Chapter 7

 

“So, let me get this straight.” Carla topped off Meg’s Dr Pepper and returned the bottle to the nearly empty refrigerator. The Fennells were still unpacking, and the moment Meg’s plane touched down in Raleigh, she’d parted ways with Seth and made a beeline for her friends’ new home.

Carla stole a peek into the restored Victorian house’s living room to see what Meg stared at from her position at the end of the paper-strewn dining room table. The children were playing raucously, hiding in boxes and scattering packing peanuts all over the floor.

Meg had already tried to mitigate the mess once, striding into the room with a giant trash bag, but Carla drew her back, scolding, “Coping strategy, my dear. Clean up once, not fifteen times while the destruction ensues.”

Now the maternal brunette leaned against the closed refrigerator door, arms crossed over her small breasts, studying Meg.

“The same woman,” she began, “who practically crucified me for making a snap decision and traipsing off to Ireland with a man I barely knew is now okay with the idea of letting one of that same man’s best friends move into her house…with her son?”

Meg swirled the ice in her soda and watched the bubbles in the dark liquid rise and pop. “He’ll be in the guest room. It’s just for show.”

“Uh-huh. For how long? What are you going to do? Annul the thing? Or will you hold out a little longer and have another divorce?”

“I don’t like your tone.”

“And I don’t like you stringing Seth along.”

Meg snapped her gaze toward her friend and did a quick reading of Carla’s face, hoping perhaps the woman was pulling her leg.

Didn’t look like it.

“I thought you were my friend. And if I recall, you were on-board with this scheme. You flew to Bermuda, remember? You were one of our witnesses.”

“That’s right.” Carla eased off the fridge door and strode to the table. She pulled out the chair to Meg’s right and folded onto it. “Look, I guess we all thought this would be a convenient sort of thing,” she said softly. “We figured the two of you would just lay low and wait for the drama to go away on its own.”

“That’s a reasonable expectation, but you know almost as well as I do that Spike isn’t a reasonable man. I thought the same thing you did: that I’d marry Seth and people would leave me alone because he’s not famous. I’d fall off the radar and could have a normal sort of life after a while, but Carla…” Meg lowered her voice to a whisper as one of the children streaked past the open double door. “You should hear some of the messages he’s been leaving in my voice mail. He’s gone ape-shit. When everyone was feeling sorry for me for getting dumped, it made him look like a bad boy and somehow all the more desirable.” That made her scoff. She took a long sip of her soda and gathered her thoughts.

It wasn’t necessary. Carla could more or less read them. “And now that you’ve appeared to have moved on, he’s taken it personally. Probably pissed he didn’t do more to screw you up.”

And that’s precisely why they were best friends. Even if they didn’t always immediately warm to each other’s choices, they generally came around to understanding why they made them.

“I feel really awful. Toby doesn’t understand what’s going on. All he knows is that Seth is going to come around, and he thinks he’s going to have a buddy, but for how long? And what if people start to recognize Toby? How’s that going to affect him in school? Are other kids going to tease him? Are the teachers going to shame him for his father being an epic douche bag?”

Carla’s upper lip curled. “I hadn’t considered that. Toby’s the first out of all the kids to start school. I haven’t even so much as browsed that list of preschools my mother brought over.”

“Yeah, and there’s another issue.”

“What?”

She didn’t know how to put this delicately, but it was Carla, so she just spit it out in a hoarse whisper. “I know it muddles things, but I can’t—no, I don’t want to keep my hands off Seth. The more he says yes, the more I want him. I feel like some kind of rampaging nymphomaniac.”

Carla pressed her lips together to stifle her words, but her watery eyes gave away her amusement.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just… You’re probably far from being diagnosable by the American Psychiatric Association’s mental disorders manual.”

“Just how often is considered clinical?”

“I took introductory psychology, what, ten years ago? Twelve? Why the hell would I know that?”

She had a point.

“I suspect you’re comparing your level of urges at the moment to what society thinks is right and proper for a woman of our age. Well, guess what? Not all married women endure sex and roll over and put out every ten days with a weary sigh. Some of us like it. Ask for it.”

Meg leaned back in her seat and located her redheaded offspring standing in the corner with his back turned to the room, counting. “One. Two. Three. Seven… Ready or not, here I come!”

After he’d zipped past on the heels of Emma, Meg whispered, “It kinda feels trampy.”

