She nodded, then nodded again, a little abstracted. “You two—you and Annalisa—how is it? Are you...?”
Rachel trailed off, glanced off, fiddled with her napkin.
“Amicable, yeah. Pretty much. I don’t think we’d either one say we did that cliché thing, you know, have a kid to fix our relationship?”
She nodded.
“Oh. That wasn’t you and Sergei, was it? Did I say something crass?”
Rachel’s smile, when it caught the dappled light and was enhanced by her flush from kayaking and the raspberry-lime popsicle, made him feel like he’d somehow invaded a watercolor painting. “Not hardly. There was nothing to fix, and Hannah just complicated everything. Not that I minded, in the end, of course.”
“Sure, how could you? She’s aces.”
“She sure is.”
He grinned right back. “So is Andres. He steals my breath away, you know?”
She did. He could see it in the flash of her blue eyes as she nodded.
“The line I give, and I had plenty of soul-searching with a therapist and even she agrees now it’s true, is that the problems with Annalisa and I predated Andres, and that our marriage was built on the feeling that it was time for us to check off these life events. We were already dating, so we took it to the next level without being sure we were with the right person. The stresses broke us apart before we had time to fix them.” He stopped another sweet cold purple drop from escaping the popsicle onto his hand. “Though I’m not sure we could have acted soon enough or done enough work to salvage it.”
“Mind my asking, how long ago was your divorce?”
He closed his eyes as he counted back. “Three years, three months.”
She nodded. “Around the time you opened the bar?”
He suppressed a laugh. She was quick. “Yes. And yes, that had something to do with it.”
Either she wasn’t interested, or he was pretty clear about not wanting to talk about it, but she let him change the subject to her job as a recreational therapist.
“For the most part my clients are recovering from strokes or mobility-related injuries. We do movement and dance, some crafts, sports. I think I’ll see about setting up group kayaking outings, if I can find a launch without so many steps down to it.”
They got talking about logistics of Houston’s waterways, and before he was ready, they’d washed off the residual stickiness and sauntered to their cars. He leaned against his bumper, thinking how Rachel was a creature made for sunlight.
“This was a good idea. It was just what I needed, thanks.”
He shrugged. “Any time. I mean that—I had fun, too. It’s a nice change to not be on the water alone.”
“Well, it was sweet of you to notice I needed an outlet. And all my cares floated off downstream—or down bayou, I suppose. To the Gulf, either way. I’m not going to spend one more second this weekend wondering if Hannah’s potty learning will be destroyed by Sunday night.”
He laughed. “That’s what I was diffusing?”
She was quick to temper, too. “Are you telling me I was overreacting?”
He held out a hand. “Peace. We didn’t get Andres out of pull-ups until after his third birthday. I still have stress dreams about reward charts.”
To his relief—and pleasure—she took his hand and used it as leverage to pull up onto her toes as she leaned in to kiss his cheek. Lips softer than her fingertips. “Peace. See you later.”
He hoped she meant her words, meant them even though he’d never managed to bring up making plans for another date. He hoped the quickness with which she hopped into her car and pulled out onto Allen Parkway indicated only that she was a woman unburdened by stress, and not that she was eager to leave him, standing in the dusty-hot parking lot, alone.
That month’s Sunday dinner with the gals was at Serena and Dillon’s. As they finished their meal, Rachel kept finding her gaze drawn to the framed game board mounted on the wall opposite her.
After eating, she spoke up. “I want a do-over.”
Her friends, in unison, turned to look at the fortuneteller they’d concocted, back when all of them were unattached. Natalie’s not-yet-ex had disappeared on her, and Serena masterminded the game board as a combined distraction and comfort. It was a grid of predictions about their true loves, like they were back in middle school fantasizing about the future. Hair color, eye color, what car he drove. How he’d perform in bed, because they were adult women not seventh graders and they had important criteria at stake. Once Serena indulged all her graphic designer impulses to beautify it, they’d all rolled dice to determine their romantic futures.
