Adrian pursed his lips as he frowned, and I wondered if he had anyone in his life who loved him enough to tell him that expression made him look like he needed to use the bathroom. “Interesting. Would you need to brush up on modern practices?”
“Do you mean social work?” I asked. “Because if so, I’m up to date on current counseling and outreach methods. And as my bookkeeping experience indicates, I’m extremely well organized and able to juggle a number of projects at one time. I believe I would enjoy and excel at coordinating effective programs for CenterPoint.”
Adrian’s expression had begun to glaze over. “I would love to hear more about what the position entails,” I said in an effort to engage him. “Would I be working exclusively with outside organizations to coordinate programs for CenterPoint, or would I begin facilitating them at some point? Because if the latter, I would be happy to apply for state licensure.”
He sat up, as if he were making an effort to look awake, and began rambling off buzzy phrases about fostering community connections and looking at every endeavor through the lens of the foundation’s mission. None of this was a legitimate explanation of what I would actually be doing. He must have seen the cynicism on my face, because he added, “We’d talk more about what the actual position entails later down the line.”
Neither of us spoke for at least five seconds longer than was comfortable. “I’m looking forward to hearing more,” I finally said. “I’m passionate about helping others, and it sounds like you and your colleagues are, too.” Liar, I thought as soon as I heard myself say this. As far as I could tell, Adrian Fromm’s primary passion was the sound of his own voice as he recited jargon.
“Great,” he said. Then he began telling me about CenterPoint’s “donor communities” and the “shepherding process” for each donation they received.
By the time he finished, I was ready to wallop him, so it was probably for the best that he stood, indicating that in less than ten minutes’ time, he had deduced that I was not the right person to fulfill the foundation’s mission—or more likely, to work in an office containing a foosball table. The entire reason I had been called in was probably so the company’s hiring manager could claim to have interviewed a broad range of candidates before hiring the person they had intended to choose all along.
“Thanks so much for meeting with us, Mary,” Adrian said, gripping my hand so forcefully that I felt one metacarpal bone crunch against another. I cringed, but his eyes were on his phone, which was faceup on the conference table. “I have a meeting in another minute. You remember the way to the door?”
“I do, and it’s Maggie,” I said. Based on the length of our interview, it was safe to assume that he wouldn’t be calling me for a follow-up. Even so, I did not want to walk out the door being called another woman’s name.
Adrian’s head lifted and he looked at me—actually looked at me, perhaps for the first time since I had walked into the office—and compassion flickered in his eyes. Perhaps I reminded him of his mother, or one of the women his foundation purported to support. “Absolutely,” he said. “Thank you for your time, Maggie.”
I was retrieving my coat from the coatrack after support group when Charlie shimmied up next to me. I startled, as my mind was still on Laurie, who had just revealed her ex-husband was a sex addict. This had got me wondering how often intimacy was the root of separation. For the past several years before we divorced, Adam regularly had trouble achieving an erection, and when I had encouraged him to see a urologist, he had informed me that the problem was not mechanical but the result of my approaching sex as another task on my to-do list. (Which I suppose I sometimes did.) If I had come on to him more often, would he actually have found it easier to get aroused? If he had come on to me more often, would I have been able to feel desire at a moment’s notice—or even after many long minutes of what was supposed to be foreplay? In the final years of our marriage, at least, he had clearly struggled to relate to me as a sexual being. In turn, this had switched my libido off, which had probably exacerbated his arousal issues. It was like one big downward spiral of sexual dysfunction. (And to think we had once been able to spend an entire day in bed, finding new ways to delight each other.)
Charlie’s presence brought me back to the present. “Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. He was leaning against the wall. “I was just wondering if you were interested in going out with me again sometime.”
Why yes, yes I was—but wasn’t dating a fellow support-grouper against some sort of rule? I glanced around nervously, but no one else was in earshot.
As I turned back to Charlie, it occurred to me that the real issue at hand was not support-group politics. It was that the last man I had been so immediately drawn to was Ian, my college boyfriend. Could I really attempt a casual relationship with someone who made my body hum?
I was going to have to try, I realized as I leaned in toward him without thinking about what I was doing. “When?”
He gave me a big grin. “Now?”
I zipped my down coat and looked at Charlie’s worn leather jacket. It was the kind of jacket few men could pull off, but he was one of them. “I was going to head home.”
“I could go with you.” Charlie laughed at himself. “Listen to me, inviting myself over. Sorry, I’ll—”
“No, that’s perfect.” The minute the words tumbled from my mouth, I wanted to shove them back in. So much for being careful.
“Okay,” said Charlie shyly. “If you’re sure.”
I wasn’t, but it was too late for that. Charlie drove behind me, which was just as well; I didn’t want him to see me clutching my steering wheel for dear life. Had I applied deodorant earlier? What if he thought I was inviting him over for sex? (Because I wasn’t. Was I?) This could end in a mess that made my night with Benito look like a tidy package tied with a bow, and that would be my fault.