That was her honest-to-God truth. On the rare occasion she’d actually ask for it from Spike, he’d demean her. Tease her. He’d made her feel like some sort of aberration for having physical needs. The same needs he’d gladly met when she was an idiot undergrad and he was a skinny, greasy, barista moonlighting as a singer.

Carla blew out a breath and pushed a swath of her long hair over her shoulder.

“I gotta say I’m surprised that with you being single for this long, I probably get more in a month, even with an infant in the house and staging a transatlantic move, than you do,” she said.

Meg didn’t doubt that. She drained the dregs of her soda and pushed her chair back to stand. “Gotta go run errands, and I’ve got a fifty-five-page instruction manual to write copy for by Friday. I haven’t even opened the files.”

“Okay. Call me if you need anything,” Carla responded at the same time the baby monitor crackled, and her daughter whimpered.

Backing toward the living room, Meg nodded. “Yeah.” She actually could do that. She could call, and Carla really could be there to help in forty minutes or less. It would take a while to get used to having her tribe complete again—for her to have help if she needed it and was brave enough to ask for it.

She couldn’t help but to wonder, though, whether that little tribe was more on her side or Seth’s.

* * * *

Several hours later, Meg slid her sedan into her assigned spot in the basement garage of her condominium building, rolling her eyes at the empty space to the left that used to be the resting spot for Spike’s motorcycle. Now the only reminder of the beast was a single skid mark and a bit of an oil stain in the center. Yep, that was Spike. One big, greasy stain.

Before unlatching Toby from his seat, she fetched her folding grocery cart from the trunk, opened it, and piled on the canvas bags of food and dry cleaning they’d picked up before returning home. She pressed the tidy stack of paperwork she’d fetched from the preschool office under her arm and slammed the trunk shut.

She let Toby down and placed him between herself and the cart, letting him push it from down low. She didn’t need the help, but he liked having something to do, and the activity kept him from running amok in the garage. The people in the building drove like assholes, so she put the burden of safety strictly on herself. He was her charge—her responsibility, and if she had to throw herself in front of a moving vehicle to keep him safe, she’d do it.

They took the elevator up to the lobby, and she bid Toby to hold the button while she made a dash for the mailbox. With her key already poised, she made quick work of grabbing the thick pile of catalogs, circulars, and assorted envelopes. She rejoined Toby in the elevator right as the control pad made a high-pitched beeping sound, complaining about the doors being propped open so long.

She let out a breath, glad the ride came with no extra bodies, and hustled Toby out as soon as the doors opened at the top floor.

There were a lot of things she liked about their downtown condo. The ten-story brick behemoth was a part of Raleigh’s new upward, rather than outward, urban growth. They could have bought a house out in the suburbs, and that would have put them closer to the airport Spike spent so much time at, but there was a certain street cred to having an address at The Gardner. The completely modern place lacked nothing in terms of amenities. There was a fitness room and sauna on the first floor, as well as a gathering room that could be rented out for meetings and parties. The small courtyard in the back came with a sunny patio and infinity pool she’d never used.

All that was nice, but what Meg had liked about the building were the spacious balconies. She’d spent hours pacing on theirs when Toby was a colicky newborn. They’d had to go outside, because that was the only way Spike could sleep. As they were on the top floor, the ceilings in their unit were extra-high and lent an airy openness to the place that had probably kept Meg from feeling claustrophobic all those times she’d been stuck indoors, staying home on Spike’s bidding.

She turned the knob and leaned her shoulder against the door, pushing it open while Toby skirted in around her.

“Gotta pee!” he called back in explanation, taking off at a brisk clip across the sisal rug.

“I’m going to have to teach that boy some manners,” she muttered, and wrapped her fingers around the cart’s handle.

The door across the hall creaked open, and Meg murmured, “Fuck,” under her breath as one of the cart’s wheels wedged against the hallway baseboard. She dropped the preschool papers into the basket and gave the damned cart a forceful tug.

“I thought I heard the elevator closing,” Rosamund said, sticking her white-blond head out of her condo and presenting her usual glossy-lipped pout.

She thought Meg and Toby were bringing down the value of the place or something. She’d also insinuated a time or two in the past that she was hot shit because she held membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. When she’d said that at one of the homeowner’s association gatherings, all Meg could do was turn her back and make a tiny whoopdie-do gesture with her index finger.