It would have been simple silliness, except that Serena and Dillon proceeded to fall like skydivers for each other. And now Natalie had Evan, who was making obvious faces at Nat and saying, “The die never lie, Rachel.”
He and Dillon fist-bumped. “Damn straight,” Dillon said. Then, “Ouch. Sorry, Rachel.”
“I will start banning you two from dinner if you can’t watch your language around Hannah,” she said. And fist-bumped Serena to thank her for kicking her cursing fiancé.
“It’s my house,” Dillon said, as if that could keep him from being banned.
Serena, on cue, said, “My house.”
“A plague on both of yours house,” Evan said. “Why do I have to get banned when he’s the problem?”
“Because neither of you understands why Rachel gets a do-over with the game board. Go do the dishes or something,” Natalie said to both men. She cleared space on the dining table while Serena stood to lift the game board from its hook.
Dillon started to collect plates, but Rachel stopped him. “I need a die.”
He handed the stack to Evan and started towards the living room.
“Make sure it’s not twelve-sided or anything,” she added.
Dillon turned around, eyebrows raised. “Not every sci-fi fan plays D&D you know.”
Rachel smirked and went back to helping Hannah wipe her chin.
Crossing his arms, Dillon leaned against the doorjamb and leveled a resigned look at Serena. “You told them?”
“I tell them everything.”
“That she does, Rocket Man,” Gillian sing-songed. Serena had rolled for the rocket ship in the fortune-teller’s ‘Sexytimes’ column. “One six-sided die, please.”
He was a good-natured man. As was Evan, but his recent revolt at being treated as the eternal baby of his family made him less fun to tease than Dillon, who still relished the role of little brother. And much as she admired Evan and Natalie’s relationship, it was still newer to her. Part of the Sergei fall-out was that Rachel was far less trusting about men in partnerships than she once was.
As if to prove his worth, Evan brought her a damp paper towel to help with Hannah cleanup. So maybe the game board’s success rate boded well. But Rachel’s own original rolls had conjured up Sergei. Or someone exactly like him.
In other words, everything she was never falling for again.
And sure, she knew all about confirmation bias. Libra horoscopes only had some eerie accuracy as long as she filtered out the stuff that didn’t fit her life. Just look at Dillon. No sign of either a motorcycle or a dog, both elements Serena had rolled for back when she’d first started seeing him. That didn’t stop her seeing a touch of fate or magic or some such in their union.
Dillon delivered a handful of dice and took the rest of the dinner detritus through to the kitchen, where Evan was scraping plates into the compost bin. Rachel lifted Hannah out of her chair and sent her toddling after the men, then centered the game board on the table between the four friends. “It’s not that I’m looking for a new husband or anything.”
“Sure. We know.” Natalie handed her a sparkly purple die.
“Let’s say last time your cosmic forces weren’t aligned right, because it was too close to the divorce,” Serena said.
“Right. Slimy Sergei tainted my rolls.”
“Typical of him.” Gillian hadn’t
even snorted at their hint of mysticism, which is how Rachel knew her friends were not so secretly hoping she was ready to try a serious relationship again. That, and the fact Gillian kept passing along lipsticks she claimed weren’t her color once she got them out of the store.
Well, good for them. She had reservations.
Reservations that hadn’t kept her gaze from straying to the game board all through dinner. So she trapped the die between her palms and rubbed for luck. Her chest had that irritating tightness, the kind she had to breathe through when her therapist asked if her thought patterns were giving Sergei power over her actions. She blew on the die. “First roll.”
“Hair color,” Natalie said, and her voice was steady and encouraging.
Opening her palms and letting the die drop straight onto the table, she lifted her chin and looked at Serena. Serena smiled and glanced down. “Three. Brown hair.”
“Same as last time.”
Gillian picked up a black die with green pips. “Well, statistically, that’s the most common anyway. I’m still searching for my bald man.”
“Wait long enough or expand your age range enough and your odds will improve,” Serena said.
