“So who all is going to be at this party?” Alexa asked him on Sunday as they ate a late breakfast on the couch. She’d convinced him to make her pancakes this time. And not to toot his own horn, but they turned out pretty great.
“A bunch of people you’ve probably heard me talk about—the guys from my basketball league; Carlos; Robin and Lucy, those girls you met last night; lots of other people I don’t know.” He paused. “Some of the dudes from my basketball league who’ll be there are black. FYI.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand.
“Thanks for letting me know.” She took another sip of coffee. “Whose party is it again?”
“Heather’s. She’s an old friend of mine. She’s got a great house, right on the beach.”
He should probably mention that he’d dated her, just so she wouldn’t find out from someone else.
“Uh, Heather and I used to sort of date, but that was a long time ago.”
“Oh.” She twisted a finger around a lock of her hair. “Okay.” She looked down at her half-eaten pancakes, so he couldn’t see her face. “What time should we go?”
Did she not care that he’d dated Heather? It’s not like he wanted her to be all jealous about it. Okay, maybe just a little jealous would be nice.
“I kind of wanted to go on the early side, since I’m on call tonight. So, like, four or five?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and drew her knees up against her chest.
“Maybe”—he wrapped his arms around her, knees included—“I can go for another run, and it can end like it did yesterday?”
“Mmmm.” She turned her head back toward him, and he claimed her mouth. “You taste like syrup,” she said, when they ended the kiss.
“If you like that, I have plenty more syrup, you know. There are many things we can do with it that don’t involve pancakes.”
She turned more fully around.
“Hmmm, that sounds interesting. Waffles, you mean? Do you have a waffle iron?”
He shook his head.
“Biscuits? My mom always puts syrup on biscuits.”
He ran his hand down that deep V of his flannel robe that she loved to wear. And that he loved for her to wear.
“Nope,” he said, his hand lingering at her left breast.
“Hmmm.” She wiggled her shoulder, and the robe fell. “Then I don’t know. Tell me.”
He leaned forward to whisper in her ear as his hands roamed over her body.
He didn’t have time for a run before the party.
• • •
Alexa realized after thirty seconds at Heather’s party that she was out of her element. Maybe every woman at the party wasn’t blond, but wow, did it sure look like it. And not just blond, but that perfect honey blond with golden highlights, all either up in swinging ponytails or down in flowing waves, in utter defiance of the humid air from the coast.
And it wasn’t just the hair. They were all wearing those barely there dresses—the kind that you couldn’t wear a bra with, the kind that Alexa always walked right by in the store—and their bodies looked perfect in them. She looked down at herself in the forgiving red and white polka-dot A-line dress she’d felt cute in before leaving Drew’s apartment and sighed.
She saw at a glance she was the only black person there, but at least she knew more would show up eventually. She squeezed Drew’s hand, grateful again to him for thinking to tell her that. He smiled down at her.
“Oh great, there’s Heather,” Drew said.
Oh great. His ex.
She had originally been glad he’d told her that tidbit of information before they’d arrived at the party. Way better than if she found out from another guest, or even worse, from Heather herself. But right now, as tall, thin, blond Heather turned to greet her, she wished she didn’t know.
“Heather, this is Alexa,” Drew was saying. Alexa noticed that he didn’t hesitate this time. She wasn’t even “my . . .” today, huh? “Alexa, Heather. We brought beer.”
“Drew, good to see you!” Heather hugged first him, then Alexa. Given no choice in the matter, Alexa returned the hug. “Nice to meet you! Beer goes in the kitchen. Go outside and join the party. I’ve got lots of beer and sangria, and the grills are all going.”
They joined a group of people outside, Drew with a beer and Alexa with a glass of sangria. She almost coughed when she took a sip; there was a lot more alcohol in that sangria than she’d been expecting. Drew introduced her to more people, and she tried to deal with this party the way she would at work: smile, make small talk, ask questions, get people talking about themselves. Like the way she’d done at the wedding.
The thing was, right now she was too anxious to be professional Alexa. When she was at work events, she was confident. There, she knew who she was and what she was doing. The wedding had been a lark, with a guy she barely knew, where she was just playing a role. Here, none of those things were true. She felt uncertain. Off-kilter. She took another sip of sangria and plastered a smile on her face.
She fell back on the time-honored way to befriend strange women: compliments.
“I love your sandals!” she said to a woman named Emma. At least she was strawberry blond.
“Thanks!” Emma said. Like lobbing a tennis ball back to Alexa, she returned the compliment. “Great lipstick! I always wish I could wear red lipstick, but with this hair, I feel like it always clashes.”
