by Lea Sims
Lexie met her out front, and Delaney grinned when she saw her. Her friend and colleague of nearly ten years was a force of nature. They were both graphic designers, both in their early thirties, successful, divorced, and loved jazz music. But that’s pretty much where the similarities ended.
Delaney was the walking definition of a tall cool blonde. Everything about her was first class and understated. She had on a pair of expensively distressed jeans and a sleeveless black crepe blouse with an upturned collar that framed her face. French-manicured toes peeked out from the open slash of her black suede ankle boots, fringed around the top at the junction of her tapered jeans. Silver hoop earrings, a single silver bangle, and a long silver chain lent the kind of no-effort sophistication that other women envied. She was elegant, graceful, and always in control of herself. When she spoke, her words were measured and meaningful, and people typically leaned in to listen to her. She didn’t waste words.
But Alexis Agostini was Delaney’s foil in nearly every way. She was a New Jersey girl from a big Italian family. She had boundless energy, loved or hated everyone she met, and would be rendered utterly mute if someone forced her to sit on her hands. Nothing she did was reserved, demure, or quiet. Like Delaney, she was tall, and an hour a day in spin class kept her reasonably fit. But no matter how many hours she spent on a bike, she couldn’t eliminate the curves that genetics and a lifelong love affair with Italian food had given her. She also didn’t complain about it. The blessing of a curvaceous figure meant she had also inherited a pair of assets that she was quite proud of and loved to put on display. She was a ton of fun, easy to talk to, and never met a stranger. She had a tough, don’t-mess-with-me Jersey attitude, and when she went out, she dressed to the nines.
Tonight, she wore tight black leather pants with gold zippers that ran up the back from hem to knee, accentuating a killer pair of Louboutin black patent leather zip booties. Her T-strap tank top was gold-sequined and bared a lot of warm, sun-kissed skin. Her head was shaved on the left side, and her thick dark hair cascaded in long flowing waves down her back and right shoulder, a long bang sweeping across and over her right eye. Her only jewelry was a black leather choker and a single gold droplet dangling to the shoulder from her left ear. She had large brown eyes and false lashes, exquisitely applied makeup, and sported red lipstick over pristine and dazzling white teeth. She was sensual and striking. Men either loved her or were afraid of her. But all of them noticed her.
“I see you dressed for church,” Delaney teased her as they approached the hostess stand.
“Seriously!” Lexie laughed out loud. “If I still went to confession, I’d have to spend the first hour just apologizing for my wardrobe. Ain’t nobody got time for that!” She’d gone through thirteen years of Catholic school and had all the battle scars to prove it.
They gave their name to the hostess and after a brief wait, they were escorted to their table. They ordered drinks and settled into the familiar groove of comfortable conversation, covering everything from work to movies to men. The conversation usually came back to men in some way. It was a favorite topic for both of them, and they made a game of coming up with mock character sketches for whatever men were scattered around the room.
“That guy at the front table has got to be doctor,” Lexie said, “but I’d bet my Lou’s that’s not his wife sitting across from him.” Delaney stole a glance at the table in question. The man was in his late forties and was wearing a light blue dress shirt, red tie and khaki pants. She could see a pair of white cross trainers tucked under his chair, and he had two pens and a tiny flashlight tucked into his shirt pocket. But the dead give-away was the beeper clipped to his side next to his cell phone. Only an on-call doctor would still be using a beeper. He was chatting animatedly with a younger woman across the table. She was probably thirty, and judging by the hair haphazardly pulled back into a bun, the fresh-faced lack of makeup, and the slight smudge of sleeplessness under her eyes, she was either an intern or a resident somewhere.
“He’s telling her what a brilliant diagnostician she is,” Delaney said with a knowing grin, even though she couldn’t hear a thing they were saying.
