by Joy Fielding
The bedroom door suddenly opened, almost knocking her over. “Shit!” she cried, stumbling backward.
“Sorry,” Noah said. “I didn’t know you were standing there.”
“You could have knocked.”
“I heard yelling. I thought something might be wrong.”
“Yeah, right. What is it—the fourth-inning stretch?”
Noah smiled. “Rain delay. And it’s the seventh-inning stretch, actually.”
“Great.” Heather turned away and scooped her gray dress off the floor. “You’d better get back before it stops raining and you miss another exciting, grand-slam thingamajig.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Looks like all the exciting thingamajigs are happening in here.”
Heather sniffed up the last of her tears. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I was wrong about the dress. It looks terrific.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Heather looked toward her bare feet. “You want to see my new shoes?”
“Do they have high heels?”
“Five inches.”
Noah’s smile widened. “Then I would love to see your new shoes.”
Heather quickly slipped them on. The extra five inches made them roughly the same height. “They’re like the ones that Kim Kardashian was wearing in US Weekly.” She bit down on her tongue. Noah hated when she talked about celebrities.
But Noah was already reaching for her, and the obvious lust in his eyes told her that she finally had his full attention.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was raining when Heather pulled up in front of Chloe’s house in Cambridge at five minutes to one the next afternoon.
She sat in the new, sporty white Lexus her parents had given her for her recent promotion, repeatedly glancing at her image in the rearview mirror and praying the rain would stop. The rain, combined with the heat, would spell disaster for her hair, hair she’d spent nearly an hour blow-drying and straightening this morning, which had made her late for work. “Nice of you to honor us with your presence,” Kendall had said in greeting.
“Fuck off,” Heather had mumbled underneath her breath, wondering when Kendall had turned into such a cunt.
“Your hair looks very nice, by the way,” Kendall said.
So maybe not such a cunt after all, Heather thought, checking her reflection in the small, round mirror she kept in the top right-hand drawer of her desk. Pleased with what she saw.
Luckily, Marsha Buchanan was out of the office in meetings all day, so there was no one else around to complain about the lateness of her arrival or question her commitment to her job. It had been mercifully easy to slip away early to meet Chloe for lunch. With any luck, she’d be back at work before anyone could take note of how long she’d been gone.
Of course, she hadn’t counted on the sudden downpour that had resulted in a multitude of traffic delays. Did no one in Boston know how to drive in the rain? It wasn’t as if it was a rare event, Heather thought, hoping the downpour would stop as suddenly as it had started and she could just sit tight and wait it out. But after almost ten minutes spent checking her hair and touching up her makeup, the rain seemed to be getting worse, and she couldn’t very well sit here all afternoon. You’d think Chloe would glance out her front window and understand her predicament, spare her the inconvenience of having to get out of the car to ring the doorbell. It wasn’t like this was a date.
Heather debated honking her horn, then decided that would be rude. It might not be a date, but it had been her idea. Not only her idea, but her treat. What the hell, she decided, blasting her horn three times in rapid succession. If she was going to pay for the damn meal, then Chloe could damn well make her way to the car, unescorted.
The front door opened almost immediately and Chloe appeared. She was wearing sneakers, baggy jeans, and a sloppy blue T-shirt, her blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail. She didn’t exactly get dolled up for the occasion, Heather thought, feeling vaguely insulted and definitely overdressed in her ruffled orange cotton blouse and black leather skirt, just like the skirt Gwyneth Paltrow had worn to a recent event.
Chloe hurried down the front steps, shaking the rain from her shoulders as she opened the car door and slid into the beige leather seat beside Heather. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup. Not a hint of blush, not a stroke of mascara, not a dab of lipstick. And yet, there was no denying how beautiful she was. Heather felt instantly dowdy.
“Well,” Chloe said in lieu of hello. “You going to tell me what this is all about?”
“Hello to you, too,” Heather said.
“I think we can forgo the pleasantries, don’t you?” Chloe said. “What are you up to, Heather?”
“What am I up to?” Heather repeated, trying to figure out what was happening. “I thought I was buying you lunch.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not buying the innocent act. So, suppose I spare you the expense and you spare me the aggravation, and you just tell me what you’re after.”
For a moment, Heather was speechless. While she’d been anticipating a certain amount of resistance from Chloe, she hadn’t counted on outright hostility. “Wow. I didn’t realize you had such a poor opinion of me.”
“Really? You’re surprised?”
“Frankly, yes.”
“You slept with my best friend’s fiancé.”
“Well, technically, they weren’t engaged.”
“They were living together,” Chloe reminded her.
“And now he’s living with me.” Heather brought her hands together in her lap and tried not to squirm. This was not going according to plan. “I didn’t exactly twist his arm, you know.”
“Yes, I’m sure you were quite blameless.”
Heather turned slowly toward the other woman. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
“I want you to tell me why you called this little meeting.”
“I honestly just wanted to touch base.”
“You wanted to touch base,” Chloe repeated.
