An Ex to Grind (29 page)

I reached for her hand and squeezed it. I felt so helpless. I wanted to comfort her, but how? "There must be an explanation," I tried.

"He's with Dr. Corbett!" she repeated, sounding like a robot. She was completely stunned, and who wouldn't be?

"You sure that's who the redhead is?"

She nodded, all the color drained from her face.

"Is it possible they're having a working dinner?" I said. "You know. Like maybe they needed a quiet place to discuss the latest techniques in throat cultures?"

She turned to look again. At that precise moment, Nards was taking a culture of Dr. Corbett's throat—with his tongue.

Weezie put her head on the table and started to sob. "I never in a million years thought he'd cheat on me," she said, although it was hard to hear her with her mouth buried in the tablecloth. "I married him because he was supposed to be honest and dependable. I can't believe this. I just can't believe it."

"Do you want me to go over there and talk to him?" I offered. "I bet he's just having a midlife crisis and needs to be reminded of his responsibilities."

"He's too young for a midlife crisis," she moaned. "What he's having is an affair. I hate him. And I hate Desiree for fixing me up with him."

It wasn't a good night for Desiree. "What are you going to do?" I asked.

She didn't answer for several long seconds, her chest heaving with sobs. Then all of a sudden, she picked her head up, wiped her eyes, straightened her posture, and stood, albeit wobbly. "I'm going to confront him. That's what I'm going to do."

With that, she marched over to Nards and the redhead. From my seat, all I could see was that he looked horrified, the redhead looked smug, and Weezie looked like a lady. She didn't throw a drink at anybody. She didn't throw a punch at anybody. She simply spoke a few words to them, wheeled around, and walked back to our table.

"What'd you say?" I asked, breathless with the melodrama—the total impossibility—of my best friend's husband, the least likely of men to stray, straying.

"I told them the chicken was rubbery and suggested they order the shrimp," she said. "And then I told Nards not to bother to come home."

"Oh, Weezie," I said, pained by the hurt in her eyes. "Do you want to stay at my apartment tonight? The sofa's a pullout."

"Thanks, but the kids need me." She paused, gathering her thoughts before continuing. "He fell in love with me when I was a big shot career woman. Then I became a full-time wife and mother, and he said he loved me even more. And now what? He's bored with the full-time wife and mother and is having a fling with a big shot career woman. What does that say about what men really want?"

"Only that we all want what we can't have," I said. "You told me the only reason I've been viewing Dan in a more flattering light is because I can't have him anymore. Maybe Nards will come to his senses just the way I will."

Only I didn't come to my senses. Not that week or the week after or the week after that. In fact, the revelation about Nards's infidelity only made Dan look better in my eyes and my respect for him stronger. I remembered how faithful he'd been to me when we were married. And it wasn't as if he didn't have opportunities. He was a sports god in a country that worships sports gods, and wherever the Giants traveled, women followed. Groupies threw themselves at him, but he never let the situation get out of hand. He wasn't a saint—I knew there were flirtations—but he managed to avoid the bars and clubs that other players frequented and kept to himself most of the time. He was "a family man," he told everybody, and for his entire career he had a squeaky clean reputation. It wasn't until our relationship deteriorated and we stopped sleeping together that he started staying out late and coming home even later, and by then I didn't care what he did.

You may not have a job, but you're not a cheater, I thought as I waited for Dan to bring Buster over that Monday morning.

When he arrived, I invited him in for coffee, our new ritual.

"I've got some crumb cake too," I said. "I, um, made it." Evan had lent me his
Joy of Cooking
, and I actually followed the recipe in it. Hey, if Leah could cook, so could I.

Dan was disbelieving. "
You
baked?" he said with a good-natured laugh.

"I baked. Let me cut you a piece."

"I'm watching the calories these days, but there's no way I'm gonna miss this historic event. Besides, we've got something to celebrate."

"What now? An interview with another college?"

He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me with the sky blue eyes that had made me weak in the knees the first time I saw them. "I got the L.I.U. job."

I shrieked with excitement, scaring Buster. "Oh my God, Dan! This is incredible!"