“Oh no, I think there’s a perfect red lipstick for everyone; it just takes trial and error. You need plenty of time at Sephora and a friend you trust.”
They talked about makeup for a while longer. Either the conversation or the glass of sangria relaxed Alexa enough so that she stopped scanning the party for someone with brown skin or an errant eyebrow hair or even a tiny roll of fat.
She walked over to refill her glass of sangria. A guy Drew had just introduced her to followed her.
“Alexa, right? Having fun so far?” He put an arm around her. Lots of huggers at this party.
“Yeah, it’s great.” She stepped to the side so she could pour her drink. “Mike, right?”
“Yeah, so smart of you to remember.” Mike liked to stand close, didn’t he? “So Alexa, where are you from?”
She took a sip of her sangria and a half step backward.
“Berkeley. I’m just down here for the weekend.”
Oh look, he’d moved closer.
“You live in Berkeley? That’s cool. But I meant, like, where are you really from?”
Now she knew where this was going. Like she couldn’t “really” be from California? Why did people always try to ask her about her ethnicity in the clumsiest of all possible ways? Getting this question, especially in this way, always made her feel like such an object of curiosity. Today it made her feel like even more of an Other in this party full of golden-haired beauty queens.
Now she was doubly annoyed with Mr. Stands Too Close. So she was going to fuck with him.
“Oh, not that far from there. I grew up in Oakland. Northern California girl!” She gave him her biggest, fakest grin.
He chuckled and took another swig of his beer.
“No, no, like where are you from from? Where are your parents from?”
This conversation was so predictable. Yet this dance people did was irritating every time.
“My parents are from California, too. My dad grew up here in L.A., actually, and my mom up in the Bay Area. What about yours?”
She felt a hand land on the small of her back and relaxed. She turned and saw Drew there next to her, as she knew he would be.
“Is Mike monopolizing you?” He grinned at Mike and did that hand slap thing guys did instead of hugging. “How’s it going, man?”
Mike’s eyes flashed to Drew’s arm disappearing around her back, and he took a step backward.
“Good, good, just stopped to chat here with your friend Alisha.”
She gritted her teeth, not even caring anymore if it looked like a smile.
“Alexa.”
Mike laughed and lifted his glass of sangria to hers.
“Right, right, Alexa, of course. Nice to talk to you.”
She walked with Drew toward the grills. As soon as they were out of earshot, she said, “I don’t like that guy.”
He stopped walking and turned to her.
“Why, what did he do?”
She made a face.
“Remember that Bill guy from the wedding? Creepy and borderline offensive?”
Now he stopped walking.
“It wasn’t borderline. Mike’s like that guy? Damn it, I’m sorry. I should have come to find you earlier.”
He believed her. Just like that. So often, guys would jump in to defend other men when women said they’d crossed a line. It had happened to her over and over again.
But Drew had immediately believed her. Why did a little thing like that touch her so much? She reached for his hand.
“No, it was okay, I handled it. Just . . . come over if you see him cornering me again?”
He squeezed her hand and smiled.
“Absolutely. Here, let’s go talk to some better people.”
He introduced her to his friend Luke, another doctor at his hospital, and Luke’s husband, Brendan, one of the aforementioned dudes from his basketball league.
“Ahh, you’re the reason for Drew’s mysterious trips up to the Bay Area as of late,” Luke said. “So nice to meet you.”
Did . . . Was Drew blushing? It could just be sunburn, but she hadn’t noticed his cheeks that color pink five minutes ago.
“Nice to meet you, too, Luke, Brendan.”
Brendan gestured at her drink.
“Is that the sangria? How is it?”
She took another sip and realized she was almost halfway through this glass.
“It’s great, but be forewarned, it has more of a kick to it than I expected. If Drew has to carry me out of here in a few hours, it’s because I had more than two glasses of this stuff.”
“Uh-oh,” Drew said. “Should I go get us some food to soak up all of that alcohol? There are burgers, hot dogs, sausages . . .”
“Definitely a hot dog,” Alexa said. “It’s the 4th of July. It’s un-American not to have a hot dog!”
Luke’s eyebrows went up and he opened his mouth. Brendan kicked him and he closed it.
“I saw that,” Alexa said, and all four of them laughed.
“I don’t know you quite well enough for a sausage joke yet, so pretend you didn’t see that.” Luke paused. “I can tell it after you’ve had that third sangria.”
Drew groaned.
“Oh no, I’m scared to leave you with these two now. God only knows what they’re going to do or say.”
