All the Wrong Places

by Joy Fielding

  “The kids will be fine,” Paige said. “Right now, it’s you I’m worried about.”

  “How could he do this?”

  “Because he’s a man,” Paige said, picturing Noah in bed with her cousin, “and men do stupid things. Tell me how you found out about this.”

  Chloe sank into the chair next to Paige. “After Matt left for work this morning…he had a closing on this mansion in Newton that he’s been trying to unload for months…anyway, it doesn’t matter; who knows if it’s even true?…Anyway,” she said again, stumbling over her words and pausing to catch her breath, “maybe ten minutes after he left, the phone rings and I pick it up and this woman says, ‘I think you should know that your husband’s on a bunch of dating sites,’ and then hangs up. I didn’t know what she was talking about. So, I decide to ignore her—I mean, she’s obviously some crackpot, right?— and then, of course, I decide to check, ’cause I can’t help myself, and I go to my computer and join Perfect Strangers, ’cause I’m an idiot and it’s free. And I scroll through and…bingo! There he is. My darling husband, father of my two children, on a dating site. And not just that one. A whole bunch of them,” Chloe continued. “Perfect Strangers, Tinder, eHarmony, Match Sticks…You name it, he’s on it.” She shook her head. “How could he not think I’d find out? Half my friends are on these sites. You’re on these sites!” Chloe stared at Paige. “Did you know about this?”

  “Me? No. Of course not! I would have told you. You know that.”

  “Would you? After the last time?”

  Paige had told Chloe about seeing Matt with another woman when Chloe was pregnant with Sasha. And Matt, all righteous indignation, had talked his way out of that one, made it sound as if Paige was either mistaken or jealous. And in a classic case of shooting the messenger, it had almost cost the two women their friendship.

  “Just look at these jerks,” Chloe said now, raising the screen of her laptop again and scrolling rapidly through the seemingly endless series of pictures. “Did you know they have a site specifically for cheaters? Which is probably the most honest one of the bunch. Look at this guy,” Chloe exclaimed, stopping on a picture of a man calling himself Surfer Dude. “And this one, Mr. Right Now.”

  Paige’s eyes zeroed in on the familiar photograph. Mr. Right Now stared back at her, almost daring her to look away.

  “He’s another one who’s on all the sites.” Chloe laughed, a harsh, hollow sound. “As if any man who looks like that needs a dating app to meet women. What am I talking about?” she said in the next breath. “Matt’s just as handsome as he is. Shit.”

  Paige looked back at her friend. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure,” Chloe admitted. “Maybe I should give one of these guys a tumble. Give Matt a taste of his own medicine.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  Josh came bounding back into the room. “Who’s that?” he asked before Chloe had a chance to close the screen.

  “No one,” Chloe said, snapping the laptop shut. “What’s up?”

  “Do we believe in God?” the boy asked.

  “Do we believe in…? What makes you ask that?” his mother said.

  “This boy at camp today. He was talking about God and heaven and stuff. Do we believe in that?”

  “This probably isn’t a great time to ask me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m just not sure what I believe anymore,” Chloe answered, clearly too tired to pretend.

  Josh’s eyes narrowed. “But we do believe in the tooth fairy,” he said warily.

  Paige smiled as Chloe fought back tears. “We absolutely believe in the tooth fairy,” Chloe said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Her mother was in the family room, reading a book and watching the evening news, when Paige entered the brightly lit apartment. Joan immediately jumped to her feet, eyes smiling in anticipation. “How did the interview go?”

  Paige plopped into a nearby chair, staring vacantly at the giant TV screen on the opposite wall. “Not great.”

  “Oh.” Joan’s smile vanished. “I thought that since it was so late, it must be going really well, that you might still be there.”

  “No. It was actually over pretty quick. I went to Chloe’s. Sorry. I should have called.”

  “No, of course not. I forgot you were going over there. How’s she doing?”

  “Not great,” Paige said, as she’d said earlier.

  Her mother knew better than to pry. Both women turned their attention to the TV, where a photograph of a pretty young woman with long, dark hair now filled the screen. “Twenty-eight-year-old Tiffany Sleight has been missing for five days,” the announcer was saying. “She disappeared after telling colleagues she was meeting a friend after work and hasn’t been seen since. Anyone having information is asked to call police at…”

  “Wasn’t there another girl who disappeared about a month ago?” Joan asked.

  Paige shrugged. It seemed that women were always disappearing. Sometimes she wished she could be one of them. Just poof—and she’d be gone.

  Be a pear…

  Joan grabbed the remote from the leather ottoman in front of the sofa and muted the sound. “Well, enough of that. Are you hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “I made lasagna.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “Do you want to go to a movie? There’s a new one with that handsome actor…what’s his name? Chris somebody…You know the one…”

  “Matt’s cheating on Chloe again,” Paige said.

  “Oh, dear. You’re certain?”

  Paige reached into her purse and removed her phone, getting up from her chair and guiding her mother toward the blue velvet sofa, then sitting down beside her. She clicked onto Perfect Strangers, scrolling through the various photographs and stopping on the picture of Matt. “See for yourself.”

