Friends Without Benefits

by Marci Bolden

  “And?”

  He swirled his drink as the momentary lapse in his misery ended. “Hide in my office, probably. There’s too much of her in that house. I can’t escape her. I keep thinking I should just sell it and get the hell out while I’m still sane.”

  Sadness returned to her eyes. “I’d love to stay in my house. My boys grew up there, but I can’t afford to keep it. However, with the holidays coming up, there is no point in putting it on the market right now. And my SUV. The payments are outrageous, at least for my budget. I have to trade down, but I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

  Paul ignored the voices in his head—his sister telling him Dianna’s problems weren’t his concern and his brother warning him not to be the hero to yet another damsel in distress—and asked, “Did you get possession of the car at your hearing?”

  “Yeah. The car, the house…the bills.” She looked down. This time when she blushed, it clearly didn’t have anything to do with him staring at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve never had to worry about money before, and now it’s all I do. Mitch got a great job right out of college, and I had babies. That doesn’t pay well.” She laughed softly.

  “Not to impede your newfound independence or anything, but call me when you’re ready to trade in the SUV. My brother has a dealership. He’ll take good care of you.” He reached into his suit pocket.

  She took the business card he extended toward her. “Paul O’Connell. Attorney at Law.” She lifted her brows. “A lawyer? Wow. You seem so human.”

  His mouth opened, but he couldn’t quite find the right comeback. She threw her head back and laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, but the smile on her face said otherwise. “That wasn’t nice of me. I…sincerely. I apologize.”

  “I can tell by the way you’re still grinning.”

  She pulled her lips between her teeth, but her smirk remained. Paul couldn’t help but be amused right along with her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I mean it. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome. And my sister is a real estate agent, so, you know. Let me know about the house, too. I bet she can sell it for you in no time.”

  Her grin faltered at the mention of selling her home, and guilt kicked him in the gut. Before he could apologize, she grabbed a handful of her long red-brown hair and made a show of looking down at the strands.

  “I would kill for a makeover. Do you have a sibling for that?”

  “No. But if you’re ever in need of a fancy dress, my cousin does own a boutique on the square.”

  “What? Really?”

  He warmed at the way she scrunched up her nose. “We’re a diverse bunch.”

  “I guess so. Well,” she said thoughtfully after a moment, “I’m a fantastic cook, so if you need help feeding yourself, let me know. I’m also very good at decorating, party planning, and raising money for the booster club.”

  “Good to know.”

  A young couple entered the café and shared a kiss as they slid into a booth. Paul’s good mood faded at the reminder of what he’d lost. That was how it seemed to go. For a moment he’d forget how miserable and alone he was, but there was always something to remind him. He shook the sting away and focused on Dianna again.

  “This has been really nice,” she said.

  “It has been. Thank you. I didn’t think my afternoon would go this way.”

  She finished her drink and turned her empty cup from side to side a few times. Paul watched, almost as mesmerized by her turning cup as he’d been by his.

  “He left me almost six months ago now,” she said quietly, “and I’m still in this tailspin. I can’t seem to get my footing. It’s just…a constant up and down of emotions. It’s going to get better. Right? It’ll even out?”

  He sighed when she lifted her gaze and the sadness had returned to her eyes. “Yes. It will get better.”

  She hesitated before reaching into her purse and pulling out a pen and a scrap of paper. She scribbled on the paper and held it out to him. “This is going to sound like I’m trying to pick you up, but I’m not. You’re one of the few people who doesn’t make me feel like my life is completely ruined because Mitch left me. I don’t want to feel like that, so call me if you need to talk or just want to grab a coffee.”

  He took the paper and then reached for the business card she’d set on the table. He flipped it over and wrote on it. “That’s my cell phone.” He slid the card back to her. “Anytime, anything you need. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She tucked the card into her purse and zipped it while he put her number into his pocket. Standing, she slipped her arms in her coat sleeves and buttoned up the front while he dropped some cash onto the table. He walked with her to her SUV and held the door as she climbed in.

  She looked at him and smiled slightly. “Thanks again, Paul.”

  “Thank you, Dianna.” He closed the door and walked away. Looking up at the sun trying to break through the clouds, he tried to figure out how his day had gone from horrid to not so bad in less than an hour.

  Chapter Three

  Dianna held the mouse of her computer so the pointer hovered over the button she needed to click to accept Paul’s social media friendship request. They’d already traded numbers. It wasn’t like Facebook was some kind of personal commitment, but even so, she wasn’t sure they were at that level. Whatever that level was.

  She stared at the button for at least a minute, debating the pros and cons, before she slammed her finger into the mouse and clicked to accept. Divorce certainly made social media an awkward place to be. She hadn’t changed her relationship status from married to single. She’d just hidden that bit of personal information.

  What had Mitch said about the end of their marriage? Had he simply changed his relationship status from married to Dianna Friedman to in a relationship with Michelle O’Connell without comment or explanation? Now the site would be announcing to the world that she was friends with Paul O’Connell.

  “What the hell?” she asked, speaking to no one since she was the only one home.

  She was about to log off the computer and find something else to do other than dwell on what the online community would think of her new friend, when another friend called her cell phone.