“Or hang out near barber shops,” Evan added. He had Hannah on his hip and an arched eyebrow. “And brown is the second most common hair color. Those of us with raven locks prevail, don’t we, Hannah?”
Her daughter thunked her head against his chest and rubbed her eyes.
“I’m thinking of taking sleepyhead here for a walk around the block.”
One quick heart thud, and Rachel swallowed so she could nod.
“Unless you’d rather I didn’t?”
“Rach—”
“No, it’s okay.” She placed a palm on Natalie’s outstretched arm, and then took in Evan’s ease with the toddler. “It is. You’re sweet to offer, thanks.”
“Want me to go with?” Dillon asked from the kitchen.
She and Evan said no at the same time. “Let me take her to the potty first,” she added.
Shut in the bathroom, coaxing the tired girl through her routine, she could hear murmurs of conversation from the dining room. Evan sounded worried, and so did Gillian, then Dillon made a joke of some kind. She hoped it broke the tension. She hoped it wasn’t at her expense.
Hoisting Hannah, she rejoined them. “I doubt you’ll get as far as the driveway before she conks out,” she told Evan.
“Nat can track my phone if you want to watch our progress,” he said.
She kissed him and Hannah both on their cheeks. “Being ridiculous can also get you banned from dinners, you know. My hesitation isn’t about you. It’s just a mom thing. A mom with maybe a couple of issues thing.”
He squeezed her shoulder before heading out. It made no more sense as reassurance than anything he’d said, but still, she turned back to the game board with a full, genuine grin. “And now for eye color.”
Chapter Eight
Theo drummed fidgety fingers on the countertop. He’d spent the day baking desserts for Elixir, which should have been soothing but left him restless like he’d substituted cardamom for cloves and had no idea how the recipe would come out. None of the pies themselves seemed off; he was the one without all the right ingredients.
He pulled out of clean rag and began wiping down his stand mixer. Thing was, yeah, he liked Rachel. She was sexy, complicated, bright, an excellent mom. Hot. Something about her coiled strength made him think it would be fuck ton of fun to be around when she decompressed.
And her ex was his manager. A friend of a friend of someone’s relative, in the way things worked in their community. Four résumés landed on his desk the day after someone at church heard about the open manager’s position. Of those, he’d picked Sergei, and neither he nor Ron regretted it.
He didn’t care—he didn’t think he cared—what the deal was with Sergei and Rachel’s marriage and divorce. In general, knowing their outline meant it wasn’t too hard to shade in the picture. Married young, discovered they one or the other or both had problems they couldn’t surmount, ended the marriage and figured out a way to co-parent despite whatever had gone wrong. Not a lot of closeness between them, but nothing alarming.
None of it impacted Sergei’s ability to do his job. Or erased any of the awkwardness that came with telling someone on his payroll, “I’m into your kid’s mom.”
It also didn’t mean he could avoid ever talking to Sergei about it, should his half-baked ideas about Rachel rise into reality.
The kitchen timer chimed. He extracted the blackberry-raspberry pie, slid in a tray of baklava, and decided to leave the washing up for another time, when being around the sweet spicy scents of his kitchen wouldn’t prompt such maudlin and too-hasty ruminations.
By Wednesday, he’d invented an excuse to ask Sergei if he would have Hannah at Elixir. Cobbled together some cheese and honey pastry bites, based on a hand pie recipe he’d run across. Claimed he wanted a kid’s initial reaction. He knew Hannah liked his baklava, but these had a more savory flavor profile. Theo thought it could be added to the children’s menu. If Hannah didn’t throw them on the floor.
“Are there nuts in them?” Sergei asked.
“Hannah’s allergic?”
“No,” he shrugged, “I don’t think so. Her daycare is nut-free.”
“But she can eat tree nuts, right? She’s had pistachios here.”
“She has?” He glanced at the daily specials board at the end of the bar, as if it held the history of his daughter’s menu choices. “Right. Sure. She can eat tree nuts.”