Alexa waved Drew away.
“Go on, get me my hot dog, I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces as I eat it and they have to hold their jokes in. Maybe for dessert there will be popsicles?”
After all four of them ate hot dogs—with most of the jokes at Drew’s expense—Alexa excused herself to both refresh her sangria and go to the bathroom. Coming out of the bathroom, she ran into Heather and Emma, along with Lucy and Robin from the night before.
“Hey, Alexa!” Heather said. “Having fun? I was just taking this crew to the kitchen for some of the white sangria, I haven’t put it out yet. Do you want to try it?”
Never one to say no to an offer like that, Alexa followed the other women into the kitchen.
“So Alexa,” Heather said as she poured the sangria, “do you live here in Santa Monica?”
Alexa glanced around the room to see if the others were all looking at her. Not yet, at least. How long ago had Heather and Drew dated? She wondered if the ranks were going to close against her like with Molly’s bridesmaids at the wedding.
“No, just here for the weekend. I live up in Berkeley, actually.”
Lucy’s eyes shot to her face. What had she said?
“Are you from there? What do you do up there?” Lucy took a sip of her own sangria without her eyes leaving Alexa’s face.
“Yeah. I mean, yeah, I’m from the Bay Area. I work for the mayor of Berkeley.”
The other three women burst out laughing. She looked around at the four of them with raised eyebrows.
“What did I say?” Was this going to be like junior high, where people would corner you and laugh in your face?
Robin took a sip of her sangria and grinned.
“Oh, we’re just laughing because we know Lucy isn’t going to leave your side for the rest of the night.”
Lucy rolled her eyes.
“Don’t worry, they’re making fun of me, not you. See, I keep talking about quitting my job as a teacher and going to law school, and the law school at Berkeley is supposed to be great for the kind of law I want to do. But just because you work for the mayor and live there doesn’t mean you’re an expert on the law school . . . does it?”
Alexa held her glass out to Heather for a refill.
“Maybe not an expert, but I did graduate from Berkeley Law School, so . . .”
Lucy crossed the room so fast she almost knocked into Heather.
“Tell me everything.”
• • •
After Alexa went inside, Drew got his share of teasing from Luke and Brendan.
“Good God, you should see the way you look at her,” Luke said. “It’s like me when I’m looking at . . .”
“A really fat sausage?” Brendan suggested.
“Oh, shut up, both of you,” Drew said, after Luke and Brendan recovered from their peals of laughter.
“No, no, but it’s cute,” Brendan said. “Look at you—you keep glancing toward the house to see if she’s coming back and trying to pretend that you’re just looking at your drink.”
Drew shifted his eyes back in their direction. Okay, fine, they caught him looking for her. He was just trying to make sure she made it back outside okay. No, that excuse didn’t even work in his own head.
Eventually, Kat, another doctor at the hospital, came over to them.
“Hey, Drew,” she said. “Did I see you running on the beach yesterday? I shouted to you, but if it was you, you didn’t answer.” Kat lived not far from him, and they went running together sometimes.
“Around noon? Yeah, that was me. I guess I was preoccupied. Sorry I didn’t say hi.” He glanced toward the house again.
“Huh, what could you have been preoccupied with this weekend?” Brendan said, between bites of hot dog. “Or should I say, who?”
“You two are such assholes,” Drew said. He didn’t know if they heard him through their laughter.
• • •
“Enough law school talk,” Heather ordered. By this time, they were all sitting around the kitchen table. “Let’s talk about something more interesting. Alexa, how did you meet Drew?”
Hmm, which story was she supposed to tell? They hadn’t really discussed that.
“We met at a wedding.” She took another sip. Oh well, if Drew didn’t want her to tell the truth, he should have told her their cover story before she’d had all of this sangria. “Sort of. In the elevator a few days before his ex-girlfriend’s wedding, actually. He needed a date, and I was free that night, so . . .”
The whole table cracked up, Alexa included.
“Oh, that’s such a Drew story,” Robin said. “Meets a girl in an elevator, convinces her to go with him to a wedding that night.”
“It wasn’t that night. It was . . .”
Emma broke in.
“Was this that wedding in May? Oh man, I was supposed to go with him to that wedding, but my dad had surgery so I couldn’t go.”
Wait, this was that Emma? Had everyone at this table dated Drew?
“Has everyone at this table dated Drew?” Shit, she probably shouldn’t have said that out loud. But at least now she’d get an answer.
“Not me!” Lucy said. But Heather, Emma, and Robin all rose their hands. Huh.
