“We’d just come from two days at my parents’ place, where we’d had an argument because he felt my parents, especially my dad, didn’t like him. Dad kept grilling him on his career plans and asking if he’d consider grad school, etc., etc.” Jennifer didn’t explain to her friends that this was her father’s modus operandi, however. That his interrogation style of conversation and overbearing presence had been a painful constant in her life. Nor did she add that David’s slides into pompousness and his tendency toward game-playing were transparent to her, often funny, and seemed, by contrast to her father’s interpersonal conduct, a minute behavioral infraction. That David’s manners were in many ways a reprieve from what she’d grown accustomed to. “So by the time we got to David’s house, he was already defensive and nothing I said was the right thing.
“Sandra made sure we had almost no time alone to work things out. She’d whisper stuff to him and to her friend when I was just out of earshot, and she made sure that every night I stayed over, she and Marcia had a sleepover, too. The last straw was her encouraging Marcia to model the latest Victoria’s Secret sleepwear they’d picked up on their most recent shopping trip that week. It was a sheer ivory teddy, which left little to the imagination. I walked out of the room, but David stayed and watched, saying to me later, ‘Aw, c’mon. It was hilarious.’ The next day I told him to drive me back to my parents. He did and, on the road, he told me he was just humoring the girls but was sorry I’d felt uncomfortable…and blah, blah, blah. We sort of patched things up and, once we were back at school, everything seemed normal—”
“Until he suddenly left you,” Tamara said.
“Right.”
“Jennifer, didn’t David go to graduation? Did you really just not see him again anywhere for those last couple of weeks?” Bridget asked.
“No, he managed to avoid me very well. The only exams he had left were in classes we didn’t have together. He was living off campus with a few buddies that semester, and whenever I called there, I got their answering machine. When I stopped by, no one opened the door. I know he completed his class work and all the requirements for graduation, but he skipped the ceremony altogether. He disappeared from my life as if he’d never been there.” Saying it aloud, remembering it, reliving it, brought the rush of pain back into her body as if those eighteen years hadn’t buffered her from it at all.
“That sounds just horrible,” Bridget said, her voice so sympathetic Jennifer had to resist the embarrassing impulse to cry in public. “It does seem like his sister had something to do with your breakup.”
Jennifer sucked in some more air and forced her emotions back under wraps. “I’m not doubting it. The question isn’t whether or not David was manipulated. The question is how much—or how little—he regretted his choice. I’m inclined to believe it wasn’t enough.”
“Well,” Tamara said reasonably, “any college guy who could be so easily manipulated by a couple of high-school girls isn’t worth much in my book. But maybe there’s some important tidbit of information you’re missing. If you meet him at your old college campus in two weeks, you can find out for sure.”
And this promise of certainty took hold in Jennifer’s brain, tempting her to tinker with it like a stray bit of code, unfinished and seductive to her puzzler’s mind. “That’s true….”
After extracting a promise from Jennifer to let them know what happened next, Tamara then turned to Bridget, who was worrying her lip, her pale forehead deeply creased. Tamara knew she could gently suggest a few good creams to moisturize away those wrinkles, but if her friend kept grimacing that way, nothing would prove effective. “You said you’d had a weird day, too. What happened?”
Bridget tried to suppress the smile that always seemed to rise to her lips whenever she thought of Dr. Luke. “You know that dentist from my office? The one I talk about?”
Her friends nodded.
“Well, he brought me a cannoli dessert yesterday. One he and his mother made. And I know I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice, but it had this amazingly rich cream filling with slivered bits of chocolate and a hint of Marsala. And he’d kept the shell separate so it would stay crispy. But at the office he piped in the filling right in front of me and insisted I try it right away. He watched me eat the whole thing! It was unbelievable, but the weird part was afterward. We had this…moment. This really long moment when we just looked at each other. It wasn’t exactly flirting. It was more like recognizing some quality in each other.” She glanced at the other two women, trying to gauge their reaction.
Jennifer bobbed her head slowly in a show of quiet understanding.
Tamara squinted at her. “Let me get this straight. The guy you’re so hot for is that chubby old dentist? And he—like what? Lives with his mother?”
Bridget felt heat rush to her cheeks. “He’s not old! He’s, maybe, five or six years older than we are. And so what if he’s got a little paunch? Other than that, he’s in pretty good shape. Just not a beanpole. He’s one of those stockier guys, which I happen to like.” She rolled her eyes at Tamara. “And he doesn’t live with his mother. They just cook together sometimes. Jeez.”
“I can see how you’d like him,” Jennifer offered, her voice soft but kind. “I usually go to Dr. Jim for cleanings, but Dr. Luke has a warmth about him, and he seems to love to cook, just like you do.”
“Thank you,” Bridget said, feeling a little better and more than a little grateful to Jennifer for this comment. But still. If Tamara was going to be so judgmental, she wasn’t going to bother trying to explain her feelings anymore.
“Hey, it’s okay with me,” Tamara said, grinning. “Whatever turns you on.”
