Jane checked her watch for the tenth time in as many minutes and let out a small whimper. A flutter of butterflies chased through her stomach, heaving it with dread. Why had she agreed to this? A date with a stranger? What would they even talk about? Sophie, the bookstore, ballet, his job?
Oh God, there would be flirting. She’d be expected to laugh, to come up with witty and clever comebacks, to seem quick and energetic. Desirable.
She eyed her sweats and T-shirt, now thrown over the edge of her bed along with half the contents of her closet. Anna was right; she didn’t date. She didn’t know how to date. Her husband had been her first and only boyfriend. He was her world, her life, the only man she’d ever known. She knew what made him laugh, how he liked to be touched and kissed, what he liked to eat, when he liked to eat… She could spot the signs of a grumpy mood hours before it manifested. She could read each expression, however subtle. She could detect the slightest shift in his tone or behavior.
But she hadn’t noticed when he’d been lying to her. Somehow she’d managed to miss that.
Sighing, she fastened her earring and smoothed down her skirt, giving herself one last hard look in the mirror. The thought of getting to know another man wasn’t just overwhelming, it was downright exhausting. It would be so much easier to slip into her pajamas, curl up on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn, and bury herself in a good movie. Instead, she was hiding in her bedroom in a black skirt that was a little too tight on the hips and a sparkly top of Grace’s that left a little too much to the imagination. She was out of her comfort zone, but then, what was comfortable about a first date?
“Oh, you look so beautiful!” Sophie nearly squealed as she came bounding into the room, her brown eyes sparkling.
Jane managed a wan smile as she turned from the mirror. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
“Auntie Grace says you have a hot date tonight, but won’t you be chilly wearing that shirt, Mommy? Your arms are bare!”
Jane muttered under her breath as she rifled through her discarded outfits in search of a lightweight black cardigan. She ran a brush through her shoulder-length hair one more time, wondering if she should pull it back instead, and then decided to leave it down. She was a twenty-five-year-old mother of a four-year-old child, and even though her life experience made her feel older than both of her sisters combined, she knew many women her age were still single, still comfortable wearing slinky tops and strappy heels instead of yoga pants on the school run.
She wasn’t a wife anymore. She wasn’t going to find a guy by still acting like one. Or dressing like one.
Taking Sophie’s hand, she flicked off her bedroom light and took the stairs slowly, barely registering her daughter’s excited chatter about all the fun things her aunts had planned for her tonight. Her stomach was twisting into a hard knot, and her heart was starting to pound. She was actually doing this. Going on a date. What was she thinking?
She could hear Grace and Anna discussing the bookstore as she rounded the hall. When she stopped in the entranceway to the kitchen, all conversation ceased.
“Look at you!”
Jane gritted her teeth and wrestled with the waistband of her skirt. “Don’t remind me,” she told Grace. “I feel conspicuous enough as it is.”
“You look great.” It was the first smile Anna had offered since the fire nearly a week ago.
“Well, I feel ridiculous. I look like one of Adam’s tram—” She stopped herself before the words slipped. She’d promised herself when Adam moved out that she would not badmouth Sophie’s father in front of her, but sometimes, when she thought of the way he’d lied, that was a challenge.
“I just wore that top to a birthday party two weeks ago,” Grace insisted.
Jane gave her a long look. “Exactly. You wore it to a party. This is a date.” Just saying the word! “With a man I don’t even know.” She looked down at the flimsy fabric. “I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard.”
“Well, what did you think you would wear?” Anna chuckled and licked the back of a wooden spoon before dropping it in a bowl. She carried a pan of brownies to the oven and set the timer. “Your usual mom jeans or perhaps that uptight pink twinset you had on last week for the PTA conference?”
Grace began to laugh, but Jane felt her cheeks flame. “I don’t wear mom jeans!” That twinset was uptight, yes. But the jeans? “Those jeans are new, I’ll have you know. I thought they were… cool.” Cool. Did people even say cool anymore? She’d spent too much time in the house with Sophie over the years, or at the park. She’d lost touch. With the world. With fashion. With herself.
Her sisters exchanged a look. “Jane,” Grace said, softening her tone. “You look wonderful; trust me. You look like every other girl your age. Young, carefree, stylish. Just go out and enjoy yourself. You could use a night on the town, and you never know, you might really like him.”
