speed, forcing her to set down her Chai and swallow down a small bit of bile that had worked its way up. She couldn’t remember being quite so nervous ever before. She focused on breathing, just breathing, and waited.
Angie arrived with her latte and sat.
“Hi,” Jillian said.
“Hey,” Angie replied, and then looked away. She fiddled with her cup, the lid to her cup, the sleeve on her cup. She gazed out the window. Jillian watched, a mixture of sadness, guilt, and sympathy coursing through her.
Finally, Jillian cleared her throat and ventured a start to the conversation. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better,” Angie said, edgy.
With a nod, Jillian said, “I know. I know, and I’m so sorry.”
“Do you love her?”
The question was quiet, simple, and such a surprise that Jillian just blinked at Angie for several seconds. “What?”
“Lindsey. Are you in love with her?” Angie stared at her coffee as if she was afraid to look at Jillian when the answer came.
“No.” Jillian didn’t hesitate, and put as much strength, as much finality into that one word as she could. “Angie. Look at me.” Angie hesitated, but finally looked up, her eyes filled with tears. “No,” Jillian said again. “No, I am not in love with Lindsey. I do not love Lindsey. I never loved Lindsey. I love you.”
With a scoff, Angie looked away, swiped at her eyes like an embarrassed twelve-year-old.
“Angie.” Jillian waited until Angie looked at her again, then she repeated herself. “I. Love. You. Nobody else. You.”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Angie said quietly.
“I know. I know. I fucked up. I fucked up badly, and I’m so sorry about that. I will tell you every single day for the rest of my life how sorry I am if that’s what it takes to get you to believe me. I swear to god.”
Angie blew on her coffee, took a sip. Her brows furrowed as she rolled the words around in her head. Then she looked at Jillian and asked simply, “Why?”
“Why?” Jillian asked.
“Yeah. Why? Why did it happen? What pulled you so far away from me that you felt the need to sleep with somebody else?”
The question wasn’t a surprise. It made perfect sense, plus she’d asked it already, that night before she left. She had been asking herself the same thing for the past seven days, since Angie had walked out. And the three weeks before that, since Lindsey had had sex with her in her own classroom, since she’d let Lindsey do that. And while she didn’t have a definitive answer—mostly because there wasn’t one—she had an idea.
Jillian inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, wrapped her hands around her cup, and began to speak. “I don’t think it was about you at all. Well, maybe a little bit, but mostly, I think it’s about me.” Holding up a hand quickly, she added, “And I know that sounds lame and it’s not an excuse. Just a fact.” She rolled her lips in and wet them while she looked for the right words. “I haven’t been feeling great about myself lately.”
“Lately?”
“Like, for the past couple of years.”
Surprise was clear on Angie’s face. “Seriously? Why?”
With a half-shrug, Jillian tried to explain. “I don’t know. I’m starting to feel older. I’m starting to feel like I look older.”
“Jill, you’re only thirty-eight.”
“I know. But I remember my mom telling me what a hard time she had when she was closing in on forty. I think I’m going through the same thing, and it’s messed with my head.” God, I wish she was here, Jillian thought.
“So . . . you needed to have a fling to make yourself feel younger?” The sarcasm in Angie’s voice was not lost on her.
“No.” Jillian let the barb go, knowing it was deserved. “But . . .” She sipped some of her Chai, chewed on the inside of her lip.
“But what?”
“But . . .” Jesus, she thought. This was not easy to say. She’d rehearsed it a hundred times last night and this morning, but it still sounded ridiculous in her head. She decided on a slightly different tack. “You know how I’ve always loved it when you tell me I’m beautiful or you think I’m pretty or sexy or whatever?”
Angie nodded.
“You stopped doing that.”
Furrowing her brows, Angie just looked at her.
“A long time ago. You stopped. You started working so much. You stopped complimenting me. Our sex life practically disappeared altogether.” Though the warning look on Angie’s face made her pause, Jillian pushed on. “I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s true. The combination of that and the crappy way I feel about myself was . . . not good.”
“So because my work got hectic, and I stopped telling you you’re pretty, you went and fucked somebody else? This is my fault?”
Fighting to stay calm in the face of Angie’s anger, Jillian said quietly, “I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t get enough attention or enough sex from me. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Okay, that’s not what I’m saying. And stop making me sound like an idiot. I do realize that there’s more to a relationship than sex, Angie. I also realize that there’s a difference between sex and intimacy—and lately, we’ve had neither.”