“And how relieved he is to have her on his team,” Lexie continued dramatically. She loved this game. “Does she have any idea how many idiots he’s had to deal with before her? I mean, she’s a godsend. He’s never had a more brilliant colorectal intern.” Lexie intentionally said the word “colorectal” just as Delaney was taking a sip of her martini, which caused her to choke, cough and laugh all at the same time.
“Yessss. Idiots, all of them,” Delaney said with mock indignation. “His last intern fumbled through his rounds, misdiagnosed a polyp, and scheduled a patient for the wrong test. Can you believe it? It’s such a breath of fresh air to finally have a polished, mature physician on his team.” She said this with feeling, looking deeply into Lexie’s eyes with exaggerated longing.
“You had me at ‘brilliant,’” Lexie responded with a dreamy sigh.
They both broke character and howled with laughter, turning more than a few heads in the room, most of them male. When they looked over to see the “doctor” patting the hand of the girl in what looked like a moment of professional reassurance, they both burst out laughing again. The fact that he was patting her right hand with his wedding-ring-clad left hand and that she was blushing furiously under his gaze amused them greatly.
“Not sure which one is the bigger idiot,” Lexie said, shaking her head. “But I’m going to say it’s her. I mean the dude didn’t even bother to take his ring off. How stupid can you get?” She had no patience for dumb women.
“I doubt she cares,” Delaney said, shrugging. “She may be the one doing the seducing. There’s more than one way to be upwardly mobile, you know.” She’d seen it happen at their own company, where there was so much political intrigue and scandal going on, you could never be entirely certain who was victimizing whom.
“That reminds me, Delaney,” Lexie said, suddenly serious. “There’s something I need to tell you, but I don’t want to ruin our evening, so…” Her voice trailed off.
“Oh sure. Like I’m supposed to say no to that comment?” Delaney responded with a smirk. “Go ahead. Lay it on me.”
Lexie sighed, leaned in and said, “I saw Danny yesterday morning.” She paused. “With another woman.”
“Seriously? Who? Where?”
“He was sitting in the window of the Starbucks at 29th and Park. He was at a small table with a young woman I didn’t recognize. What stopped me in my tracks was that they were sitting so close. They weren’t sitting across from each other with tablets or laptops…you know, nothing that looked like a business meeting. He had actually pulled his chair around the table to sit beside her. They looked very…cozy.”
Delaney felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She sat back in her chair in shock, though she tried not to let it show on her face. Danny? In another relationship already? Why had this possibility not occurred to her?
“Did he see you?” Delaney asked.
“No, he was very engrossed in his conversation with her. And that Starbucks is huge. I went in and got in line to order so I could get a better look from behind at what he was doing. I watched him while I was tucked into the line, and he never turned and looked back at the counter. I ordered a coffee and left. I’m pretty sure he didn’t see me.”
“Well if you watched him that long, what did you see?” Delaney hated herself instantly for asking. She really shouldn’t care a whit what Danny did or who he was with.
Lexie hesitated, debating how much to divulge to her friend. Very few people knew Delaney like she did. Delaney guarded her emotions like Fort Knox, but Lexie strongly suspected that’s because there was a lot to guard. “She’s definitely a love interest,” she finally said reluctantly. “They weren’t all over each other, but there was a quick kiss or two and a lot of hand-holdin
g.”
“Hand-holding?” Delaney asked, incredulous, her glass paused halfway to her lips. “He was actually holding her hand? In public? And you’re sure this was Danny?”
“A hundred percent.” Lexie thought it interesting that Delaney would care more about the hand-holding than the kissing.
“Well you may as well have told me that he was riding a kangaroo around Times Square,” Delaney said, too surprised to be angry.
Danny didn’t like to hold hands. It was too cheesy, he said. She couldn’t even get him to hold her hand under dark cover in the movie theater or when they were home alone on the sofa. There had been more than one occasion when they were engaged when she’d reached over to grab his hand, and he’d pulled away disapprovingly. Her heart seized over that memory, and a quick sting of tears threatened her eyes, a response so sudden and uncharacteristic that it startled her. She stood up quickly.