"I know. I'm still in a daze. They want me to coach the C.W. Post Pioneers in the fall. Me." He shook his head in amazement. "I'm employed. What do you think of that, huh?"

What did I think of it? Well, I was thrilled for him, of course, but also proud of him. I always knew he could find work if only he'd try, and now he'd tried and done it. He wasn't a bumbo anymore. He had pulled himself together, embraced life, taken charge of it, grown up. Everything I'd wanted for him. For us. But there was no "us." He belonged to Leah, and I was the genius who'd made it happen. Suddenly, I was more than confused. I was depressed.

"I think you'll make an outstanding coach," I said, forcing myself to sound upbeat. Like Leah. "I always told you that."

"You did, Mel." His hands were still on my shoulders, his gaze fixed on me. My knees weren't weak, but I felt my pulse race. "You told me over and over, but I was too—" He stopped himself and moved away from me, over to the sofa. "No point in dwelling on the past, right? I got the job. That's the important thing."

"Right. And this really does call for a celebration."

I served him the coffee and cake, sat next to him on the sofa, and watched intently as he took his first bite of what was basically a box worth of sugar held together by a tub worth of butter. "How is it?" I said as he was chewing.

"It's…"

"What?"

"Give me a second," he said with a mouth full.

I waited.

"It's… just like my mother's."

I smiled. "Give me a break. Your mother's a great cook. If this is even edible, I'll be happy."

"It's delicious. Honest. And I appreciate that you made it." He laughed. "Remember that time you tried to make a souffle?"

I burst out laughing with the memory. The coach of the Giants and his wife came over for dinner a few months after Dan was drafted. Instead of having the party fully catered, I got ambitious and decided to make my own dessert—a type of dessert that's hard to pull off even if you know what you're doing in the kitchen. But during a dry run the night before, it became evident that I should leave the cooking to the pros. "My souffle looked more like a Frisbee."

"And tasted just as good."

"Thank God you bought that apple tart as a backup."

We laughed some more about the incident, and the mood in the room was so relaxed, so totally different from those months and months of nastiness. Dan was appealing again, the way he used to be, and it was hard not to feel—

No. I wasn't supposed to feel anything. Sure, his new job impressed me, and there was no question that his new behavior was turning my head, making me think we might have had a second chance if Leah were out of the picture, but that wasn't the case. She was very much in the picture, and I was simply the ex.

I was about to offer him more coffee when my doorbell rang.

"Who is it?" I called out.

"Evan," he called back. "Glad I caught you before you left for work. I want to ask you something."

Evan. Talk about bad timing. Not that I wasn't always glad to see him. It was just that I only had Dan to myself once a week, and I didn't feel like sending him back to
her
so soon.

"I'm kind of busy," I said through the door.

"Who's Evan?" Dan asked with an odd expression, as if he couldn't imagine that I might have a life.

"My neighbor," I said.

"Kind of early in the day for a visit, isn't it?"

"He lives right—"

"Hey, Melanie," Evan said, ringing my bell again. "Open up. One question and I'm out of there, I promise."

"Sounds important," said Dan. "I should go."

He set his coffee down on the table, stood up, and headed for the door. I trailed after him.

"You can stay if you want," I told him and opened the door.

"Oh," said Evan when he saw Dan. "Sorry, Melanie. I didn't realize you had company."

"No problem," I said. "My ex-husband came to drop Buster off."

"Traffic Dan Swain." Evan, who was in his standard smock and jeans, seemed startled by Dan's presence—not awestruck like a fan, because he didn't really follow sports; just surprised to be face-to-face with the man he'd heard me rant and rave about. "Great to meet you," he said. "I'm Evan Gillespie."

I expected Dan to give Evan the toothpaste-commercial smile that came naturally to him after all the years of being in the public eye, but he responded with a hint of a snarl. I'm not kidding; his upper lip sort of curled.

Either ignoring the chilly response or just determined to be friendly, Evan grabbed Dan's hand and shook it warmly.

