Friday Mornings at Nine (30 page)

Nevertheless, she broke their kiss long enough to ask a question she’d wondered on a number of occasions. “Do you have a tool belt?”

He groaned. “Oh, God. You’re one of those.”

“C’mon, Aaron. It’s sexy. Tell me you’ve—”

She didn’t have a chance to finish because he rolled fully atop her, crushed his mouth to hers and rammed his pelvis hard against her. She gasped. Guess he wore his tools all day, every day.

He yanked at her waistband. “These need to come off.” He sprung off her, pulled her upright and moved about the room, snapping the blinds closed completely and adding another log to the fire. Then he wandered into the bathroom, dug around in there for a minute and returned, only to begin tossing the cushions off the sofa.

“What are you doing?”

He lobbed a handful of Trojans onto the coffee table and pulled out the bed inside the couch. “Sleeper sofa.” He pointed to the thin mattress. “My bed’s softer, but there’s no fireplace upstairs.”

“And these?” she asked, waving her open palm at the condoms.

“Better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. Isn’t that what you told me once?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, I’m breaking that rule. Tell me yes or no. I can escort you home right now because, as I’ve already been compelled to warn you, this is a supremely bad idea. But I’m not going to fight against well-informed bad judgments. You have all the background. You know we shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not wise, even if you’ll be legally separated soon. But it’s also been a long time for me and, like I said, I wanna nail you in front of a roaring fire, so…”

Oh, this was interesting. She hadn’t asked him much about his love life post-divorce. “How long has it been?”

“Five months, almost six—so, expect enthusiasm.”

They met each other’s gaze and laughed. And this—this, too—was something she had never had with Jon. Or even with the handful of men she had slept with before getting married.

Suddenly, a conversation with her aunt from years ago finally made sense. Aunt Eliza had said her husband was
funny
in bed. That they could joke about everything, even their sex life. Tamara hadn’t experienced that. Jon took every aspect of their life and their relationship seriously. He took himself even more so. In their bedroom, he was either solemn or intense. A workaholic in there as he was everywhere. And, after a while, she’d lost what little bit of humor she’d had about intimacy. When Aunt Eliza told her this about her uncle, Tamara had already been married for a dozen years. She could understand intellectually what her beloved aunt was saying, but it had never seemed real to her. Not until this night.

She unbuttoned her jeans. “I’m staying.”

He made a weird sound that seemed to come from the very back of his throat. “Good.” He unbuttoned his jeans, too, and pulled them off. He nodded in the direction of her pullover. “I wouldn’t cry if you took that off also.”

She disrobed to her underwear and planted herself on the now-open sofa bed. She struck a languid pose, waiting for him to slide onto the mattress next to her. Which he did in a matter of seconds.

She ran the tips of her fingers over his bare arm, enjoying the texture of the muscle just below his skin. In a dreamy voice, she said, “So, you’re saying, if I stay here tonight, we can just cuddle?”

Through heavy-lidded eyes, she watched his jaw tighten. Watched him swallow and nod. Very slowly. “We can just cuddle,” he said through a sigh. “Are you telling me that’s what you want?”

She opened her eyes wide and grinned at him. “Nope. I want you to nail me in front of the fire. Try to make me regret this—how did you put it? ‘Well-informed bad judgment.’ I dare you.”

“Did I not say
you
were the manipulative one? Hmm?” Then he embraced her, engulfed her, rocked into her. And, even though she knew this was a fling and it could never last beyond a few pleasurable, transitional months, she had to acknowledge Aaron was
much
better than her vibrating bunny.

Still, in the quiet hours of the night, she couldn’t help but suffer the stabs of guilt she would have to be a hard-hearted bitch not to feel. How arrogant she was, really, to act as though she and Aaron had both made these terrible marital choices. Didn’t everyone know a spousal crisis took two people to form? Based on both her behavior and Aaron’s—it was likely they were each the
causes
of their respective marital rifts, not just the injured victims. In which case, perhaps they deserved each other.

“Hey,” he said, his voice sleepy since it was probably two
A.M
. She was facing away from him, but he caressed her shoulder and pulled higher the blanket he had thrown onto them earlier. “Are you regretting?”

She twisted toward him so she could look him in the eye. “No, Aaron. Not a bit.”

They chatted a little longer, finally finished the last of the Sauvignon Blanc, channel surfed until they had watched snippets of about ten different stupid cable sitcoms and made love again. This time so long and leisurely, she was left drained of the energy to even dwell on the mess she would have to deal with at home.

Exhausted, she and Aaron fell deeply asleep and woke up embarrassingly late the next morning.