Meg plastered on a smile and said, “Yep,” through clenched teeth. She was pretty sure Rosamund and Spike had done the deed at some point during their separation. She hadn’t confronted either about it because A, she no longer cared who Spike put his dick in, and B, they probably deserved each other.

Rosamund rolled her airy head around on her neck, closed her eyes, and pushed out a long exhale as if she were sitting on a yoga mat aligning her chakras or whatever the hell those cultural appropriating hipster dorks did, and not just leaning against her doorframe making idle conversation.

Meg yanked the cart through the door and gave Rosamund a mock salute. “See ya.”

“Oh, Meg?” she said in that whisper-low voice, now deigning to step her bare foot out onto the hallway’s marble floor.

Didn’t she have a Pilates rack to go contort herself on or something? “What?” Meg asked, trying to sound blithe, but her voice came out too deep and too clipped.

Rosamund wrapped a long swath of her hair around her index finger and turned her thin face sideways. “You missed the meeting. The board brought a bunch of issues up for a vote.”

Nothing new. In four years, Meg had attended three of forty-eight meetings. They were always held at god-awful times. Reasonable people had things to do during the day beyond discussing crown-molding finishes and haggling over pool-cleaning contractors.

“And?” Meg shifted her weight, but kept her gaze squarely locked on Rosamund’s pale eyes. She gave Rosamund the same stare Erica had given Meg the first time they’d met, and Meg had insulted her in some subtle way she still hadn’t figured out. If the demeaning look had nearly the same effect on Rosamund, the woman’s brain should have been momentarily scrambled.

Rosamund blinked. “Um. Well. I’m sure they’ll put the information on the building web loop, but I just thought you’d like to know, considering your circumstances.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

She blinked again, and this time her head tilted upright. “Uh, for one thing, parking spaces are now transferrable and leasable, so if you wanted to let yours out to someone—”

“Why would I do that?”

Rosamund’s eyes widened. “Oh yes, that’s right. You got married! Saw that on one of those sites. Yahoo! Maybe. He’s big, huh?”

“I’d prefer if you’d mind your business.” Meg had no idea where that snarky outburst came from, but since she’d said it, she’d stand by it. Besides, she meant it.

Rosamund’s serene smile flattened into a thin, twitching line.

“Not even kidding,” Meg said. “If you so much as lay a pinkie finger on him during casual conversation—”

Rosamund laid her head to the side. “Have you considered meditation? It’s so good for moodiness, and with practice—”

Now it was Meg’s turn to cut her off. “Don’t start that Poor Meg shit. I can just tell you’ve got it brewing in that pea brain of yours. Why not try originality?”

“Well, maybe there’s some truth to it if you’re going to be so temperamental during a completely benign discussion…” She put her hands up in a calming gesture.

Meg didn’t feel calm as a result. Anything but. Pressing her palms against her closed eyes, she groaned and gathered her thoughts. “Rosamund, we’ve never had a discussion, per se. You’ve talked at me, and I’ve nodded and gone on my way.” When Meg dropped her hands and opened her eyes, her neighbor had her hands pressed together as if she were poised to loose a namaste at any moment. Meg opened her mouth to speak, but thinking better of it, shook her head and let the door close.

Toby had returned from the bathroom, and was pulling his shorts up as he strode toward the sofa.

Blowing out a sigh, Meg raked a hand through her messy hair. He was demonstrating yet another bad habit he’d learned from his father.

“Toby.” She pulled the grocery cart toward the kitchen island. “You’re the love of my life, but please do me a favor and zip up your shorts before you leave the bathroom. When you start school, the kids in your class will appreciate that courtesy.”

He grunted and pushed the button through its hole. “It’s just you.”

“Thanks, boy.” He would have been funny if she didn’t know what that behavior could bloom into, given twenty-five years or so.

A tentative knock on the door gave her pause as she stowed a carton of orange juice in the refrigerator. Thinking it was probably Rosamund, she rolled her eyes and resumed unpacking the grocery bags. She had the meat arranged in the freezer compartment just so when the knock came again, this time a little louder.

“Mommy, there’s someone at the door!” Toby yelled.

Meg put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at the boy, who was pressing buttons on the universal remote control, but not the right one to turn on the television. “What if I was pretending not to be home?”

His finger paused over the device and he furrowed his brow. “Then they would know you’re home now.”

“Exactly.”

“Why would you pretend not to be home? That’s lying, Mommy.”