Bridget realized Tamara was being her normal, in-your-face self, but knowing this didn’t stop her from resenting it. She and Tamara had had their differences in the past, but she had never been so irritated by Tamara’s insensitivity before. She’d been trying to be open. Get a handle on her emotions and experience. Ask for advice from two women she thought she trusted.
But Tamara’s response made her want to fire back a nasty retort. Only, she couldn’t think of one fast enough. At least not one that wasn’t blatantly rude. So she settled for narrowing her eyes a fraction and pausing while she tried to regain her composure. Then she added, being careful to stamp the sarcasm out of her voice, “What happened with you and the younger man?”
Tamara looked at her dark-haired friend, instantly regretting her flippancy. She knew she’d been behaving less than charitably toward Bridget, and she had no excuse besides panic. She could feel her anxiety rising higher with each ticking second that they continued to sit there discussing this topic. She’d been fighting to retain some small measure of self-control and had to resort to her “tough girl” demeanor to do it.
She feigned a shrug. “Not much, I guess. I mean, he was out working in his front yard again, looking cute in his little running shorts.” She forced a laugh. “He’d borrowed my grass trimmer on Wednesday and brought it back yesterday.”
“You said you’d had a ‘weird’ day,” Bridget persisted, not about to let her off the hook that easily.
Tamara acknowledged this and tried to sort out the “weird” part of the scene in her mind before openly expressing it to her friends. In a twenty-second flashback, she ignored the inquiring stares of the other two, took several sips of her coffee and reviewed her mental tape:
Aaron, showing up at her house yesterday, had been dressed in a faded red T-shirt with black running shorts, which revealed his tanned and muscular legs. He stood in her doorway, holding the trimmer out to her like a harvest offering.
“Morning, Tamara. Just wanted to drop this off,” he said, a smile on his face and in his voice. “Thanks.”
She managed some trite reply but, mostly, just stared at him. She hadn’t been expecting company. Hadn’t showered. Was dressed in her rattiest cutoff jeans and an old lilac-colored sweatshirt. And she’d turned on the stove to make tea, so when she heard
the doorbell ring, she didn’t think it was for anything more important than one of the UPS deliveries Jon was always getting.
She took the trimmer and forbade herself to smooth her hair and give away her insecurities over her appearance. “You sure you don’t want to keep this? Come back tomorrow and do my lawn, too?” (Yes, she’d said my lawn, not our lawn. Huh. Cutting Jon out of the picture already, eh?)
He laughed. “Not a chance, neighbor. Your Thistle Empire is part of your domain.”
She said, “Fine, fine. Be that way.” Then the kettle whistle blew, a noise startling enough that Aaron spun around looking for its origin. “That’s just my tea,” she explained.
“Oh, I’ll let you go then.” He took a step back.
But she read a look in his eyes, a flash of disappointment clouding the light blue irises, so she impulsively said, “Want to have a cup with me?” The tooting got ever louder, making it impossible to ignore, adding a sense of pressure.
He entered her house. “Sure. Anything to make that scary sound stop. I thought we were being bombed.”
She motioned for him to join her in the kitchen as he kicked off his dusty Reeboks. She raced toward the stove. Within seconds he was right behind her. What an unsettling habit, that stealthiness of his. She could feel his breath just two feet behind her as he laughed and said, “Tweety Bird. How cute.”
He’d been pointing to her designer kettle. “Cute” was a new and refreshing descriptor for it. Jon had always called it “infantile.”
She murmured, “Thanks,” then asked, “Do you like Jasmine Blossom?”
“No idea. Never heard of it, but I’m sure it’ll be great.”
She tended to chatter when she got nervous, so she prattled on about how it was a traditional Chinese tea that dated back to the Song dynasty of the ninth century. “It’s mild and lightly floral. I’m usually more of a coffee drinker, but I’ve always appreciated this one.”
“Wow. History, botany and high tea all in one. Think you’re pretty smart, don’t ’cha?” And he laughed. Was it at her or with her? Either way, she didn’t know how to defend herself against his mockery. It was mild and good-natured, though, unlike Jon’s abrasive snark, and she hadn’t had an interaction like this with a male—bantering but not confrontational—for so long. She felt lost, vulnerable in her too-comfy clothes, unprotected against his judgments. But his eyes kept smiling at her, and so, she fought for balance. Tried to think up an appropriately scathing reply. He surprised her, though, by adding, “Well, I guess you are pretty clever,” a concession her own husband had never willingly made.
It rendered her speechless.
Aaron glanced around the kitchen, seemingly oblivious to her faltering. “Do you want me to grab spoons, napkins, creamers or something?”
“Umm, no,” she managed. “I’ve got it.”
“Seriously, I have three older sisters, remember? I won’t faint if you ask me to pull the half-and-half out of the fridge.”
She couldn’t take much more of this. She either had to lasso her fear of speaking her mind in front of him or kick Aaron out of her house. She had a big personality and she refused to be intimidated by some guy she could’ve babysat for as a teen. Now was the time to draw her weapons. “Why are you being so nice to me? Do I seem that pathetic to you? That in need of self-esteem bolstering?”
He squinted at her. “What?”