As it turned out, no one would have been any the wiser if Tamara had not left her cell phone at home.

Jennifer and Bridget stared at each other as the clock inched ten minutes past nine, then twenty minutes past nine, then thirty…and, still, Tamara hadn’t shown up for their standing coffee date.

“It’s not like her to blow us off,” Bridget said. “She’s never done that before.”

Jennifer agreed. “She’s always at least called or e-mailed one of us.” She pulled out her cell phone, dialed Tamara’s home number and got the answering machine.

“She’s not there?” Bridget asked.

Jennifer shook her head and tried Tamara’s cell number but got the same result.

Bridget bit her lip. “Should we be worried? Maybe go over there?”

“Let’s give her a few hours. If we don’t hear from her by noon, I can drive over and check up on her. Hard for me to believe she just
forgot
. Something must’ve happened.”

Of course, Tamara did—eventually—wake up. She remembered the Indigo Moon Café and her friends, and she said, “Oh, shit.”

Using Aaron’s cell, she left an apology message on Bridget’s machine. With Jennifer, she got a hold of her in person.

“Sorry. I just overslept,” Tamara lied (in principle if not in fact).

Jennifer thought herself quite charitable to go along with this charade. But there was the odd phone number that showed up on her Caller ID and the even odder tone in Tamara’s voice, which her friend might have camouflaged on voice mail, but not in a real-time interaction.

Jennifer wasn’t fooled. She knew all about covering up.

Saturday, November 13

I
n the past couple of weeks since the big Halloween party, the stalemate between Jennifer and Michael only solidified. She wasn’t sure how they had managed it, but somehow they both acquired the useful skill of never occupying the same room at the same time. Veronica and Shelby, understandably, found this disconcerting.

Jennifer didn’t know how Michael chose to answer their daughters’ questions about why one of them always slept on the couch these days (something she and Michael typically did only on rare occasion, when one person was up all night with a bad cold or flu). Her pat response to the girls’ expressions of concern was to tell them, “Don’t worry. Your father and I are just going through a difficult patch in our relationship. We need time to think.” Then, to Shelby’s inevitable, “How long is this gonna last?” and Veronica’s infuriated, “I
knew
something was going on! What happened?” Jennifer, again, never veered from her answer of “We just had a disagreement about something. It doesn’t involve either of you girls. We’ll work it out.”

Veronica huffed and stalked away, not even bothering to correct her on the use of “girls” versus “women.” Shelby just hid in her room.

Michael, whose conversation to her in the past week had been limited to scintillating phrases such as, “I sent in the mortgage payment yesterday,” “I’ll pick up Shelby from her friend’s house” or “I’ve got a department meeting that goes until four-thirty,” addressed her briefly that morning (as he slipped by her, hastily retreating from the kitchen as she entered it). “Are you going to be gone tonight?” he asked.

Over a number of days, she had thought a great deal about her answer to that question and her reason for it, but to Michael she only said, “Yes.” She said it, however, very clearly.

He emitted a noise, something she took to be disgust, and sometime around noon he left the house with both of their daughters for a movie day. Shelby shot Jennifer an anxious glance on her way out the door. Veronica narrowed her eyes at her mom and dramatically threw her palms up in a show of chronic irritation.

By two-thirty, however, Jennifer had packed an overnight bag—just in case she needed it (a snowstorm in mid-November wasn’t unheard of in the Midwest), finished a number of chores around the house, double-checked her e-mail and voice mail (each contained messages from David, which she returned quickly—“Yes, I’m coming!”) and chose an outfit to wear that was both comfortable for driving three hours round-trip and, also, flattering on her. She wasn’t a fashion hound like Tamara, but she hadn’t seen anyone, except for that one time with David, since graduation. It wouldn’t kill her to look nice.

The reunion started at five o’clock (well, 5:07, to be exact), but with weekend traffic to consider, lane closures on the toll roads or any other surprises, she’d give herself an hour’s leeway.

There was a familiarity to her drive down to C-IL-U, which made her thankful for her prior excursion last month. She knew precisely which landmarks she could expect to see on the interstate and which radio stations came in clearest in her car. That, at least, was comforting. Just as before, though, she was assaulted by gloomy melodies on the station she’d tuned in to, which convinced her that the seventies were a dreadfully depressing era. (“Fire and Rain” by James Taylor, anyone?) But flipping stations didn’t help. Neither the eighties power ballads nor the angsty nineties grunge eased her anxiety. Country hits, rap and alternative were not consistently cheering. And nothing about the new, post-millennium music her daughters loaded onto their iPods could soothe her either.