In the rearview mirror, I watched Charlie pull up behind me in the driveway. Unless I was imagining it, he looked anxious, too.
“This is nice,” he said after he got out of the car. “Rustic for a spot so close to town.”
The porch was lit with twinkle lights, but my nerves were blinding me and I couldn’t seem to find the right key on my keychain. “Thanks. I can’t really take credit, though. It’s all Jean.”
“She’s your friend, so I’m going to call this an extension of your good taste.” His words soothed me, and I located the key and unlocked the door, which Charlie held open for me, motioning that I should go in first.
“This is really something,” he said as we entered, but his eyes were on me, not the house, and desire shot through me.
I understood then what an insane idea this had been. Benito was good looking in an abstract, unthreatening way, sort of like a catalog model. But Charlie’s full lips, his muscular arms, and even the deep timbre of his voice created the sort of visceral experience that overpowers your senses before you have time to back away.
“I’m nervous,” I blurted. “I’m attracted to you, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”
He chuckled. “Sorry, I think?”
“Don’t be. I know I’m overanalyzing it, but that’s kind of what I do.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.” He took my jacket from my hands and hung it on a hook next to the door. “But you should know that this doesn’t have to be anything you don’t want it to be.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I said, “I think I can handle that.”
He slid his jacket off and hung it on top of mine. “Well, if that changes, tell me.”
“I’ll do my best. Would you like some tea?”
“Tea sounds like just the thing.”
When I was done in the kitchen, we sat on opposite ends of the sofa, each holding a mug. Things between us had again normalized, and we talked about Laurie’s dilemma and whether sexual addiction was real (we both presumed it was, but couldn’t say for certain). This led to a discussion about why neither of us
drank. I explained that I had relied on alcohol too heavily during the separation and wanted a fresh start. Charlie, in turn, told me that his father had been a drunk. “Not the fun-loving, functional kind,” he said. “The kind who drinks away the grocery money and belts whoever he can reach before passing out. I didn’t want to be anything like him as an adult, and not drinking seemed like a good place to start.”
His voice was measured, but his face was full of pain as he told me this. I put down my tea and moved closer to him without thinking. “I’m so sorry. I had a rough childhood, too, but not like that. That must have been terrible for you.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly. Then he inched toward me, so that our knees were touching. “This is off topic, but I like the color of your hair.”
“Oh.” His compliment was unexpected, and I felt shy again. “Thank you. It used to be darker, but I’m trying to incorporate the gray, so . . .”
“You’d look great gray, too,” he said, so sincerely that I wanted to reach into the space-time vortex, find his father and this Lucinda character he had been married to, and give them both a piece of my mind.
“Charlie,” I said, “you never did tell me what you do for a living.”
He leaned back. “Oh, this, that, and the other thing. I’ve had a lot of different gigs over the years.”
His reticence to discuss work when we had just delved into far deeper issues struck me as odd. The leather-strapped watch on his wrist and the black sedan he drove told me that he was not hurting for cash. Did he, say, run errands for a mobster or work for a company that manufactured chemical weapons?
Before I could keep speculating, he added, “I worked in tech for a long time, usually at start-ups. I owned the last one I was at, and got burned out and sold it. That’s one of the seven hundred reasons Lucinda divorced me—because I didn’t like settling down with one company. She said it made her feel insecure about our future. So I guess I don’t really like talking about it.”
At least he didn’t make a living dissolving bodies in lye. “We can talk about something else,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said. His eyes were deep pools of black as he looked at me, and longing spread in me like heat. “I’m going to be honest with you right now.”
“Anything.”
“I’m thinking about kissing you, Maggie,” he said. “What are your thoughts on that?”
Thoughts? If I had a single one, I could not locate it in my head. I was an animal running on the pure, biological instinct to mate. But after I panted at him for a moment, some semblance of self-protection kicked in, and I managed to say, “I’d like that, but only if we can keep this casual.”
“Absolutely,” he said, and I willed myself not to concentrate on the fact that his voice had just lowered an octave. “You probably won’t even like kissing me anyway.”
I could feel my hands trembling. “Probably not,” I said.
“Then I apologize in advance,” he said, and put his hand on my neck and brought his lips to mine. His kiss was soft but hungry, and—dear God—he was kissing me as if I were delicious. As I kissed him back, it occurred to me that maybe I was delicious, and somewhere along the way I had forgotten that.
But after a few minutes, I started to think about Adam, and how little we had kissed at the end of our marriage. When we bothered to be intimate, there had been at most a perfunctory tongue touching before we moved on to the act itself. Had that been part of the reason our marriage had fallen apart? Or was our lack of kissing a symptom of the larger disease that had destroyed us?
I pulled away from Charlie. “I need a breather.”
