She, Myself & I

by Whitney Gaskell

  “She’s four,” Zack said, and he pulled out his wallet, flipped through it, and pulled out a small color photo of a smiling chubby-cheeked girl with a head full of brunette curls. The picture looked like it had been taken at one of those inexpensive mall studios, and Grace had been put in a forced pose—her head tipped to one side, resting on her hands, an ugly basket of plastic tulips in front of her.

  “She’s precious. Look . . . Zack . . . the custody laws in Texas, in most states, have a very strong presumption in favor of the biological parents. And since you didn’t legally adopt Grace during your marriage to her mother, you just don’t have any standing to seek visitation. Perhaps if your ex-wife wasn’t a fit mother . . .”

  “No, no. Molly’s great with Grace,” Zack said quickly.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help you,” I said. I laid my pen down on top of the yellow pad.

  “I just thought . . . it doesn’t seem right that Molly could cut me out of Grace’s life like that. We’d talked about my adopting Grace, but then . . .” Zack hesitated, and seemed to be weighing whether he should continue. He sighed and suddenly looked tired. “Well, there’s no point in getting into it, I guess. It looks like I don’t have a choice.”

  “I really am sorry. For what it’s worth, I think it’s wonderful that you want to stay involved,” I said impulsively. “Too many of the divorcing parents I deal with don’t seem to care about their own kids, much less try to seek visitation for their stepchildren.”

  I normally try to avoid making personal comments about a client’s life—it was a rookie mistake I hadn’t made since I first started practicing law. One sympathetic comment, and suddenly my clients would think I was their best friend/shrink/mom, rather than a disinterested professional, and take to calling me constantly, asking for advice, divulging far more of their personal business than I’m comfortable hearing. It was much easier to keep everything on an entirely professional level, for everyone involved. But I felt unusually sympathetic to Zack’s plight, perhaps because I was starting to wonder if I’d misjudged him at our first meeting.

  Zack just shrugged in response, and then looked out my window at the view of downtown Austin and the tree-dotted grounds of the state capitol building. He was silent for a few beats and then glanced back over at me and said, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

  “Dinner?” I repeated. “Why?”

  Zack smiled, and I flushed, realizing how ridiculous I must sound.

  “It’s just that we don’t really know one another,” I said.

  “Sophie said you weren’t seeing anyone, and I thought . . . well, she seemed to think you’d be open to the idea of going out with me,” Zack said.

  I should have known. Sophie was up to her old tricks, even after I’d explicitly told her to butt out. I opened my mouth to say No, thank you, I’m not interested. But something stopped me. After all, wasn’t Zack exactly the kind of man Owen had urged me to have a fling with?

  The thought made me swallow hard. The whole idea had just been a lark, something to laugh about with Owen . . . hadn’t it? One-night stands were not—and had never been—my thing. Life was easiest when you stayed on a routine—eating the same things, working the same hours, watching the same kinds of shows on television. There was an ordered calmness to it all, and it was a sort of happiness to always know what was just around the corner. Love affairs, even if only physical, can wreak havoc on all that.

  But then, wasn’t that supposed to be the whole point of the no-strings fling? You get to indulge in the physical pleasure without the baggage. And if I didn’t take the plunge now, when would I? Would the weak-chinned, beady-eyed tax lawyer who’d asked me to lunch last week, for whom I felt nothing but a mild revulsion, really be a better candidate?

  “Sure. Dinner sounds . . . okay, why not,” I said, and tried to shrug off the alarm bells that were going off inside my head.

  It’s just dinner, I lectured myself. If I can’t go through with the strings-free sex, I just won’t. I don’t have to decide that now.

  “Enthusiasm. I like that,” Zack said, and when I opened up my mouth, gaping like a fish, he said, “Kidding. I was just kidding.”

  “Oh,” I said, and felt absurdly stupid. This was why I hate being teased, I always end up feeling like everyone’s laughing at me. Why was I letting myself be put in this position?

  “Maybe this isn’t . . . ,” I started to say, but Zack just shook his head.

  “No backing out now. A deal’s a deal. Is five o’clock too early to pick you up? We’re going to need a little extra time to get to where we’re going,” Zack said.

  I stared at him, fairly sure that I’d just been outmaneuvered. It didn’t happen often.

  Chapter Five

  “This should be an interesting evening,” I muttered to myself, as I rushed into my apartment at 4:50 p.m.