"Nice to meet you too, pal," Dan finally managed. Pal? What was that about? It sounded so condescending and very un-Dan. He was the glad-hander who was always so cordial to strangers, so gracious and eager to put them at ease. But not this time. For some reason, he seemed to have taken an instant and inexplicable dislike to Evan.

"Evan's been an enormous help to me," I said, trying to smooth over the awkwardness. "He calls me his damsel in distress, and he's always there to rescue me when I do something stupid."

"And she's not the easiest person to rescue," Evan said jokingly. "She's pretty feisty, but then you already know that."

Dan tensed again—how odd!—and said, "She always seemed pretty capable to me. Aren't you, darlin'?" He put his arm around my shoulder, almost as if he were reclaiming his territory. I honest-to-God didn't know what to make of his behavior.

"Evan's a very gifted painter," I said, just keeping the conversation going.

"You do portraits or something?" said Dan in yet another condescending tone that was so unlike him.

"No. Mostly images of the sea," said Evan. "The water's magic for me."

"Then why would you live here?" asked Dan, suddenly the expert on painting. "The East River isn't the most inspiring body of water I can think of."

"New York's been my base," said Evan. "I go off to the islands for inspiration."

"You should see the painting he did in the Bahamas," I said to Dan, who was still holding on to me, still not the congenial guy he usually was with new people. "It's so realistic that you feel as if you're there."

Evan smiled at me. "I should hire you as my publicist. But instead I'll ask the question I came here to ask and then let you get on with your business. Are you and Buster free Wednesday night? I was planning another culinary extravaganza, Chez Gillespie."

I turned to Dan. "Evan's a fabulous cook too. He even feeds Buster."

Dan's response? "Sounds like you're taking care of everybody around here, pal."

The "pal" again! So bizarre!

I hoped that by plowing ahead and bringing Evan's visit to an end, the discomfort all three of us were experiencing would be over. "Dinner on Wednesday would be great," I said. "Thanks for the invitation."

"My pleasure," said Evan, who turned to Dan and grabbed his hand for a goodbye shake. "And a pleasure meeting you, pal." Obviously, it hadn't been a pleasure, but off he went, and the tension in the room eased.

Dan removed his arm from around my shoulder, checked his watch, and announced that he had to get going too. I, of course, was already late for the office.

As he stepped across my threshold, he stopped and said, "The guy's got it bad for you, darlin'."

"Evan?" I said, bewildered by the remark. "What makes you say that?"

"What makes me say it?" He grinned, coming through with the toothpaste-commercial smile after the fact. "Because I've been there. Takes one to know one, right?"

After my ex walked out the door, I leaned against it, staring after him like one of his groupies, his parting words reverberating in my head. I had no sense of Evan's feelings for me, nor were they my focus then. What I wondered was whether Dan really did "have it bad for me." Present tense. And was that why he'd treated Evan with such disdain?

How else to explain what had just happened? How else to account for the climate change in my apartment after Evan showed up? Dan had been in a great mood—the best mood. We'd been celebrating, reminiscing, enjoying each other's company. And then along came Evan. Suddenly, Dan wasn't himself, speaking to my neighbor with near scorn, almost as if he were sizing him up like a rival.

A rival! That was it! Dan had never seen me with another man, and, given my workaholic tendencies and my professed disinterest in romance, he probably figured he never would. But there I was, first thing in the morning, with a very attractive guy at my door, and he was jealous!

I staggered into the apartment, sank onto the sofa, and let this revelation register. Dan was jealous. The idea of me moving on with someone else at some point in the distant future was one thing. But actually watching me interact with someone else—accept a date with someone else—was a very different reality. A reality for which he obviously wasn't prepared.

He's still in love with me, I thought with a jolt. He hasn't gotten me out of his system any more than I've been able to let him go.

It must be true. His relationship with Leah wasn't as solid as it appeared. She hadn't won his heart after all, not if he still cared for me.

And he did still care. Yes, my ex, who had gone out and gotten a fulfilling job and turned himself into the kind of man I'd hoped he'd be, still cared for me.

And so, knowing Leah was no longer blocking my path, knowing that nothing was blocking my path, I decided I wanted him back.