by Hilary Dartt
He would later admit he experienced that same fizzy feeling during the handshake and had been rendered idiotic for the rest of the day, misplacing his handcuffs and leaving his gun in the bathroom stall at the police station.
The moment was fleeting though, because Paul’s phone vibrated on his belt and he answered it right away in a tone so serious Josie smiled.
Susie wiggled her eyebrows up and down behind his back as he walked into the hallway. Josie shook her head and took that opportunity to slink back to her own classroom, her reason for visiting Susie’s forgotten.
The following Thursday, Delaney came up from vet school for a weekend visit. The three girls went to Rowdy’s for Happy Hour, and Josie confessed: “I’m not usually one to go for men in uniform, but wowza! I mean, he was hot.”
“So did you get his number?” Summer asked.
“I’m working on it. You know, police officers’ phone numbers are top secret or some shit. Classified.”
“Delaney,” Summer said. “Look at the way she’s grinning right now. When’s the last time you saw Josie grin like that? I sense something special about this one.”
Delaney nodded sagely. “Yes,” she said. “I haven’t seen her smile like that since freshman year of high school when Davey Richmond taught her what second base is.”
“I’m scandalized,” Josie said, but deep down, she knew it was true. She didn’t often let guys get to her. Well, not usually.
Scott had gotten to her. And look what had happened there.
“Whoa, that was weird,” Summer said. “The grin disappeared. What’s up with that?”
“Oh, nothing,” Josie said brightly. “Just need a refill, that’s all.”
The conversation moved on then, to Delaney’s final exams at vet school and how Summer’s daughter Sarah had started preschool. Even as they laughed at Sarah’s insistence on wearing all purple - socks, pants, shirts, a sweater, and boots, Josie felt a tiny bit … nostalgic, maybe? Sad? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
And worse, she couldn’t hash it out with the girls. Because she’d been in the middle of grieving for her mother, Josie hadn’t mentioned Scott when they first met. Then he’d sworn her to secrecy, so solemn she’d joked they should take a blood oath.
“I can’t have anyone knowing we had a relationship,” he said to her one night as he stood in her doorway on the way out. “You understand. It just wouldn’t be … proper.”
Of course, Josie nodded. She understood. She planned to ascend the career ladder, too, and didn’t want scandal coloring her resume.
So instead of telling the girls about Scott, she told them she was going through the isolation phase of grief and needed time alone. In reality, she spent every spare moment with Scott. She told the girls she was getting ready for the school year. In reality, she and Scott were having steamy sex on her classroom floor.
It was easy to fool them. Summer was about to give birth to Nate and Delaney was finishing up school. The secret went completely undetected, and it stood sacred, even until present day.
***
Josie’s relationship with Paul erased her feelings for Scott with the efficiency of a chalkboard eraser. The solid lines disappeared, but that fine white dust, made of memories and possibility, always remained.
The following summer, Josie married Paul in a wedding that blended romance and practicality. She carried a bouquet of orchids (romance) and wore her mother’s wedding gown (practicality). She and the girls transformed one of Juniper’s lakeside parks into a wonderland by draping twinkling lights in the trees and setting potted trees and flowers on almost every flat surface.
As the Comstock-Garcias—she chose to keep her mother’s last name—walked back down the aisle after the minister pronounced them husband and wife, Josie felt like she was flying, soaring with happiness. She looked into Paul’s eyes and thought nothing could ever take him away from her.
***
When the front door finally clicked open, Josie managed to open her eyes just wide enough to read the time on the clock. Twelve minutes after two in the morning. Although she and Paul both knew she only half-slept when he worked late, Paul tried to be quiet. She could picture him now, pulling his gun and holster out of his waistband and putting them in the safe in the coat closet. He would take off his shoes next, stepping on the heel of one with the toe of the other. He’d set them next to the front door and then go to the kitchen to make himself a drink.
Whiskey on the rocks.