  Dianna put the phone to her ear. “What’s up, Kara?”

  “Who’s the hottie?”

  “What hottie?”

  “The silver fox you just friended on Facebook.”

  It was almost as if Dianna had foreseen this very conversation just a few moments ago. “He’s my husband’s girlfriend’s husband.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait. Back the hell up. He’s the husband of the woman who stole your husband?”

  Dianna closed the window on her computer. “Yes.”

  “Why are you friends with him?”

  “I told you I was testifying at his divorce hearing today.”

  “That explains nothing.”

  Dianna pushed herself up from the kitchen table to get a glass of water. “We had coffee after the hearing and offered to be each other’s support system.”

  “Are you…you know…interested in him?”

  “Kara, I’m not even divorced yet. I’m not interested in anyone.”

  “Well, before you decide you are, know that he still has a lot of pictures of that slut on his page.”

  She imagined Kara, strawberry blond hair twisted in a messy braid, squinting at her computer as her reading glasses sat unused atop her head. Kara had been on social media for all of three months—thanks to Dianna’s insistence—and already had learned the finer art of snooping. “You’re stalking him? Already? I just friended him five minutes ago.”

  “I’m creeping his page as we speak. His privacy settings won’t let me read his status updates, but I can see all his pictures. He’s handsome, isn’t he? Why the hell would she leave him for Mitch?”

  Dianna
shook her head. Kara had known Mitch in high school, and they hadn’t exactly been friends. The first time she’d met Kara, Dianna could sense her distrust of Mitch. In a strange way, it was what had drawn Dianna to Kara. Everyone else, it seemed—even Dianna if she were honest—had been fooled by Mitch’s charming smile and soothing laugh. It was nice to meet someone who looked at him with suspicious eyes.

  Right now, however, Dianna didn’t want her friend’s perspective on things. “I have to go, Kare.”

  “Want to come to yoga with me in the morning?”

  Saturday classes were free, so Dianna had no excuse not to go. “Yes,” she said, even though she knew she would probably sleep in. “No. Maybe.”

  “You have commitment issues. That’s okay right now. But you should work on that before you guys get serious.”

  Dianna opened her mouth to argue, but Kara’s laugh cut off as her friend ended the call. “Jerk,” Dianna muttered as she dropped her phone.

  She looked at her beckoning laptop as she took a long drink from her glass. Finally, she set her water down and went back to the computer.

  “Don’t do it,” she whispered to herself. The words had barely left her before she reconnected to the Internet. She opened Facebook, clicked on Paul’s name, and looked at his page.

  His profile said he was married, though it didn’t specify to whom. She clicked on his friends and searched for Michelle’s name. When she didn’t find it, relief washed over her. Had he still, by some sick twisted need for torture, been friends with his wife, Dianna would have had an undeniable urge to look at her page. She maneuvered back to Paul’s wall and scrolled through his status updates. There hadn’t been many in the last few months. The ones that had been posted were mostly commentary on the weather, sports, or saying he was somewhere with someone he’d tagged in the status.

  Nothing he said was very revealing. The pictures, however, told of what appeared to be a happy marriage. Photos of him with his wife seemed endless—parties, barbeques, on vacation someplace with palm trees, and holiday after holiday.

  Looking at Michelle’s smiling face, even if she wasn’t standing next to Mitch, made Dianna’s hands shake and her heart race. She felt like she was breaking Paul’s trust somehow, and even though she felt guilty and didn’t want to see how happy Michelle had pretended to be, she couldn’t stop. She flipped through his photos, her heart pounding harder and her stomach tightening more and more until she had seen every one, including their beach wedding.

  Michelle seemed to have played the part of doting wife well, at least in public. Paul must have been completely blindsided when she told him she was leaving.

  “Poor guy,” she whispered to herself.

  Dianna navigated away from Paul’s photos and into her own, just to see what he would see if he chose to snoop through her social media profile—which she assumed he would. Her status updates, much like his, had been sporadic in the last few months. Where his few had been about weather, hers were about Sam and Jason.

  While Mitch was in a few, her photos were mostly her smiling next to her sons or her friends. She hadn’t even realized how much of her life she had been living without her husband. Where was he? Had they really been that far apart for so long?

  Dianna frowned as she closed the window again. She texted Sam to see if he was going to be home for dinner. When he responded that he wouldn’t, she pushed herself up and grabbed a container of leftovers from the fridge to eat while watching a movie. Alone.

  Paul stared out the window of his front room. The house was too quiet. It hadn’t bothered him the last six months since Michelle had gone. He had no idea why it was bothering him now. He hadn’t missed her loud music, with the thumping bass and lyrics he supposed were intended to be clever. Perhaps if he were a drunk twenty-something in a club, he would have thought they were.

  He chuckled to himself and took another pull of his brandy. Michelle had told him he’d been fun when they’d gotten married but he’d become such a bore. He wasn’t a bore. He’d finally just accepted that she was never going to grow up, and he was tired of spending all day every day at work listening to excuses and whining from his clients and coming home and listening to excuses and whining from his wife. So what if he wasn’t up for dinner with half a dozen of her friends after being in court all day? So what if he didn’t want to spend every single weekend tailgating or going to bars like a damned college student?