She had a point. Jane fingered the thin cardigan that was draped over her arm. “I think I’ll wear the cardigan there, and then if I decide I like the guy, I’ll take it off.”
Grace sighed. “If that will make you more comfortable.”
“What do you know about this guy anyway?” Anna asked. She hoisted Sophie onto a counter stool and gave her the same wooden spoon she’d just licked. Catching Jane’s disapproval, she said, “What? We’re family.”
Jane couldn’t help but smile. That they were, and thank God for it. “I don’t know much. His name is Brian and Rosemary said he works at the Forest Ridge Hospital. She’s one of his patients.”
“A doctor!” Grace waggled her eyebrows, and Jane felt her spirits lift.
“I guess it’s just one dinner,” she mumbled, barely able to suppress a pleased smile.
“Perhaps the first of many,” Anna said brightly. “Don’t hurry home on our account. We’ve got everything covered.”
Jane eyed Sophie warily. Her cheeks were painted in chocolate batter, and her eyes were already turning glassy from the sugar intake. “Maybe I should stay home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Besides, what would you tell Rosemary?”
Grace had her there. Jane shook her head, feeling angry with herself for even asking for this date in the first place, and wiped the brownie mix from Sophie’s face with a paper towel before quickly planting a kiss on her cheek.
“Behave,” she instructed, as she grabbed her keys from the hook near the door.
“Oh, of course she will,” Grace assured her.
Jane paused with her hand on the knob. “I wasn’t talking to Sophie.”
Before she wimped out, she unlocked her car, slipped inside, and pulled out of the driveway. By the time she’d reached the end of her street, she was feeling downright liberated, and the butterflies were starting to feel more excited than nervous in nature. As she pulled into Piccolino’s parking lot, however, she felt as if she could be sick at any moment. She sat in her car, her eye trained on the door, watching each man who walked up its cobblestone steps with unwavering scrutiny, wondering if one of them was her date. Brian was said to be in his early thirties, with brown hair and glasses. Jane liked glasses on men; Adam had worn his only at night, and by the end of their marriage, he was rolling in so late she never saw him wear them.
Already this date had potential. And a doctor, a doctor who wore glasses, couldn’t be so bad, could he?
Jane laughed at herself. It wasn’t like the man was going to bite. The worst that could happen was that he didn’t like her. Didn’t find her funny or witty, didn’t smile at her attempt at humor. Didn’t kiss her goodnight.
But did she even want him to kiss her goodnight? She hadn’t thought of that—kissing another man. She hadn’t kissed anyone other than Adam since she was a teenager, and it wasn’t like she’d had much practice before him. She didn’t even know how to kiss, not really. Well, she knew how to kiss Adam, but generally speaking… Oh, God.
She pressed a hand to her stomach. She was getting ahead of herself. She hadn’t even seen the guy yet. She’d know if she wanted him to kiss her once she met him. And if she didn’t… She’d tell him she didn’t kiss on the first date. Perfect.
Jane lurched open the car door and shrugged on her cardigan, feeling Grace’s disapproving frown from halfway across town. A light drizzle had started, and she hurried across the concrete parking lot and up the winding cobblestone stairs to the arched oak door of the brick building that housed Piccolino’s.
Inside, the restaurant was loud and lively, the waiting area crowded with couples. Darting her gaze swiftly over the room and not seeing anyone who matched Brian’s description, Jane inched away from the door just as a cool gush of spring air floated into the room.
She turned, bracing herself for the arrival of her date, but the buzz of the room around her fell silent when she came face-to-face with her husband.
Soon-to-be-ex-husband, she scolded herself.
“Adam!” Her gaze drifted immediately to his left, where Kristy stood, shaking out an umbrella. It was one of the few times Jane had been so close to her; usually when she picked up Sophie after one of Adam’s appointed nights, Kristy stood back in the kitchen instead of coming into the hall to greet her. Now, up close to the other woman—her husband’s mistress, her replacement—she couldn’t stop staring. Kristy’s long blond hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail that looked effortlessly chic; it would only look sloppy if Jane attempted the style. She wore tight jeans and stilettos, with a gray patterned silk top that Jane had eyed in a window on Main Street just last week.
“Hello, Jane,” Adam said.
Without so much as a smile in Jane’s direction, Kristy set her hand on Adam’s arm. “I think our table’s ready, honey.”