She couldn’t allow herself to back down an inch. She had to come on strong, forceful, opinionated. Take control of the conversation and shape it to her own specifications. She had to rip into him. Project confidence even if she were nowhere near to feeling it. “Oh, I’m onto you,” she claimed. A lie. A total lie. She had no freakin’ idea what was running through the man’s mind. “I know all this flattery and helpfulness comes with ulterior motives. You don’t just want tea, do you? You want cookies, too.”
He laughed again, as if finally getting the joke. “Oh, you just think you know my Machiavellian plan. Not likely, neighbor.”
Her breath caught in her esophagus for a split second, but she pushed it out, laughed lightly and pulled two Tweety Bird mugs (they matched her kettle) from the cabinet. She poured. “Milk? Cream? Sugar?”
“None of the above.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Grapes? Pistachios? Snickerdoodles?”
“Snickerdoodles.” He grinned at her.
“Okay.” She broke the seal on the package she kept stashed in the pantry and reached into the bag. She plopped a couple of cookies on a plate, wishing she could have baked homemade ones like Bridget. “You can have more if you want.”
Aaron took his plate and teacup and sat down at the table. “Why are you being so nice to me? Do I seem that pathetic to you?” he mimicked.
She shook her head and, again, forced herself to laugh. But she made the mistake of catching his eye, and he leveled a very steady gaze across the kitchen at her. Was he challenging her? Was this flirtation? What kind of game, exactly, was she playing with him?
As if in answer to this question, he intensified his stare—a bright blue-eyed burning—and, for a moment, it was as if they’d physically touched. As if her well-crafted veneer had been stripped away and he could see the girl underneath. Whatever the game, she was going to lose against him, and that knowledge scared the shit out of her.
After that, he’d gulped most of his tea and chomped down one of the cookies before she’d even made it to the table. The conversation that followed was jerky, awkward and brief. He grabbed his second cookie for the road, thanked her for the snack and said he needed to finally get in his run (“an easy 10K”) before his conference call with an advertiser that afternoon.
“See you around,” he said, shooting her a guarded glance over his shoulder on his way out.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
She’d mocked Bridget’s “moment” with the flabby dentist, but only because she couldn’t believe the terror she’d felt in having experienced a similar instance with Aaron. She did everything in her power to push those unsettling emotions away.
But Bridget and Jennifer were still waiting for her reply. And Bridget asked again, her tone slightly irritated, “What weird thing happened?” And Jennifer kept staring at her, her blue-green eyes round and luminous.
“Sorry,” Tamara murmured. “All that happened was that he rang the bell, I opened the door, he handed me the trimmer, thanked me for its use and ran away. Literally ran. He does a minimum of five miles per day. What was weird was that this was all he said. That our conversation was so short,” she lied.
“Oh,” Bridget said, sounding disappointed.
Tamara shrugged and turned her attention to the task of people-watching in the café. She couldn’t eat more than half of her muffin and felt physically ill over lying to her friends. Sure, she’d omitted information here or there in the past, and certainly she’d exaggerated a time or two, but she hadn’t actively misled them before or told full-scale falsehoods. At least never about something so important.
She inclined her head toward a young couple sitting down four tables away. “Look at those two. College kids.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and threw in a smirk for good measure. “He’s staring at her like he wants to undress her right there in front of the donut counter. Should I yell, ‘Get a room’?”
“No!” her friends exclaimed in unison. And, with that, Tamara successfully redirected the spotlight and remained free to keep her disconcerting interaction with Aaron to herself.
Jennifer didn’t say anything, but she’d noticed the way Tamara kept twitching and stabbing her grilled muffin with a fork. She’d seen Tamara do the same thing after Benji got his UT acceptance letter and, also, one time when Tamara had confided in them that Jon threatened to put their house on the market and move them all to Atlanta to take a job with another law firm if Tamara didn’t agree to let him increase his work travel.
So, no matter what Tamara said, Jennifer had reason to believe there were issues she’d
left unspoken.
Bridget, on the other hand, was happy not only to let the subject drop but to ignore Tamara altogether for a while. As they parted company an hour later, Bridget vowed to be more guarded the next time she met her friends for coffee. Her “moment” with Dr. Luke meant something to her, and she wasn’t willing to be criticized by Tamara again—whether her behavior was a result of meanness or merely thoughtlessness.
Her tall, slim friend didn’t know what it was like to censor herself the way Bridget did. Tamara always got to play the Outspoken card, which was fine and good for her, but Bridget was determined to get to the bottom of her own problems and concerns. And while she’d hoped for her friends’ support in doing so, she didn’t require it.
Bridget, Jennifer and Tamara left the Indigo Moon Café with affected smiles and professed delight in their next coffee date, just seven days away. They openly lamented their inability to see one another sooner than that, or even talk for long on the phone, due to their “crazy schedules.” It was their usual parting ritual—a well-worn script that they’d clung to out of habit. And it had once been completely true, at least when they’d first created and reserved these Friday mornings at nine for each other.
All three of them, however, grimaced, frowned or scowled respectively when they were in their cars and safely out of view of the others.
As they each drove away, all three reflected on the obligation of telling the truth in intimate friendships. Was it really such a necessity? Or, beyond a set point of general veracity, was there such a thing as too much information?
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