  That’s what he got for marrying someone so much younger, he supposed. That’s what Matt and Annie had told him. His siblings certainly didn’t hold any punches.

  He looked at his computer when it made a noise. Setting his glass on the coffee table, Paul swiped the mouse until the screen lit. Dianna had accepted his friend request. He wondered if she’d debated accepting as long as he’d debated sending. He wasn’t much for social media. He signed up for Facebook mainly to keep up with his kids. They were both in college, and other than texting, this seemed to be the only way to be sure they were still alive. He had, however, felt compelled to friend Dianna to get a voyeuristic look into her life.

  After clicking on her name, he looked at her page. He scrolled through, noting that six months ago, there was a significant drop in the number of people on her wall. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said her friends had abandoned ship as soon as Mitch left her.

  He couldn’t help but smile, though. Her life, even after Mitch, seemed so much more together than his. It was clear from the photos that her sons adored her. Her friend—Kara, according to the photo tags—looked like a modern-day hippie, whereas Dianna looked more like the soccer mom type. A mixed pair, but it apparently worked for them. They were laughing in most of the photos.

  In just a few minutes of snooping through Dianna’s social media, he thought he had more in common with her than he ever had with Michelle. The irony that he’d altered his entire life to suit a woman who left him because he wasn’t what she wanted wasn’t lost on him. She didn’t want kids—she was too much of a kid herself—so he’d lost what little ground he’d gained with his sons when he’d married Michelle. He saw them occasionally but not nearly as much as a father should.

  He’d put distance between himself and his siblings because even when they weren’t telling him what a mistake he’d made, he could see their disapproval in their eyes. Friends? He’d never really had many of those. Most of the people he knew were through Michelle, and much like Dianna, they’d picked sides when things had gone to hell—and most hadn’t chosen his.

  Who the hell needed them anyway? He didn’t. His life was much quieter without the parties his wife felt compelled to throw. He looked at a photo of Dianna with her boys and wondered what kind of get-together she’d host. Somehow, he doubted it would be like a frat party gone wrong.

  Paul closed the page and leaned back with his drink, wondering why it even mattered.

  Dianna winced, her hamstrings screaming in protest as she leaned forward to try to touch her toes. Why had she done this? Why hadn’t she just stayed in bed like she’d wanted to?

  “So, what’s he like?” Kara whispered from the yoga mat beside her.

  “Who?”

  “The husband.”

  “Paul?”

  “Yes, Paul.”

  Dianna exhaled slowly per the instructor’s direction and frowned at her friend, who was effortlessly leaning over her bent and twisted legs. Dianna kind of hated her at the moment. “How did you get so flexible?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  The woman on the other side of Kara wasn’t exactly glaring, but she didn’t have the serene look that was supposed to go along with doing yoga.

  “Shh,” Dianna hushed. “We’ll talk later.”

  She was relieved when the class was told to go into savasana. Lying flat on her back taking deep breaths? Yes, that she could do. She tried to clear her mind, but Kara was relentless.

  “Is he as cute in person as he is in his pictures?”

  Dianna e
xhaled much faster than would be considered relaxing. She imagined Paul smiling, that real smile he flashed when they’d shared a few laughs. “Yes.”

  Kara grinned as if she’d learned some great truth.

  Dianna rolled onto her sit bones and crossed her legs as she put her hands into prayer. Several more deep breaths, a well-wish spoken, and the class ended.

  “Do you like him?” Kara asked.

  “We spent twenty minutes drinking coffee and talking about how horrible our spouses are. I don’t think that qualifies as liking him.” She started rolling up her mat. “Besides, I am not the least bit interested in having a man in my life.” Slipping her shoes on, Dianna did her best to ignore Kara’s concerned stare.

  “He’s been gone six months, Di.”

  “Six months is nothing compared to twenty-two years. When I’m ready, I’ll be ready, but it isn’t going to be with her husband.”

  “I’m just tired of seeing you so down on yourself,” Kara said as they walked out of Stonehill Community Center.

  “I’m fine.”

  They stopped in front of Kara’s car.

  “Come to lunch with me.”

  “I can’t. I have a ton of stuff to do before Thanksgiving.”

  “Do you and the boys want to come to our house for dinner?”

  Dianna chuckled, imagining the chaos that would be a holiday at Kara’s. She had a way of taking in strays who had nowhere else to go. Dianna’s amusement faded when she realized that she’d become one of those wayward souls with no family of her own to share the holiday. “No. I can manage.”

  “I know you can, but you don’t have to.”

  “This is my life now. I have to face it sometime.”

  “I’m proud of you. You’re doing great.” Kara brushed a strand of hair from Dianna’s face.

  It was that kind of maternal touch from Kara that Dianna needed and hated at the same time. Kara had become an emotional rock for Dianna, but Dianna was determined to make her way through her divorce on her own. She had to prove to herself that she wasn’t as weak and co-dependent as Mitch had made her feel. Even so, she couldn’t help but smile at her friend. “Then stop trying to fix me.”