“Give me a second,” she said to Lexie. “I’m going to the restroom. Order me another drink if our waiter ever decides to come back around.”
Lexie sighed as she watched her friend walk regally away from the table. Not once since the night Delaney had showed up at Lexie’s apartment with her suitcase in hand had she seen her friend break down. They had sat up all night talking through what had happened—Danny scanning through her phone while she was in the shower, ostensibly trying to find a picture they had taken at a Cirque show, only to discover the texts she’d been exchanging with Trent. Lexie had suspected something was brewing between Delaney and Trent, but it wasn’t until that night that she’d had it confirmed. By then, supposedly, their fling was over.
Danny had been livid, incapable of being reasoned with. He had literally grabbed Delaney by the arm and pulled her to the hallway, telling her to get the “F” out. He relented enough to let her pack a bag, and she’d knocked on Lexie’s door forty-five minutes later, stunned and stoic. She relayed her entire story to Lexie as if she were reciting the Gettysburg address, with all the inflection of a fifth-grader just trying to get it over with. Lexie tried to probe her emotions a bit, but Delaney shut her down. “I’m fine” or “I’ll be okay” were her responses to Lexie’s questions. In the end, Lexie just decided to support her friend however she could, even if it was to sit silently by and pretend along with her that this wasn’t a big deal.
Lexie knew first-hand what a big deal divorce was. Her own divorce had been an emotionally charged drama that tore her family apart. Her ex-husband had been her high school sweetheart and her brother’s best friend. His mom and her mom had been friends since childhood and had been planning their wedding for years. In fact, the only event that had eclipsed their divorce, in both drama and expense, was their wedding. But their marriage was a headache from day one, really before they were even married. Tony had chased every skirt in the five boroughs, and when he got a girl pregnant that worked for him, Lexie was done.
Amanda had squeezed a lot of penance out of Tony Agostini, and Lexie got a divorce settlement that went a long way in pacifying her (and keeping her in Louboutins). Lexie was the one who had referred Delaney to Snyder, Beckworth & Frost. Since Danny had filed for the divorce, Lexie had been encouraging her friend to fight it out with him, but she finally figured out that Delaney just wanted it all to be over. Where Lexie thrived on drama, Delaney avoided it like the plague.
“Excuse me, is your friend coming back?” A deep voice spoke from above her. She looked up to see a guy standing beside their table. She sized him up quickly and gave him a slow, sexy grin. He was in his early thirties, wore dark jeans and a simple but expensive charcoal gray T-shirt. He was a lifter, biceps stretching the sleeves of his shirt, a tribal tattoo just peeking out from under the edge of his sleeve. He was blonde, slightly and perfectly unshaven, and had warm brown eyes. Hellooo, gorgeous, Lexie thought.
“What if I say no?” Lexie asked, testing his intentions.
“Would you consider giving me her number or telling me how to find her on Insta or Facebook?” the guy asked, hopeful.
She sighed. She’d learned not to take it personally when guys took an interest in Delaney instead of her. They both got a lot of offers, and she’d figured out pretty quickly which kind of guys had a thing for her friend and which ones came panting after her. Still, this guy was a doll. She hated to let him off the hook that easily. She cocked her head to the side and pursed her red lips as she contemplated her answer.
“Well, in that case, you can buy her a drink in a few minutes,” she said, finally relenting. “She went to the bathroom. She’ll be right back.”
“What’s her name?”
“Andromeda,” Lexie said with a straight face, sipping her gin and tonic.
“Like the Greek girl?” he asked, looking surprised and intrigued at the same time. “The one from Clash of the Titans?”
“No, like the galaxy,” Lexie said. “Her father helped build the Hubble telescope.”
“Holy crap. Really?”
“Really.” She paused and then went in for the kill. “People think it’s a stripper name, but of course, that’s ridiculous.”