The sounds seemed amplified in the house: the cabinet closing, Paul setting the glass on the counter, opening and closing the freezer and then dropping ice cubes into the glass. Clink, clink. Next he’d drop one cube. It clattered to the floor. “Shit,” he muttered. Josie knew he was bending down to pick it up, and then she heard it land in the sink. The liquor cabinet closed next, and she heard the whiskey glugging out of the bottle.
Now he would sit on the couch, feet on the coffee table, and wind down.
And she would pounce. Not in the way she hoped to pounce earlier. She felt her body sway, side to side, as she walked through the bedroom to the living room.
He didn’t hear her behind him. With a mix of nostalgia and irritation, she thought about the conversations they had when he couldn’t find a specific shoe, or the scissors, or the sharp cheddar.
“The man can find a gram of meth behind the headlight of a nineteen-eighty-five Mustang,” she’d say, “but he can’t find a pound of sharp cheddar in the fridge.”
“I’m off-duty,” he’d say, putting both hands up in a “what-can-I-say” gesture.
Now, he sat on the couch exactly as she pictured, reading something on his tablet. As she always did (it had become automatic after all this time), she admired the way the muscles in his shoulders bulged just enough as to be visible underneath his shirt.
“Hi Paul,” she said.
He jumped and the tablet tumbled off his lap and onto the floor. She noticed he managed to keep his drink from spilling.
“Geez, Josie! You startled me! Don’t do that!”
“Since when is it a crime to say hello to my husband when he gets home from work?”
He picked up his tablet and set it on the table, then turned around to face her. “I thought you’d be sleeping.”
“I was.”
“Why is there steak on the counter? Did you forget to put it away? It’ll go bad.”
“By now, I’d think you could put two and two together,” she said, in a tone that sounded much harsher than she meant it to.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Of course you have no idea what it means,” she said.
“I put it in the fridge for you.”
“For me? You put it in the fridge for me? Why, thank you, Paul. Thank you so much.”
Confusion made his eyebrows draw together and his mouth form a tiny o. She hated it when he made that face.
“What are you talking about?”
“Stop making that awful face! God, I feel so stupid!”
Then, Josie Garcia did something she had vowed after Scott that she would never do again. She cried. Over a guy. This guy happened to be her husband, but still. The sensation was so unfamiliar she didn’t realize it was happening until she felt the moisture on her face.
“Are you crying?”
“Shut up, Paul.”
“No, really. What’s wrong?”
He stood up and came around the back of the couch. His arms came up as if he wanted to hug her, but he dropped them back at his sides like he was afraid she’d explode at his touch. A small laugh made its way to the surface. Paul had entered full panic mode.
“I feel so stupid,” she repeated.
“Is it the steaks? It’s okay, I’ve left meat out before.”
“It’s not the steaks,” she snapped. “Actually, it kind of is the steaks. I’ve been feeling so, I don’t know, so disconnected from you lately, and I thought I’d make a nice meal and, you know, seduce you
, and have a romantic evening. I went to the store, bought some steaks. I even looked up which scents are best for romance and bought candles. Candles! I put on those lacy undies you like. I shaved my legs!”
“It does smell really good in here,” Paul said. In nervous gesture, he rubbed his nose with the knuckle of his pointer finger.
“But you didn’t eat the steak.”
“I can eat it now,” he said, shrugging.
He was trying, she’d give him that. But probably only because he didn’t like to see her cry.
“You’re missing the point,” she said.
“Oh. Ah… what is the point?”
“I just told you! Weren’t you even listening?”
“I was listening! You wanted me to eat the steak,” he said.
Okay, maybe he wasn’t trying as hard as she thought.
“You shaved your legs?” he tried.
Josie sighed, and pressed her fists against her eyelids. When she looked at him again, she saw realization dawning on his face. If it had happened at any other moment, she would have found the transformation comical. His shoulders drooped and he looked down at the floor.