So, it was back to the decade of disco, bell-bottoms and the original
Star Wars
action figures. But, between Yvonne Elliman belting out “If I Can’t Have You” and that disturbing song called—can you believe it?—“Torn Between Two Lovers,” Jennifer found herself wishing for one of Luke Skywalker’s light sabers so she could slit her wrists.

By the time she reached campus, her road trip (morose melodic accompaniment aside) had successfully helped her transition from her Michael world to her David one. Although, in remembering Tamara’s question—“Which world are you in when you’re alone?”—Jennifer still had no answer. Was there an independent Jennifer World out there, or was her “world” simply comprised of fractured pieces…collected castoffs of her parents’ lives, her time with David, her marriage with Michael, her small circle of friends and her daughters? And how did some people instinctively
know
who they were and where they belonged? She felt herself to be little more than camouflage-colored wallpaper on the screen of her own life. A lost chameleon.

Even after a leisurely drive through town and the careful selection of a parking space, she was still too early to venture over to the Vat Building. So, she sat in her car and applied a light layer of powder and a little lipstick. Then she stared out the window, watching as the sun descended on the campus of her youth.

Her cell phone rang. David.

“You here yet?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, come to the lounge. Help me set up.”

“Isn’t Mitch there helping?” she asked him. “I don’t want to get in the way.”

“Please, Jenn.”

And that was how she found herself facing an assembly of acquaintances—a few who had actually been close friends back then—a full half hour prior to the start of the event. In fact, of the fifteen confirmed attendees, eleven were there early, so eager were they to reestablish that fleeting sense of unity and techie supremacy they’d felt within these walls. It had once flowed like electricity through their fingertips. That night, it was clear this was no longer the case but for a select few.

The first person to see her walk through the door was Pete, one of the CPU regulars from their college years. “Whoa, Jennifer?” he said, grinning. “Time’s been good to you. You look great.”

She couldn’t honestly exclaim the same—he’d grown both bald and pudgy—but what a warm, welcoming smile he still had. She grinned back and said, “Thanks, Pete. It’s wonderful to see you, too. How have you been?”

He told her a bit about his wife, their three little ones and the newest baby boy that’d arrived in April. The love he had for his family, however, could not mask the wistfulness he felt in being back in this room. Jennifer understood that. The world had once been limitless inside the Vat Building. They had once been untouchable. Neither was true anymore.

She saw David watching her from across the room. He lifted his hand in a wave and indicated he’d be there in a minute. She turned her attention back to Pete, who was still chattering sweetly about his family.

“Oh, but this story is
really
cute,” he said, and launched into a tale about his four-year-old daughter. But before he got out more than one sentence about her attachment to “Dolly” her stuffed llama, he was interrupted by Bill—one of the always obnoxious Ehle brothers—carrying a cheese, sausage and cracker tray into the Techie Lounge.

“Yo, Jennifer. Long time, sunshine,” Bill the more annoying twin said. “Hey, Pete, can you set this down on that table over there for me? Thanks, man.” He deposited the tray into Pete’s hands and, with a turn of his head, dismissed him. Pete blinked and slunk away as if slapped.

Jennifer swallowed and opened her mouth to tell him that wasn’t very polite, but he wouldn’t have heard her anyway.

“So, what’s been up with you? You in IT?”

She began to shake her head, but Bill didn’t wait for her to explain.

“You know, me and Bryce, we’ve been having a
very
good year.” He leaned in and she could smell brandy on his breath already, even though the cocktails weren’t set to begin for another twenty-some minutes. “We got a bead on a project that—” He leaned in even closer. “I probably shouldn’t be tellin’ you this, but we think Microsoft is gonna be hot for it.” He eyed her up and down as if his clearly embellished “project” gave him the right to inspect everything and everyone that crossed his path.

“Really?” she managed. “How interesting.” She took a step toward David, but Bill followed her.

“Yeah, I can’t reveal any of the details yet, but, me and Bryce, we’re pretty sure we’re gonna get a big offer by—”

David strode over and clapped Bill on that back. “You’d better not spill more than that,” he told him. “I could hear you over there by the tables.” David pointed for good measure. “Just think what would happen if those top-secret details of yours got into the wrong hands?”

Bill’s jaw dropped. “Uh…”

David threw his arms around Jennifer and gave her a side hug. “Nice to see you,” he said to her. Then, to Bill, “You know, if we could find a quiet corner, I’d
really
like to hear more about what you and Bryce are doing after dinner. I mean, if we could be sure it’d be
private
. But, for now, I need Jenn’s help, okay?” And with that he steered her away toward the drinks table.