She could have sworn his knees buckled a little and his eyes widened. She didn’t need the Hubble telescope to see where his mind went. He was picturing Delaney and her mile-long legs wrapped around a stripper pole. Her lips twitched and she had to press them together to keep from laughing.
“Run along, gorgeous. You don’t want to be here when she gets back.” Lexie waved him off.
“Why not?”
“If she comes back and finds you hovering over our table, she might assume I’ve laid claim to you. And we don’t share.” Her eyes flared, challenging him to reconsider his selection.
“Okay, I’ll send a drink over when she gets back. Thanks…um…what was your name?”
“Alexis.”
“Thanks, Alexis. Put in a good word for me.” He returned to the bar, where he rejoined a group of people that had been watching their interaction. She winked at one of his friends, whose bottle of Yuengling promptly slipped through his fingers and crashed to the floor. She grinned. Men were such easy targets.
A few minutes later, Delaney returned to the table and sat down.
“You okay?” Lexie asked without making eye contact.
“Of course I am,” Delaney said with a wide smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Your revelation just caught me off guard. If Danny has moved on, then hallelujah.” Her carefully constructed mask was back on. Her eyes scanned the room. “So, where’s my drink?”
Lexie eyed the hottie at the bar. “Oh, it’s on its way, I’m sure.”
Within minutes, their waiter came back to the table and placed a martini in front of her along with a napkin that had a note written on it. “From the muscle man in the tight gray shirt,” he said, nodding toward the bar. Delaney looked over to see a guy in jeans and a gray shirt facing them, leaned back with elbows on the bar and one foot up on the rail. His eyes were locked on her. He raised his whiskey glass to her and nodded. Wowzers.
Looking down at the napkin, she tried to make out the distinctly strong masculine writing. She squinted and pulled it closer, not noticing that Lexie had turned aside to hide her laughter.
“What the heck…” she muttered, as she read what he’d written.
Can’t take my eyes off you. Turns out, your name is as beautiful as you are. Would love to meet you and hear all about your dad’s telescope.
She looked her friend squarely in the eyes and saw Lexie’s shoulders shaking with laughter. “Sooo, what’s my name?” she asked, eyes sliding back to the hunk at the bar.
“Andromeda.” Lexie burst out laughing at the look on her friend’s face.
“That’s a new one,” Delaney smirked but clearly interested. “And my dad has a… telescope?”
“He was on the NASA crew that built the Hubble. He named you after a galaxy. Isn’t
that precious?” Lexie mocked playfully, tucking one foot up under her in the chair like they were at a slumber party. She was truly enjoying herself.
The waiter who had brought her drink was still standing next to them, enjoying the exchange. He was always curious to see what was written on the napkins men loved to send with their drink offerings. “Any message you’d like me to deliver back to him?” he asked, offering her a pen.
Delaney put a hand up to decline the pen, but she nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving the man at the bar. Oh, this should be fun.
“Tell him if he can name the Three Sisters in Orion’s Belt, he can join me at this table.”
“People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been just another word for darkness. Blind encounters writing sonnets no one can ever read.”
—Mark Z. Danielewski
Delaney awoke the next morning to Rogue licking the palm of her outstretched hand, which hung limply out from under her down comforter. Rogue being on the floor next to her bed was not her dog’s normal routine, at least not since she and Danny separated. Danny would never allow the dog in their bed, so Rogue used to make a beeline to Delaney’s side of the bed in the morning to enthusiastically lick whatever was sticking out from under the covers, be it hand, foot or face. But since Delaney had been living alone, Rogue had taken to bounding up on the bed and trampling all over her to force her up and out of bed. Delaney had grown accustomed to it. She never needed an alarm clock.
The sensation of Rogue’s rough tongue on her palm roused her quickly from sleep, reminding her that she was not alone. She sat up slowly, her eyes adjusting to the stream of light coming in through the cracks of her window blinds. A gathering headache pounded lightly against her temples, reminding her why she usually held herself to a three-drink limit. She winced slightly as she turned to look at the man occupying the space beside her.