“Yes. This might surprise you, but I don’t have a lot of friends…”
“It doesn’t surprise me.”
“Okay.” Heather felt tears hovering. Definitely not going the way she’d planned. “You’re really not going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“Not everyone’s as easy as Noah,” Chloe said.
“Wow. Okay. Listen, I know you and Paige are best friends and everything, but…I always considered you my friend, too. And I honestly just wanted to reconnect, find out how you are, hear about the kids. Find out what Matt’s been up to.”
Chloe nodded knowingly. “You know exactly what Matt’s been up to.”
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t think you were actually fooling anybody with that little stunt you pulled last week, did you?”
Heather felt the color drain from her cheeks and was glad she’d applied that second layer of blush while waiting for the rain to stop. “What little stunt?”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Really? You’re going to play dumb?”
“My dumb one,” Heather heard her father say.
“I honestly have no clue what you’re talking about.”
Chloe reached for the door handle. “Then I don’t think we have anything else to discuss.”
“Wait,” Heather said, grabbing Chloe’s arm, and feeling the other woman instantly recoil. “Okay, yes. I assume you’re talking about the phone call.”
“Not so dumb after all,” Chloe said. “Just…mean.”
“I wasn’t trying to be mean.”
“No? What were you going for?”
Heather took a few seconds to regain her composure and gather her thoughts. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure why she’d phoned Chloe with the news that Matt
was on multiple dating sights, except as possible payback for Chloe choosing Paige over her. Plus, she’d been high, and it had been kind of fun. “I just thought you deserved to know, that’s all.”
“And you thought that an anonymous phone call was the best way to tell me.”
“I didn’t think you’d appreciate the news coming from me.”
Chloe shrugged. The shrug told Heather she was probably right.
“I just know that I would want to know if Noah were cheating on me.”
“Oh, I think you can pretty much count on that happening.”
“Now who’s being mean?” Heather asked.
Neither woman said anything for several seconds, the only sound coming from the rain beating against the car’s windshield.
“So, what did happen with you and Matt?” Heather heard herself ask.
Chloe’s laughter filled the small space. “You’re unbelievable.” She shook her head. “You know, you might actually be considered charming, if you weren’t such a bitch. What the hell? There’s no big secret,” she continued before Heather could react. “I confronted Matt; we had a big fight; I kicked him out; I’m talking to a lawyer and probably filing for divorce. Satisfied?”
Heather wasn’t sure what she felt. “I just thought you should know,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Look. The truth is, whether I like it or not, you probably did me a favor. So…did you get what you came for? Are we done?” Once again, Chloe moved to open the door.
“Wait,” Heather said. “At least till the rain lets up a bit.”
“So, we’re not done,” Chloe said. “There’s more going on inside that devious little mind. Let me guess: your mother told you that Paige would be bringing a date to your father’s party…”
“Paige is bringing a date to my father’s party?” Heather interrupted, opening her eyes as wide as three layers of mascara would allow.
“You’re playing dumb again.”
God, how she hated that word. “Okay, so she told me,” Heather admitted. “And I’m curious. Last I checked, that wasn’t a crime. How do you know what my mother told me, anyway?”
“Paige told me that her mother confessed she’d let that information slip.”
“You’ve been speaking to Paige.”
“Pretty much every day.”
“And she knows I invited you to lunch.”
“I called her the second I hung up with you.”
“And the two of you thought it would be fun to have me drive all the way out here in the rain…”
“Well, we didn’t know it would be raining. That was kind of the icing on the cake.”
“Okay. You can get out of the car now,” Heather said, angry tears taking the place of her curiosity.
“What were you doing on those dating sites, anyway?” Chloe asked, her hand on the door handle. “Things not going so well with Noah these days?” She didn’t wait for an answer, bolting from her seat, the heavy car door slamming behind her as she darted through the rain toward her front door.
“Things are great,” Heather called after her. “You think you’re so damn smart, don’t you?” she continued as Chloe disappeared inside her house. “You just wait. We’ll see how smart you are.” She lowered her head to the steering wheel and cried.
She might not know much, but she knew all about getting even.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“For God’s sake, Heather,” Noah said, his voice burrowing underneath the bathroom door. “What are you doing in there?”
“I’m almost done.” Heather checked, then rechecked, her makeup in the round magnifying mirror on the wall beside the large, rectangular mirror over the sink. Was that a blemish forming underneath her skin, right smack in the middle of her right cheek? Damn it. She hadn’t had a pimple in years. It had to be stress. Her father’s upcoming party, her escalating brushes with her supervisor, the humiliating encounter with Chloe, the rain. She reached for her concealer, dabbing at the offending imperfection until it almost disappeared, then applying an extra coat of the concealer under her eyes for good measure. She’d already had to redo her makeup after today’s fiasco with Chloe, her supposedly waterproof mascara having left a trail of telltale black tears down her cheeks. The stains had been removed, but the sting remained, and was now translating into a giant pimple below the surface of her skin. “Damn you, Chloe,” Heather said, applying yet another stroke of concealer.