Theo wasn’t getting the answer he needed. If Hannah would be at the pub, Rachel would drop her off, and he could aim to waylay her and ask if she wanted to go out again sometime. Catch a movie or grab a meal. Or spend the next couple of hours naked with him. “So it’s okay for me to test these out on her tonight?”
“Right. Sure thing. But I’ll have to check with her mom.” He didn’t sound eager for the encounter.
Theo tried to channel casual disinterest. “Want me to ask her about it?”
“Who, Rachel?”
He nodded.
“Sure. That works.” Sergei checked his watch. “She should be here in like forty minutes. Do me a favor? Find out about the whole nuts thing without telling her you asked me first?”
He wasn’t going to play with his gift horse. “You got it.”
No matter what Gillian might accuse her of, Rachel did not reapply her lip-gloss before unlatching Hannah from her car seat. Well, she did, but it was because they were dry, not because Theo might be inside when she dropped Hannah off. And they were only dry because it was that kind of weather—an odd lack of humidity for a Houston summer. None of that had to do with Theo’s brown hair and computer-related job and the possibility he had a goldfish swimming around somewhere.
Not that she was looking for permanence of any kind, like Serena and Natalie had found rolling dice for their relationships. Just ... something a step up from occasional hasty single encounters between near-strangers. She’d had, for now, her fill of those.
She paused in the doorway of Elixir to let her eyes adjust, and to hunt down Sergei. In the dim light, it was natural she’d mistake the man over by the bar for her ex, with their same build and his back to her and all. Never mind that her stomach’s slight flip was so different from the distinct knot she got whenever she had to walk up to Sergei. Hannah, at least, seemed to know the difference between the men. She lunged at Theo as they approached, and he caught her up easily, settling her on his hip with a ready laugh and a kiss to her forehead.
Rachel decided her body language must explain it all. No matter how she worked to keep an upbeat tone about Hannah’s dad, her daughter must pick up on nonverbal cues, and that’s why every handoff to Sergei was a struggle. But with Theo, there was none of the clinging, or the repeating of ‘no no, Mama,’ or the occasional and dreaded toddler tantrums. She went to him as readily as she did to any of Rachel’s friends,
or to Depy. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Sergei. Rachel had lurked in parking lots spying on them often enough to know her daughter was all smiles as soon as the door shut behind her. So she’d already suspected the bad handoffs were her fault, even without the periodic comments from Sergei telling her so.
Add another thing to the list of ‘ways Mama’s decision to divorce screwed up Hannah’s life.’
“Hey,” Theo touched her upper arm gently. “You okay?”
“Sure.”
He pressed a little harder, both with his fingers and with his words. “Seems like you’re shaken up or something.”
Rather than enlighten him about all the ways she was failing at the most essential responsibility of her life, she backed up and narrowed her eyes at him. “You think every time I come in here upset now you have to swoop in to my rescue?”
His deep brown eyes widened. “I wasn’t trying to talk you into anything.”
She looked at her daughter, kicking and content in the cradle of his arm. Told herself to dial down her stress levels so Hannah wouldn’t cry when she left. “All right. Sorry. How are you?”
“Good. Fine. Happy to see you again. I was going to call but I don’t have your number.”
She maintained her pleasant face. Reminded herself she’d had a good time with the man, and anyway, he wasn’t to blame for her bad parenting. “I didn’t think about that.” Not that she’d called him herself. Hadn’t planned to. Didn’t cross her mind to imagine doing anything further with him.
“Hey, little H.” Sergei came from behind her and lifted Hannah from Theo. The men exchanged a look she couldn’t quite decipher.
Theo turned back to her, nodding. “So, you know I make the desserts here?”
She shook her head.
“Yeah. Well, the baked ones. And I have a new one, a savory variation on baklava, I want to add it to the kids menu.”
“Right?” She wasn’t sure how it mattered to her.
“I thought I’d see if Hannah would be my taste-tester. If that’s okay with you?”
Roll of a Lifetime Page 5