“Now do you get it?” she asked, again sounding much more severe than she meant to.
“You planned a romantic evening, and I ruined it,” he said.
“Yes! Yes, Paul. You ruined it. You ruined yet another evening we could have spent together. What makes it worse is that it’s not the first time. I’m so sick of your job! I’m so sick of you spending all your time with tweakers and drug dealers. I’m so sick of you never being home. And you know what’s really sad? I’ve come to expect the late nights, the never seeing you, the lack of sex because you’re always too tired or too wired or whatever. I’ve come to expect it. It doesn’t even surprise me anymore.”
Paul shrugged. Not in a way that signified he didn’t care, but in a way that signified he didn’t know what to do or what to say. Josie waited.
“It’s the nature of the job, Josie,” he said. “And I didn’t know you were feeling this way.”
“That’s the problem,” she said. “Exactly. If you didn’t realize I was feeling this way, and you think this situation is a given, then we have worse problems than I thought.”
She spun around and stomped back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
In her imagination, she heard a tongue clucking, and her mother’s voice saying, “See, mija? You married for practicality and yet you want romance. Romance lets you down. He’s a hard-working man, providing for you. Cut him some slack, eh?”
Josie knew she should cut him some slack. But she wanted romance, at least a little. And was there anything wrong with that?
CHAPTER THREE
“So how did it go last Thursday with the romance?” Summer chewed an olive, slowly, while waiting for Josie’s answer.
Josie had been tempted to skip out on Thursday Happy Hour at Rowdy’s, but knew she’d have to face her friends eventually. So she showed up. To give herself an extra minute before the inevitable inquisition began, she paused in the doorway to let her eyes adjust to the dim lighting. Now, of course, the questions had begun.
Josie crossed her arms on the table and rested her head on them.
“That good, huh?” Delaney said. “I’ll order another round.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Josie saw her raise her hand to signal Benjamin.
“Dish, sister,” Summer said. “What happened?”
Josie groaned.
“You’re not getting out of this, Josie,” Delaney said. “If I had to endure the two of you intruding on my love life for your so-called ‘Dating Intervention,’ then you can at least open up about how your night of romance went.”
“Or didn’t go,” Josie said. “Nothing happened. I bought some steaks and wine and scented candles and I even shaved my legs. Seriously. I shaved my legs and put on his favorite underwear and this stupid, impractical silky nightie thing, and he didn’t even show up. I mean, it’s not like he knew about it. I wanted to surprise him. But he got stuck at work. Again.”
When she lifted her head off the table, she remembered Delaney doing something similar just a few months ago when Josie and Summer had insisted on making all the decisions in her love life and a few in her regular life. They’d required her to learn how to cook, and to get a new job, swapping out bar tending for veterinary medicine.
The result: she was now in a serious, sappy relationship with Jake Rhoades, a sexy Roman god of a man who brought Delaney coffee and sometimes flowers. She could cook a mean roasted chicken and a better-than-decent spaghetti. Recently, she’d solved several complicated veterinary cases. Josie’s thoughts wandered to her own professional predicament.
Delaney interrupted her. “See? You’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re thinking about how much better off I am, and you want the same for yourself.”
Josie opened her mouth to answer. Yes, she was thinking about Delaney’s life. But she was no stranger to her friends’ interference: she had also been thinking about how the girls had hacked into her human resources file and applied for the Juniper Elementary School principal position on her behalf. Before she could speak, Benjamin returned with their drinks.
Summer held up her water glass and said, “I’d like to make a toast. “To Josie’s marriage. More importantly, to our help fixing it. Cheers.”
“Cheers!” Delaney said, with a little too much enthusiasm.
Even as Josie giggled, she felt the emotion well up in her chest. She loved these girls. Feeling more stirred up than hopeful, Josie clinked her glass to each of her friends’.