She fluffed out her hair, tamped it down again, and promptly fluffed it back up, but it still didn’t look right. The rain had indeed done a number on it. “Damn frizz,” she mumbled, wetting the sides of her hair, then removing her hair dryer from its cramped quarters inside the cupboard beneath the sink. This was all Paige’s fault. She’d obviously convinced Chloe to go along with her little scheme to embarrass her cousin. “Sore loser,” Heather muttered, lifting the hair dryer to her head and turning it to maximum strength.
“What are you doing now?” Noah wailed from outside the door.
“Hold your horses. I’ll just be a minute.”
“You said that ten minutes ago.”
“You’re slowing me down,” Heather warned.
“We’re already twenty minutes late.”
“So, another few minutes won’t make any difference. Who shows up right on the dot for dinner, anyway?”
“I guarantee you that everybody else will be on time.”
Heather rolled her eyes at her reflection and continued blow-drying her wet ends, trying to corral them into some sort of style. Since when had Noah turned into such a whiner? Although he was probably right. The lawyers of Whitman, Loughlin were a very conservative bunch. They’d undoubtedly arrived en masse at the restaurant in Little Italy at precisely seven o’clock. So reliable. So predictable. So boring. “Bor-r-ing,” Heather said over the continuing blast of hot air from the dryer.
“What did you say?”
“I said that if you wanted me to be on time,” she shouted, “you should have gotten an apartment with more than one bathroom! I can hardly move in here.”
“The bathroom is not the problem.”
He was right. The bathroom was not the problem. Heather hated everything about Noah’s apartment. Traces of Paige could be discovered in virtually every room: the carpet she’d chosen for the bedroom, the floral throw pillows on the living room sofa, the pewter salt and pepper shakers in the center of the glass dining room table, even the goddamn mirror over the goddamn sink in the tiny, cramped, goddamn bathroom. Not to mention, could the lighting be any less flattering? How could Noah expect her to be ready on time?
“Two more minutes,” she said, shutting off the dryer and shoving it back into the cupboard, spying the remainder of a joint hidden behind a bottle of nail polish remover. She tucked her hair behind her ears, wondering if she had time to smoke it. Better not, she thought. Noah had made it very clear he didn’t approve of her propensity for weed, despite the fact that it was legal now in Massachusetts. Damn it, she thought, closing the cupboard door. Why did everything in her life have to be so damn difficult?
She’d returned from Cambridge only to find Marsha Buchanan waiting at her desk, her meetings having wrapped up earlier than expected. “I’ve scheduled a performance review for you this coming Monday at ten o’clock,” she’d told Heather. “Be on time.”
Heather knew that a performance review was merely a formality, the first step toward being dismissed. She’d be given a stern warning and the chance to shape up. If her superiors didn’t see a significant improvement in the coming weeks, she’d be out of a job. And she wouldn’t have the excuse of a New York takeover to make her firing more palatable, thus handing her father yet another reason to compare her unfavorably with her cousin.
Heather had returned home, exchanged her orange blouse and leather skirt for sweats, and wolfed down a cold
piece of pizza from the fridge, looking forward to sex with Noah to make her forget her shitty day. Except she’d forgotten about the scheduled dinner with Noah’s colleagues.
Damn that Chloe anyway. She might be Paige’s mouthpiece, but would it have killed her to be nice? Or at the very least, more forthcoming? But no, Heather had been forced to waste half the afternoon driving to Cambridge and back, risking both her job and her life—Boston drivers were the worst—and what had she learned? Nothing! Paige’s mystery man had remained a stubborn blank. The news that Chloe and Matt were likely headed for divorce had made the afternoon only slightly more palatable.
“What’s going on in there?” Noah asked.
“Can you back off? You’re making me crazy.”
“I’m making you crazy?”
Heather gave her hair one final toss and took a deep breath, tucking her tight red jersey inside her dark blue designer jeans. Considering everything she’d had to deal with, she didn’t look bad at all. She pulled open the bathroom door. “Okay. Ready to go.”
Noah’s hand reached toward her cheek. “Is that a pimple?” he said.
* * *
—
“So, then, Shiloh says, ‘Stop singing, Lance. You’re distracting me from my sleep!’ ” Brianne Palmer brought both hands to her chest in a gesture that combined both shock and delight. “Can you imagine? She’s only three! What three-year-old uses words like ‘distracting’?”
“Unbelievable,” Nicole Barry said, dropping her fork to what little remained of her chocolate lava cake dessert. “She’s so smart.” Nicole pushed herself away from the table, patting her eight-months-pregnant belly.
“Shiloh is definitely gifted,” Kaitlin Seymour agreed. “I’ve always said that. You could tell from the minute she was born—eyes wide open—that she was special.”
“Girls definitely develop faster than boys,” Brianne said. “I mean, Lance is a great kid, but he’s no Einstein.”
“Oh, but little boys are so cute,” Nicole said, her hand tracing wide circles on her stomach.