Silence fell as they each absorbed what Jillian had said. The fact that Angie didn’t get up and storm out was something, at least.
“Look,” Jillian said, lowering her voice and choosing her words carefully. “None of this is an excuse. Like I said, I fucked up. I know that, and I will regret it for the rest of my life. I take responsibility for this mess. I am to blame. But you asked me why, and I’m giving you the best answer I can. It’s vague, I know, because I honestly don’t understand the whole of it.” She reached across the table and grabbed Angie’s hand, thrilled when she didn’t pull away. “I do know that you and I are meant to be together. I am supposed to be with you. You are supposed to be with me. And my stupid mistake doesn’t change that. I love you, Angelina. I love you. Tell me what I can do to fix this.” Tears filled her eyes, and her throat tightened, but she choked through and continued. “I need to fix this. I’m a mess. You’re a mess. And I miss you so much. The house isn’t home without you there. Tell me what to do. Please. Tell me what to do.”
Again, they sat quietly holding hands across the small table. Finally, Angie spoke up.
“You can’t see her again. You can’t be her friend.”
Jillian nodded, not surprised. “Okay.”
Angie looked up at her. “I mean it. You’ll see her at work. That’s bad enough. But you can’t go out with her. Even if others are there.”
Jillian nodded again. “Okay.”
As if realizing her request might be overkill, she amended, “I mean, if there’s a party or something, that’s okay I guess.”
“We can play it by ear,” Jillian suggested, trying not to show too much joy over the fact that she might be getting a chance to have her life back. “I’ll always let you know the situation, and you can decide what’s okay.”
With one nod, Angie said, “Okay.”
They looked at each other, still holding hands. Jillian said, “So, will you come home?”
Angie swallowed hard, looked out the window at the traffic. When she looked back, she said, “It’s not magically better, Jillian. You know that, right?”
“I know that. Believe me, I know that.”
“Okay,” Angie said finally. “Then yes. I’ll be home tonight.”
Jillian wanted to laugh in delight and clap her hands together in happiness. She wanted to jump up and dance around the Starbucks. She wanted to grab Angie’s face across the table and kiss her. Hard. She wanted to do all these things at once. But instead, she kept her cool, grinned, squeezed Angie’s hand, and said simply, “Good.”
Angie knocked softly on the doorjamb to Keith’s office. When he looked up from his desk, she asked, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure. Come on in. Have a seat.”
She did so and closed the door behind her, which caused him to raise an eyebrow.
Keith Muldoon was a big man. At six feet tall with broad shoulders and the build of a defensive tackle, he had a personality to match: big. If you liked him, he was gregarious and commanded your attention. If you didn’t like him, he could suck all the air out of the room. His suits were always impeccable, today’s a black pinstripe. The jacket was hanging on a coat rack in the corner of his huge office, but his white dress shirt and red tie still looked freshly pressed, even at this late-afternoon hour. Angie had never really liked Muldoon, but over the years, her grudging respect for him had multiplied. The man could sell ice to Eskimos, he was that good. He had no college education, but he was better at his job and made more money at it than a large percentage of the college-educated people she knew, and that was cause for admiration.
Angie sat in one of the two wooden-armed chairs across from Muldoon’s desk and placed a closed manila folder in front of her. He sset down his pen, folded his hands on the papers, and gave her his full attention. She took a deep, fortifying breath and plunged in.
“I don’t think you’re happy here since Jeremy took over.”
Muldoon neither confirmed nor denied her statement. He simply waited for her to continue.
“Neither am I. I’ve been doing a lot of research and a lot of studying.” She told him about all the reading and exploration she’d done over the past months, poured it all out. She told him some of the ideas she’d had for the company, how she’d presented them to Guelli, only to have him turn them over to Jeremy, who’d pretty much taken them on as his own. She talked and talked for what felt like hours. Muldoon sat quietly, listened intently, never interrupting. “The bottom line here, Keith, is that you’re the most amazing salesperson I know. We’ve been in this business for a long time; I don’t know that either of us feels like we can change horses this late in the race. However.” She stopped, leaned forward with her forearms on his desk, and looked him dead in the eye. “I think we’d make a great team.”
Muldoon cocked his head, the first sign at all that his interest was piqued by her words. He looked at her for what felt like a very long while before he made a rolling motion with his hand and sat back more comfortably in his big leather chair. “Tell me more.”
Trying to keep her grin tempered, she opened the manila folder and began to outline her idea.