Then Delaney became businesslike. She pulled out a notebook and set it on the table, aligning its corners with some invisible guidelines. Josie immediately became tense. Yes, the three of them had been friends (best friends!) for the past twenty years, and they knew almost every detail of her life … but not every detail. Some things were meant to remain private.
“Okay. So. I have some questions for you,” Delaney said. She opened the notebook to a fresh page.
“Okay,” Josie said, drawing out the word and taking a big gulp of her drink.
Delaney was silent for a moment, writing something down. “How often do you guys have sex?” she asked then, looking up at Josie.
“Delaney!” Summer said quickly. “Don’t start with that one! Derek and I have sex like, once a decade.”
“Well, we know that’s not true,” Josie said to her drink.
Delaney added, “You’re pregnant. And you have four kids. Typically, frequency of sex is a good marker of any romantic relationship.” She blushed. “Fine, I’ll start with a different one.”
“She and Jake are doing it, like, three times a day,” Summer stage-whispered to Josie.
Delaney, now bright red in the face, went to cross out what she’d written. Josie stopped her by putting a hand on her arm.
“No. Don’t cross it out. It’s fine. If I can’t tell you two everything, what kind of friendship is this?”
Well, not everything.
She pushed the little voice to the back of her mind and answered Delaney’s question: “Once a month.”
Delaney couldn’t hide her shocked expression, but she managed to bring it back to neutral pretty quickly when Summer elbowed her.
“I saw that,” Josie said. “Not all of us are in the throes of fresh, new love like you and Jake are.”
Delaney grinned.
“Yes, I have you two to thank for my stellar sex life, that’s for sure,” Delaney said.
“Let’s move on before she starts regaling us with stories of Jake’s between-the-sheets prowess,” Summer said to Josie.
“He is pretty amazing. He does this thing where he—”
Summer cut her off. “Next question, please.”
Still smiling, Delaney asked: “How often do you hug?”
“‘How often do you hug?’ What the hell kind of question is that? I’m
going to need sustenance for this.” Josie waved to Benjamin, held up her drink, pointed at it and held up two fingers.
“So?” Summer said. “How often do you guys hug, Josie?”
“Like, I don’t know, every few days or something?”
“Wait. So how do you say good-bye when he leaves for work or whatever?” Delaney wanted to know.
“He’s sleeping when I leave for work. I’m sleeping when he gets home. I’m telling you, ships passing in the night and all that.”
“Yikes,” Summer said to Delaney. “This is worse than we thought.”
Delaney nodded. “I think it’s time to lay out The Rules.”
Josie sighed. “Fine. But I’m not promising anything.”
“Geez, Josie, it’s your marriage. It’s not like we’re going to make you go out with guys who feed you ham sandwiches while wiping hog’s blood off their boots from that morning’s butcher.”
“That was only one date, Delaney,” Josie said. “And how could we have known that Jesse the Rancher would be obsessed with hogs?”
“Didn’t he have, like, a pig as his online dating profile picture?”
“He was very good-looking, if I recall,” Summer said, and Josie added, “And he had exceptional manners.”
“That’s true,” Delaney said. “But still. Be patient, Josie. Give us a chance, here. I followed your rules.”
“Kind of!” Josie said. “You used loopholes. Like when you went shopping for office supplies when you were supposed to be writing your resumé.”
“I needed a good atmosphere for working.”
“Whatever. Fine,” Josie said. They all laughed. Their use of “fine” had become a running joke since Delaney started using it every time Summer and Josie coaxed her into following their rules during The Dating Intervention.
“All right,” Delaney said. She turned to a fresh page in her notebook and wrote The Marriage Intervention at the top. “Let’s get started.”
***
“First of all,” Summer said, “she’s got to start initiating sex.”
“Who says I don’t?”
“Whether you do or not, once a month just isn’t going to cut it,” Summer said. “Research has proven that sex makes you feel closer to your partner. So even if you initiate it now, you’ve got to initiate it more.”