  Her mother sighed. “What’s with these men?” she asked. “Are they asking to be caught?”

  Paige knew her mother was thinking of Noah.

  Joan shook her head. “You showed Chloe this?”

  “She showed me.”

  “Poor thing. How’s she handling it?”

  Paige shrugged. The shrug said, Not well.

  “Just look at all these men,” Joan marveled after a silence of several seconds. “I had no idea.” She took the phone from Paige’s hands. “Oh, this one looks nice,” she said, stopping on the picture of a man calling himself Samson. “Hair’s a little long, but great smile. Very nice teeth. Maybe you should…what do you do when you want to meet someone?”

  “You swipe right.”

  “Like this?” her mother asked, absently flicking her index finger across the screen.

  “Mom! What are you doing?” Paige grabbed the phone from her mother’s hands.

  “What did I do?”

  “You told him I liked his picture.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that if he’s interested…oh, my God…”

  “What?”

  “He’s interested.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “He was on his computer,” Paige explained. “See?” She pointed to the screen. “It indicates here that he’s on his computer, so he saw right away that I swiped onto his picture and he swiped back.”

  “This is fascinating. Now what? He phones?”

  “He messages,” Paige corrected. “It’s a process. You message for a while; then if you like the messages, you agree to a phone call; then maybe, eventually, you meet for a drink.”

  “Why don’t you just meet right away?” her mother asked. “Then you don’t waste all that time writing.”

  “Because…oh, my God,” she said as her phone beeped to indicate an incoming text. “He wants to meet for drinks
.”

  “I like this man,” Joan Hamilton said.

  “Then you go out with him.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling. It’s your picture he liked. Write him back.”

  “This is ridiculous. No.” When did you have in mind? Paige typed.

  How about tonight? came the quick response. Eight o’clock? Murphy’s on Somerset?

  “Perfect,” her mother said. “It’s practically around the corner. Say yes. Come on, darling. You’ve had a hard day. First me and my eyes, then your cousin, then the job interview, then Chloe. You deserve some fun.”

  “He’s not going to be fun.”

  “You don’t know that. Come on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “Yes, you may. Go on—tell him yes.”

  See you at eight, Paige typed. “I must be out of my mind.”

  “For heaven’s sake, darling. Why else are you on these sites? How many of them are you on anyway?”

  “I don’t know. A few,” Paige said. More than a few, she thought, dropping the phone to the cushion beside her. What did people do before dating sites? “How’d you meet Daddy?” she asked, burrowing into her mother’s side.

  “You know. Your father must have told that story a hundred times.”

  “I’ve never heard you tell it.”

  “Well, that’s because I could never tell it as well as he could. Besides,” she added, “I didn’t want to contradict him.”

  “What do you mean? It wasn’t the truth?”

  “Let’s just say that it contained a few embellishments.”

  Paige pulled away from her mother’s side. “Such as?”

  “Well, you know how your father always claimed that we met when I interviewed for a job as his secretary and he told me flat-out that he couldn’t hire me because he intended to marry me?”

  “That wasn’t true?”

  “It was…and it wasn’t,” Joan qualified. “The reason he didn’t hire me was because I was a lousy typist.” She smiled. “But he did keep my number, and about a week after our interview, he called me up and asked me out. And a few weeks after that, he showed up at my door and told my parents we were getting married, said he’d known from the first moment he laid eyes on me that I was the one for him.” Her smile widened, bringing her whole face into play. “Over the years, the story…well, let’s just say it…evolved. Like when they say a movie is based on a true story. They change a few of the details, compress the time, so that what you get is essentially the truth, just more dramatic. And your father was nothing if not dramatic.”

  “You must miss him so much,” Paige said.

  “I do,” her mother said simply.

  “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “I know,” her mother agreed. “When I started having that thing with my eyes…”

  “You mean this morning? Your ocular migraine?”

  Her mother nodded. “I turned to your father…well, where your father would have been…on his side of the bed…and I started to say, ‘Robert…’ I wanted him to assure me that I was just being silly, that I wasn’t having a stroke…as if he was still lying right there beside me. But, of course, he wasn’t. So then I was sure I was having a stroke because, clearly, I was losing my mind…”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “Oh, darling. You look so worried. Please don’t worry. I’m fine. The doctor said so. It’s just that…”

  “Just that…what?”

  “Well, this morning got me thinking. No, that’s not true,” she corrected immediately. “I’ve been thinking about it for a little while now, if I’m being honest.”

  Paige had never cared for the phrase “if I’m being honest.” Whatever followed was rarely good. “Thinking about what?”

  Joan Hamilton took a deep breath. “It’s just that life is such a precious thing, sweetheart, especially when you get to be my age. You can’t take anything for granted. We just never know how much time we have left.”

  “Where are we going with this, Mom?”

  Her mother took another deep breath, followed by an audible exhale. “Well, at lunch you said…”

  “What did I say?” Dear God, what had she said?