“He’s a sweetheart,” Robin said. “We had a great time while it lasted.”
Everyone else at the table nodded.
“How long did . . . Why did it end?” Alexa asked them. What was she supposed to do, not ask these women who had all dated Drew that, when she was both tipsy and had been thinking about that very topic for days? She did not have that much willpower.
Heather was the one who answered her.
“At least for me, it was when it was going really well. I was starting to think . . . well, whatever, I’ve been over it for a while. But after about two months, he came over one night and gave me a little speech about how it was best to end things when we—”
“Were still friends?” Emma jumped in. “Yeah, I got that same speech. He was really sweet about it, though. Even sent me flowers afterward, to make sure there were no hard feelings.”
Robin laughed.
“I got the same speech, also after about two months, but no flowers. The flowers must be new.”
Heather jumped in.
“It’s a testament to what a great guy Drew is that we all still like him. And one another. He obviously only dates great women.” She stood up and refilled everyone’s sangria cups.
“So what did you put in that sangria anyway?” she asked. The subject changed to cocktail recipes. Alexa did her best to chime in with her favorites as her mind was swirling.
Maybe she didn’t want to get those answers from Drew after all.
• • •
Drew almost went into the house to find Alexa at least three times and stopped himself each time. Finally, he saw her walking across the lawn with Lucy and Robin.
He and Kat wandered over to them. When he put his hand on the small of her back, she jumped.
“Hey, it’s just me.” She’d probably been on edge from Mike irritating her earlier. “You having fun?”
“Yeah.” She took a step away from him and looked at the group around them. “It’s great.”
She reached her hand out to Kat, that smile from the wedding on her face again.
“Hi, I’m Alexa.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Drew jumped in. “Kat, this is Alexa. She’s here visiting this weekend. Alexa, this is Kat. She’s also a doctor, and a sometime running buddy of mine.”
“Great. So nice to meet you, Kat!” Alexa took another sip of her drink and turned back to Lucy and Robin.
Was something wrong? It felt like something was wrong.
“What were you ladies up to inside for so long?” Brendan asked as he came up to the group.
Robin, Lucy, and Alexa all laughed. Alexa was looking at them, not at him. Why wasn’t she sharing this laughter with him?
“Oh, just chatting,” Lucy said. “Well, drinking and chatting, anyway.” She turned to Alexa. “Oh God, Alexa, I forgot to tell you that story about how two of my students got arrested—it tested every instinct I had when they told me about it, because I wanted to laugh so hard but I knew I shouldn’t.”
As Lucy went on to tell a long story about her students and a cemetery and getting chased by security guards into blackberry bushes, Drew watched Alexa. She was totally relaxed with the other women, smiling and laughing without that fake smile that he hated on her face. That smile had been his sign to come over when she was talking to Mike.
But she still had that tense look around her eyes. When he touched her arm, she turned toward him, but her body was stiff.
“Everything okay?” he said in a low voice.
She flashed a smile, but it didn’t reassure him. It didn’t have that glitter of joy hovering behind her eyes like her real smiles usually did.
“Fine,” she said. “Want to get me more sangria?”
When he came back with the sangria, he brought a plate of chips and guacamole for them to share. This time when he joined the group he slid an arm around her waist, but she stepped away from him.
“Oh look, Heather’s bringing out the cupcakes. Let me go see if she needs help.”
So she walked off to help Heather with the cupcakes, leaving him with one arm empty, and one hand weighed down with a full plate of chips.
“Those for me?” Carlos asked from behind him.
“Hey, man, when’d you get here?”
Carlos reached for a handful of his chips.
“Just now. Why are you looking so forlorn? Where’s Alexa?”
He gestured with his empty hand.
“She’s over there, asshole. Helping Heather do something with cupcakes . . .” He paused as he saw Alexa and Heather talking to three men he didn’t know. “I guess Heather introduced her to some more people.”
Carlos looked at him for a long moment but just nodded.
“Cool, I’ll go say hi. Where are the drinks?”
Drew pointed and went back to munching on chips and listening to Lucy and Brendan talk about surfing. Forlorn? He wasn’t forlorn. It was possible he would prefer Alexa to be standing next to him than over on the other side of the party talking to three strange men, but he wasn’t forlorn.
He watched Carlos approach her group and tap her on the shoulder. Alexa threw her arms around Carlos and beamed her hundred-watt smile at him and absorbed him in her cozy little group. Drew waited for her to look around for him. She was probably just waiting to catch his eye to signal to him to come join them. But she didn’t turn her head.