“No.” She strode toward the door, wagging a finger at him. “That’s called time management and crisis avoidance. You’ll learn it when you’re a bigger dude.”

“Okay.” Finally, he found the correct button and let out a little “Whoop,” only to immediately deflate when he realized the station was set to CNN. Back to work he went.

Standing on tiptoes, Meg put an eye to the peephole. “Is that…”

Even standing a couple of feet back from the door, he filled the panoramic view the fish-eye lens afforded, and his coppery hair shone in the hallway’s soft lights.

“How’d he get in?” she mused.

Didn’t matter. With some squinting, she realized Rosamund had poked her head out again, and Seth was turned to her, talking.

Hell no.

Meg snatched the door open and said in the sweetest voice she could manage, “Did you lose your key already?”

He turned, eyebrows raised, lips slightly parted, but quickly adapted to the situation at hand. He nodded and shifted the black backpack strap on his shoulder to his hand. “Yes, I…I tried calling your phone, but it kept going to voice mail.”

Shit.

She’d turned the thing off after clearing her voice mail and hadn’t bothered to turn it back on.

“I accidentally dropped my phone in the sink. It’s drying out in some rice,” she lied, moving out of the way of the door for him to enter.

“I’ll talk to you later, Seth,” Rosamund said. The ballsy bitch actually stepped across the hall and followed Seth as far as the doormat. “I teach some classes at Gerrity’s Gym, so if you’re looking for a—”

Meg pushed the door closed.

“I take it you don’t like her?” Seth set his backpack and briefcase by the table where Meg usually tossed her keys and spare change.

His movement drew her attention to the wad of gauze and the medical tape affixed on the inside of his elbow.

Toby must have noticed it, too. “What’d you do to your arm, Seth?”

“Oh.” Seth flexed the arm, working his elbow, as if he’d forgotten the bandage were there. “Nothing’s wrong. I went to my doctor earlier. He drew some blood.”

“Ew. Can you change the channel? I don’t want to watch this. This is boring. Are you sleeping in my room? I’ve got bunk beds.”

Suddenly, that Dr Pepper she’d sipped while flitting around the grocery store wasn’t sitting right in her belly. Toby didn’t seem to have a good understanding of what Seth’s role was in this mess, which made good sense because Meg hadn’t been all that good at explaining it. She hadn’t even told him what they were doing in Bermuda, hoping that when the charade all fell apart, his only takeaway would be the memory of a nice vacation and not much else.

But now… He seemed to know that in some way he was connected to Seth, and that Seth belonged in the household. However, he couldn’t have known why and Meg didn’t know what lies to tell him.

Seth sat on the sofa next to Toby and took the remote. He quickly brought up the channel guide and scrolled through the offerings.

“Read them. I can’t read,” Toby demanded.

“Saying please would go a long way,” Meg said.

Seth just grinned and kept scrolling.

“Please read them!” Toby said.

And so Seth did.

Once Toby was settled in front of a cartoon movie he’d already seen at least five times by Meg’s count, Seth joined her in the kitchen, looking somewhat bashful and out of place given the way he shifted his weight. “I…have a meeting in Research Triangle Park in the morning and I thought—”

“It’s fine.” She hoped to placate him with her soft tone. Soft was hard for her, but how dare she be crusty when he was so kind to Toby? So patient? She pulled the freezer door open and rearranged the meat to find the beef round she’d just bought.

Maybe stroganoff…passive cooking.

If dinner were going to be only for her and Toby, she probably would have made them soup and sandwiches, and they’d hang out in front of the television, recovering from their travels. But maybe they’d had enough soup-and-sandwich nights in recent history. She hadn’t had the mojo to cook for just the two of them. It wasn’t that Toby wasn’t entitled to a substantial hot meal, but seeing all those leftovers that would get stored for three days and then scraped into the trash was depressing.

“So, you don’t mind? I did try to call on the way here. Also called Sharon to get your house number, but she said you didn’t have one.”

Meg shook her head and drew in some air when she finally let her gaze settle on his face. He was an attractive man with that coloring and the masculine cut of his features, but when he showed those moments of tentativeness, there was a vulnerability that seemed to enhance it all. The shyness humanized the big man. He had to know how people saw him. They wouldn’t know he wasn’t the sort of man who’d throw his weight around, but Meg did now. He didn’t abuse his capacity. She wasn’t afraid of him.