He sat up and cleared his throat. “Of course. Obviously I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
See? I thought. There were brakes, and I was not afraid to use them. “Thank you. That was . . .” I blushed. “Wonderful. But like I said, this is really new for me.”
“Think it will be okay to see me at the support group next week?” Charlie’s face was flushed, too, but his voice was back to its usual register.
I nodded.
“Great.” He stood and bent to kiss me on the cheek. “I’m going to get going, but feel free to call or text if you want to get together before Tuesday. It was nice to spend some time with you, Maggie Halfmoon.”
Charlie Ellery was ninety percent more complicated than I had been aiming for. But when I was with him, I felt good. Not like my old self, necessarily—but nonetheless better than I had in a long time. Maybe that’s why, as I watched him walk to the front door, slip on his jacket, and turn to say goodbye one more time, I gave myself permission to see where this might lead.
EIGHTEEN
Adrian Fromm called the following Monday. “Maggie, hello!”
“Hello, Adrian,” I said, stretching the two words out as if he were new to the English language. I had just pulled eggs from the fridge to begin making an omelet for lunch, and I tapped one on the counter and broke it into a bowl with my free hand. Adam used to call this one of my secret ninja moves. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”
“Why’s that? I really enjoyed our chat,” he said.
Is that what they were calling eight-minute interviews these days? At least he had not called me Mary or Margaret. I cracked a second egg into the bowl. “I’m glad,” I told him, because I was not going to fib and say I had, too.
“Unfortunately, we did go with another candidate.”
“Then may I ask why you’re calling?” I said, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder. A year ago, I would have danced around this question or waited for Adrian to volunteer information, but in addition to ripping my bleeding heart from my chest, divorce seemed to have removed my social-niceties filter.
“I’m reaching out to see if perhaps you would like to come intern for us.”
I pulled a whisk from the drawer. “Pardon?”
“It’s a paid position, of course; you’d be making thirteen dollars an hour.” That was a dollar more than I had made as a bookkeeper. “There’s plenty of room for growth,” he added.
“But you filled the community services coordinator spot, yes? And you said there was only one at the foundation, so it’s safe to say I wouldn’t move up into that position as a result of interning.”
“All true!” he enthused. “But we have many other career paths. In particular, we’re always in need of development professionals.”
“Development . . . you mean fund-raising?”
“Yes. Specifically finding and interfacing with donors. I apologize if I’m being forward, but you have the sort of gravitas that could really take you far in the development arena. And the ability to raise capital is arguably the most charitable endeavor a person can undertake.”
Arguably indeed. And I would sooner call myself Mary than use the term interfacing. But I was mostly stuck on gravitas. I was pretty sure Adrian’s definition of this word was old. “What would I be doing as an intern, exactly?” I asked.
“A bit of everything. We would want you to understand all the nuts and bolts of how the foundation works.”
Translation: sorting mail and running errands. I did need a job, however, and given how long I had been out of the field, I already knew I’d need to start at the bottom. Adrian Fromm’s foundation could be that bottom. “Who would I be working with?”
“Oh, nearly everyone here. We have three C-level executives, myself included, though we don’t call ourselves chiefs. And you’d work with Ned, the new community services coordinator. This is his first position out of graduate school.”
I had a strong suspicion that my duty as an intern would center on supervising this Ned character. I said nothing.
“Hello?” said Adrian. “Mar—Maggie? Are you still there?”
“Oh, I’m here.”
“So? Would you like to come work with us?”
I poured the eggs into the cast-iron pan on the stove. My mother used to say all work was good work, and I did need a job.
One that could be a potential path to a career was even better. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to say yes then and there. “Adrian, I’m flattered by your offer, but I’d like to sleep on it. Let me get back to you.”
“What do you think?” I asked Charlie the following evening. Like the week before, he had approached me after support group to see if I wanted to get together. “No pressure,” he had said, all dimples and innocence. Now we were standing across from each other in my kitchen, waiting for the teakettle to boil, and I had just finished telling him about Adrian’s proposition.
Charlie scratched his head. “Well, I’m glad you want my opinion, but I think the more important question is what do you think?”
“It’s not the worst offer, and I need to find something to do with myself.”
“But do you want it?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. “No,” I confessed. “I don’t really like the guy, and I don’t feel legitimately excited about the possibility of working for him or his organization. I guess I’m just worried that this will be my only opportunity, and I don’t want to live on alimony alone.”
“I get that. But I don’t think fear is a good reason to take a job, especially if you’ll be okay financially for the next few months. I think you could find a dozen other ways to tide yourself over until you figure out what it is you really want to do next.”
“Hmm. Like what?”
“Well, I took a job at a bike shop a few years ago after leaving a start-up. They paid peanuts, but I was interested in seeing how bikes were put together and I needed a change. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time.”
The kettle began to whistle, and Charlie walked to the stove and turned the burner off. Then he reached into the cupboard for mugs and tea bags.
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