  “You asked me if I’d considered dating…”

  She had?

  “And you suggested that I go on that site of yours…”

  “I wasn’t serious,” Paige protested, her voice louder than she’d intended.

  “I know you weren’t.” Her mother smiled, her lips trembling with the threat of tears. “Of course you weren’t.”

  Neither woman spoke for several long seconds.

  “Forget I said anything. I’m being silly.”

  “Oh, God, Mom. I’m so sorry,” Paige cried. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I know you didn’t. Let’s forget the whole thing.”

  “Are you lonely? Is that it?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Look. I’m going to message that guy back, cancel tonight. We’ll go to the movie with that actor you like, then we’ll come home and finish off that lasagna.”

  “No, darling,” her mother said. “Absolutely not. You have your life. I want you to live it.”

  Paige burst into tears. “Oh, God. I’m such a brat.”

  “You’re not a brat. You’re a beautiful, sensitive girl whom I love more than anything in the world.” She grabbed Paige’s hands. “I’m not looking for a husband, darling. I’ve had the great love of my life. No one could ever replace your father; you know that. And if the thought of my dating makes you so unhappy, well, then, I won’t do it.”

  “No,” Paige said. “That’s not what I want.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and reached for her phone. “I don’t want you to be lonely. I want you to be happy.”

  “What are you doing? Don’t you dare cancel your date.”

  “I’m not canceling. I’m going to take your picture, and then we’re going to create a profile for you, give you a fake name…”

  “What’s the matter with my real name?”

  “Nobody uses their real name on these sites.”

  “They don’t?”

  Paige shook her head.

  “What name do you use?”

  Paige grimaced. “Promise you won’t laugh?” She waited for her mother’s nod. “It’s Wildflower.”

  “Oh, that’s so pretty,” her mother said.

  Paige felt surprisingly pleased by her mother’s approval. “So what name do you want to go by?”

  Joan gently pried the phone from her daughter’s hands. “There’s plenty of time to do all this another day. Right now, you’re going to go wash away those tears, put on some fresh mascara and a bit of lipstick, maybe change your dress, and get ready for your date. Go on now. Get moving. That’s an order.” She grabbed the TV remote and clicked the sound back on, wandering aimlessly through the channels. “Oh, there’s that poor girl again,” she said as once again the picture of Tiffany Sleight’s smiling face filled the screen.

  And then, with another click of the remote, poof, she was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Paige recognized him immediately.

  He was standing near the crowded bar, laughing at something the male bartender had said, and only occasionally glancing toward the entrance. Surprisingly, he looked just like his picture on Perfect Strangers. Not traditionally handsome perhaps, but not not handsome. Medium tall, casually but nicely dressed in dark pants and a striped shirt, longish curly brown hair. Hence the moniker Samson, she supposed. Nice smile, as her mother had pointed out, although from this distance it was impossible to judge the state of his teeth.

  Paige had slouched into Murphy’s Bar behind half a dozen already inebriated young men, and quickly made her way to a table in the
corner, head down, hoping to have arrived before her prospective date, wanting to check him out before he spotted her. “That way, if the guy is a dud,” Heather had once told her, “you can slip out before he even knows you’re there.”

  Except Paige would never do that. Unlike her cousin, who’d had no qualms about standing up online suitors when she’d been a regular and enthusiastic user of dating apps, Paige understood all too well the pain of being rejected. Didn’t everyone deserve at least a chance? Okay, so a guy was five feet six, not six feet five—it could have been a typo; people inadvertently transposed figures all the time. So what if he was closer to sixty than forty and the muscles he’d proudly displayed in his online photo had long since turned to flab? She didn’t have to marry the man. She didn’t even have to go on a second date. Maybe he’d have a great personality. Maybe he’d make her laugh. Maybe the evening wouldn’t turn out to be a complete waste of time.

  Except they usually were. The men she’d met rarely lived up to even a fraction of their online potential, and the ones who did were generally only interested in one thing. Paige chuckled, wondering from what depths she’d dragged that old expression.

  Not that she wasn’t interested in the same thing. It’s just that it had been a while—four months, one week, and two days, to be exact—and she needed at least the pretense that a new lover was interested in more than just a one-night stand. Although, who knows? She might feel differently a few weeks from now.

  “What’ll it be?” a perky blonde in a low-cut white blouse and thigh-high black skirt asked, and Paige jumped at the sound of her voice. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Sorry,” Paige apologized in return, an automatic reflex. She seemed to be sorry for everything lately. “Gin and tonic?”

  “Coming right up.”

  Paige glanced back at the bar. The man calling himself Samson was now hunched over the long glass counter, his back to her. She watched him peek at his watch, and immediately did the same. Five minutes after eight. She knew what he was thinking: that he’d give her another ten minutes before messaging to see if she was on her way, then settle with the bartender if he didn’t receive a reply, and be out the door. What was she waiting for? she asked herself. Get up and go over there. Get this miserable day over with.