She chuckled low enough so only he could hear. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, his arm still around her. Then, louder, “Could you help me put some ice and a few of these beer bottles in the cooler?”

“No problem,” she said, game for anything, even inane tasks, especially when he smiled at her that way, so much like the boy she’d known. Or, rather, thought she’d known.

She dipped her head, remembering, and started pouring ice into the jumbo C-IL-U cooler. It was clear Mitch and David spear-headed the event with a College Life theme in mind. Though everyone in attendance chipped in to cover the cost of the room, the booze and the food, the slogan of the night may well have been “The Way We Were.” She brushed a rogue ice chip off her casual but tastefully tailored outfit. Looking around her at some of the guys in the room, she thought she was the only one who missed the announcement of the jeans and sweatshirts dress code.

Until she spotted Allie.

Allie was wearing jeans—of a type. They were black and formfitting, tapered to the ankles with black low-cut boots on her feet and some very sheer ivory material for a top. She wouldn’t have looked
grossly
out of place, however, if it weren’t for her expression of rapt fascination when she was chatting it up with a number of the guys—first Keith, then Charlie, then Bill’s twin, Bryce. All of them edging up to talk with her. All of them equally riveting conversationalists, at least from the spellbound look on Allie’s face.

“I think it’s time for the drinks,” David announced, seeing the direction of Jennifer’s gaze. “What can I get you?”

“A wine. Something red,” she said absently, observing the interplay between Allie and the men. People’s personalities remained pretty constant, didn’t they?

David handed her a plastic cup of Pinot Noir. “She got divorced five years ago.”

“She tell you that?”

“Yeah,” David said quickly. “Mitch and I needed to contact everyone, so…” He grabbed a bottle of Amstel Light for himself, popped it open and raised it in a private toast with her. “Here’s to happy old days.”

She clinked with him but couldn’t bring herself to drink more than a sip. She was deluged by memories, more with every second that ticked passed. Not all of them were happy. Not even all the ones before David left. She tried another taste of wine. Its acidity seared the back of her throat as she tried to swallow it away.

David, by this time, had finished half of his beer. A
light
beer? Huh. He’d vowed never to drink that “watered-down piss,” as she recalled. Maybe times had changed more than she’d thought.

She indicated the snack tray the abominable Bill made Pete bring to the table. “Want a cracker or something?”

David shook his head. “Nope. Cheese and salami—” He shuddered. “Not good for the abs.”

She blinked at him. The
abs?
This was a far cry from the guy who’d loaded up on junk food at Kirby’s for an all-night snack-a-thon when they were nineteen.

He shrugged at her expression of disbelief. “I know, I know. But it’s easy to get a gut after a while. I wanna stay fit.”

And, indeed, she hadn’t really thought about it because, for her, keeping weight off was easier than for most (she didn’t eat when she was stressed out), but he didn’t look much heavier around the waist than he had during college. His face was fuller and older, yes, but not his stomach. Even Michael had put on some weight there, and most of the guys in the room were on the heftier side now. David must have worked hard to maintain his shape. Interesting.

“Hey, David,” Allie said, sauntering up to them and winking at David. “Good to see you…again.” She turned to Jennifer. “Wow. If it isn’t the happy couple reunited at last, huh? You look”—Allie inspected her—“unchanged. Mostly.”

Jennifer cleared her throat. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.” She feigned a sweetish smile. “So, what have you been doing lately?”
Besides being an outrageous flirt,
she added silently.

“Oh, you know.” She made a rolling motion with her hands. “One day’s a lot like the other. Work and get-togethers with friends and weekend softball tournaments and stuff.” She winked again at David. “We won our league’s championship this year. Got to go on a fun overnighter in Springfield.”

“Oh,” Jennifer said. What the hell was it with all the winking? “Are you working in programming?”

Allie’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Of course. But I get manicures every week so my fingers don’t look like it.” Never one to be underestimated, she sloughed off the fluffy-headed act for a second so Jennifer could receive the full impact of her familiar intelligence behind those nasty blue eyes. Then she held up ten perfectly polished fingernails. French-tipped. “David tells me you do…Web pages.” She laughed brightly, as if something so mundane couldn’t
really
be possible. “He said you—”

“Oh, Allie, look.” David nodded at the entrance. “Didn’t you say you were wondering when Nico was gonna show? The dude’s finally here.”

“Excellent,” Allie murmured, her attention momentarily diverted.

Jennifer wondered why the sudden interest in Nico, especially from somebody like Allie, who’d pointedly ignored the thin, quiet guy during all four years of college, preferring to focus on boys who could score her some good weed or, barring that, a high-tech microprocessor. “What’s he been doing lately?” she asked them.