Jane felt her breath still as she watched the exchange. She stared into the eyes of the man who was, for all intents and purposes, still her husband—still a part of their little family unit—and felt something within her begin to crack.
The heartache came in waves. At first, when she had discovered Adam was cheating on her, she denied the truth, but as he grew increasingly distant and she felt him slip away, the realization chipped away at her heart, until she was barely holding it together for their daughter’s sake, or for her mother and sisters, who needed her in the wake of her father’s sudden death last spring. When Adam finally admitted the truth and moved out just before Christmas, she felt an odd mix of relief, but it wasn’t until later, in the middle of the night when she woke alone to an empty and quiet house, that she knew the relief wasn’t that he was gone and never coming back. It was that the pain was finally over—that it had reached its limit—and she didn’t have to worry about holding herself together anymore. She just had to focus on healing, and moving forward.
And that’s why she was here, wasn’t it? She was getting on with her life. She was going on a date. In the same restaurant as her husband and his girlfriend.
Jane watched as he walked away, weaving his way through the tables, his fingers placed intimately on the small of Kristy’s back as he guided their path through the crowded restaurant, and the hollowness in her chest began to fill with anger as the distance between them grew larger. He hadn’t even asked about Sophie! Kristy was laughing as he pulled out her chair, and Jane caught the grin on Adam’s face as he sat down beside her, already deep in conversation as he casually picked up the menu and scanned it. It was as if she didn’t exist. As if she wasn’t standing in this room. As if the nearly six years of their marriage had never happened, never mattered. She wasn’t even an old friend. She was just forgotten.
Blinking back tears, Jane headed for the bar, deciding it would be a safer place to wait than here in the open, exposed and raw. She took a seat behind a large arrangement of sunflowers and, remembering Rosemary’s advice, ordered a white wine, without bothering to specify anything more, and then accepted it with a shaking hand, waiting for her pulse to steady.
She eyed the door, almost willing it to open, imagining the look on Adam’s face when she strolled through the dining area, a handsome doctor at her side, her cardigan officially off. She was just getting to the part in the fantasy where Adam’s face would turn ruddy, the way it did when he was especially angry, and where Kristy noticed his reaction and tossed down her napkin with a harrumph and stormed out of the establishment when her phone rang.
She glanced at the caller display. “Rosemary?”
“Are you already at the restaurant?”
Jane frowned. “Yes.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I didn’t think to give Brian your number, but he just called me. Something came up with a patient. He has to reschedule.”
Panic tightened her chest. Adam would see her leave. Alone. Minutes after he had arrived. The bastard would probably assume she’d fled on account of him.
Jane quickly ended the call and popped the phone back into her bag. She slid the unfinished glass of wine away, slapped a generous tip on the sleek mahogany bar, and forced herself to stand up. Lifting her chin, she marched back to the door, aware of Adam’s presence behind her, somewhere in the bustling crowd of tables.
Her cheeks burned as she pushed through the bar area. She kept her eyes forward, locked on the door, hoping he might think she was just popping into the bathroom, or ducking outside to make a call and check on Sophie. Judging from the way he eagerly leaned into Kristy, she highly doubted his daughter was forefront in his mind.
Adam has reclaimed his life, choosing to continue on without her in it. He was back in the game, out to dinner at the end of a long hard week, looking good and sipping wine, laughing and carefree. While she… she had three loads of laundry to do… of yoga pants and mom jeans.
Outside dusk had fallen. The rain came down in a steady drip, splashing against the stone stairs and making her path slippery. She clung to the rail, cursing her decision to wear these shoes Grace had insisted she borrow, and hurried to the car, not even caring that her hair was sopping by the time she slid inside. She was safe. She was free. And she was utterly alone.
Hot tears mixed with rain wet her face, and she fumbled in the glove compartment for a tissue—she always kept some on hand because that’s what she did. She was responsible. She was a mother. But she wasn’t a wife. Not really.
Her husband was inside that very room, eating dinner with another woman. And her date had stood her up.
She’d told herself she didn’t even want to go on the date, that she’d rather sit at home, eat ice cream, and maybe watch a late movie. That wasn’t true.
She wanted to feel alive. She wanted to get out there, feel special and pretty like Kristy and the dozens of other girls whose laughter had filled that room.
But the sad fact of the matter was that she wasn’t sure anyone could ever make her feel that way. Not like Adam had. Once.