“I don’t have a landline phone anymore,” she said, then broke her gaze. Kneeling down to the cabinet where she stored small appliances, she drew out her slow cooker and set it on the counter. “Got rid of it a couple of years ago. I wasn’t using it for anything but ordering pizza.”

“That’s pretty much all I use mine for.”

“See?” She smiled and let the cabinet door clap closed. “Italian beef for dinner? Picked up some great soft buns at the store that are good all on their own. Got any aversions to pepperoncinis?”

As if the man had ever missed a free meal.

“I hate pepperoncinis!” Toby called.

Meg sighed and opened the spice cabinet. “You’ve never had pepperoncinis.”

After a moment, Toby said, “Oh.”

“You don’t have to cook,” Seth said, stilling her movements by placing his big hand over her right wrist. “You’re just getting home. I’ll just have whatever you two were going to have or I can go out and bring us back something later. Or I can go harass Curt and Erica. She’s always annoyed when I’m in town and don’t come eat.”

“No,” Meg said, perhaps with a bit too much snap. She wrapped her left fingers around his wrist, and tried to smile, but it felt forced. Unpracticed.

The truth was, she was glad to see him. Glad he’d come over on his own, so she wouldn’t have to ask.

The thought of spending another night alone in a big bed seemed so goddamned defeating, she’d planned on sleeping on the sofa. And the more she thought about it, the more it became clear that it wasn’t just any man’s body she wanted in her bed. There was something especially appealing about the one standing in front of her at the moment. She tried to be rational about it. Maybe she just liked him because he was nice to her, and after all those years with Spike, she needed kindness.

But, weren’t kind men the ones you rebounded with and moved on when the next bad boy came along?

He squeezed her hand and quirked an eyebrow up at her.

She swallowed, and forced her tense shoulders down to their natural position. “I mean…I’m really making it for the leftovers. Can recycle it into a couple of other dishes. You’re not putting me out.”

He didn’t seem to believe it, judging by the way he gnawed at his bottom lip.

“Really,” she insisted. She tightened her grip on his hand, knowing she should let go, but she didn’t want to.

His chest expanded with his deep draw of air, and he exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry I won’t be here for the leftovers,” he said. With his free hand, he tucked back the swath of hair that’d fallen over her eyes.

“I hate leftovers!” Toby shouted.

Meg opened her mouth to rebut, but Seth got the drop on her, and said to the boy without looking at him, “Leftovers are what make us way cooler and smarter than other primates.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that whole civilization thing has nothing to do with that,” she said. Finally, she withdrew her hands and peeled plastic off the meat. She’d have to cook that thing on high for it to be done by dinner.

“You think there would be civilization without smart women figuring out ways to make one chicken last four days?”

“Now that would be impressive.”

He shrugged and scratched at the edges of the medical tape on his arm. “My grandmother did it all the time.”

Meg opened her mouth to tell him how awful that sounded, but at the last minute thought better of it.

“Perhaps on Sunday there’d be a roast. By Wednesday, there’d be soup.”

“And on Saturday?” She curled her fingers around the drawer handle, and she met that hypnotizing stare of his once more.

His lips quirked up into a grin that wasn’t quite joyous. “There was a lot of cabbage. Potatoes. Carrots. Fortunately, my babushka was a creative woman. I was never truly hungry, even if what was on my plate wasn’t particularly presentable.”

Meg couldn’t imagine living that way. Growing up, she’d never wanted for anything. Never had occasion to. Her father was well employed, and her mother had entered the marriage with money of her own. As an adult, Meg had always had a fallback, if she needed it. She hadn’t in a long while, and she was thankful for that. She never wanted to draw on her parents that way again unless things were truly dire.

“Mommy, phone.” Toby held her cell phone out to her, and confusion clouded Meg’s thoughts.

“The phone was off.”

“I turned it on to play a game.” He thrust the phone closer to Meg.

She squinted at the touch screen, making out the contact data scrolling across the top. Mom & Dad - Home. “Shit,” she whispered.

“It’s Nanna Maura. Take it! Commercial’s ending.”

Meg just stared at the phone. Her mother? What would she say? Did she know what Meg had done?

Well, of course she did. She would have had to by now.

Meg ran her tongue over her dry lips and tilted her face up toward Seth.

His curious expression softened to…one of mercy, perhaps? He took the phone from Toby.

“Hi. This is Sergei Rozhkov. Sorry to keep you waiting. Megan has her hands full at the moment.”