  I’d been planning to leave work even earlier—which was something I never did, and felt like a juvenile delinquent as I slipped out the back door of our office, looking over my shoulder guiltily while I waited for the elevator—but I hadn’t been able to get off the phone with a teary client who was convinced that her estranged husband was going to get his hands on her doll collection. Now I had to hurry to change, swapping out the gray suit for a pair of boot-cut khakis and a sleek black boat-neck top.

  The phone rang, and I clicked the on button, then tucked it between my ear and shoulder so I could keep my hands free for applying eyeliner and mascara.

  “Hello,” I said, leaning toward the mirror as I carefully smudged a black charcoal pencil along my upper lash line.

  “Hey, it’s me. Have you talked to Mom recently?” my sister Mickey asked.

  “Where are you?”

  “Where do you think? I’m at school,” Mickey said. She was in her senior year at Princeton and had already been accepted into Brown Medical School. Mickey was nauseatingly successful at everything, balancing her schoolwork and a nonstop social schedule with an effortless, offbeat charm. She was the person I wanted to be when I grew up.

  “Can I call you back? I’m going out,” I said.

  “Ooh, hot date?”

  “No. Not really. I wouldn’t call it a date.”

  “I thought you swore off dating.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mom. And Sophie. So, tell, tell. Who’s your new guy?”

  “No one. Really.”

  “So I know him?”

  “No! And he’s not my guy. He’s just a guy. And it’s not really a date, because I don’t plan on ever seeing him again after tonight,” I said.

  “Then why won’t you tell me who he is?”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise you won’t tell Sophie,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise. Soph is kind of scary these days, anyway. I called her a few days ago—Nick and I were going to see the new John Cusack movie, and I knew she’d just seen it, so I wanted to hear a review—and she yelled at me and told me to never, ever interrupt her when she’s watching Survivor. So who is he?” Mickey asked.

  “You don’t know him. He’s Sophie’s contractor,” I said.

  “The hot one?”

  “She told you about him?”

  “Yeah! His name’s Zack, right? He’s pretty much all she would talk about, once she stopped freaking out that I was bothering her during her precious show. I think she has a crush on him. Is that why you’re not telling her that you’re going out with him?” Mickey asked.

  I put down the mascara wand and swished a MAC brush into a container of blush and then swept it onto my cheekbones.

  “Of course not. And Sophie doesn’t really have a crush on Zack, she’s just a little hormonal right now.”

  “Then why don’t you want her to know you’re dating him?”

  “First of all, I’m not dating him. We’re just going out this one time, and it’s not even tech
nically a date. And second, I am going to tell Sophie, I’m just going to wait until after our . . . non-date thing. Anyway, I have to go, I’m running late. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Wait! The reason why I called: Have you talked to Mom lately?”

  I frowned. “Mmm, I can’t remember. I think we talked a few days ago. Why?”

  “Because I’m getting a weird vibe from her. And when I called her yesterday, Dad was over at her house,” Mickey said.

  I dropped my MAC brush.

  “What?” I asked. “But she and Dad hate each other.”

  Our parents’ divorce had not been amicable. They’d never gotten along, bickering constantly while we were growing up, and then one day, my mother had announced that if she had to cook my father one more dinner or iron one more of his shirts, she’d—and this is a direct quote—“lose her fucking mind,” and then had gone on a strike. She spent her days sitting on the couch reading astrological charts while the laundry piled up, the refrigerator overflowed with containers of stale take-out, and an aggressive mold took over the grout on the tub. A month later my father moved out, hired a cleaning lady for his new apartment, and immediately started dating one of his graduate students. This shot across my mother’s bow marked the official commencement of hostilities. She turned around and sold off my father’s golf clubs, his beloved collection of toy trains, and all of the clothes he left behind in an impromptu garage sale. My father retaliated by closing their joint credit card accounts. My mother changed the locks on the house. My father refused to pay for the garbage pickup. And on and on it went.

  Soph and I were already out of the house by that point—I was in law school, Soph was in college—so we were spared the worst of it. But Mickey was only twelve when they separated, and so she became yet one more thing that they argued endlessly about, first directly and then through their lawyers. It was truly a miracle that Mickey was now as happy and well adjusted as she was, and I always felt a tug of guilt that I hadn’t been around more to help protect her from the chaos.

  “I don’t think they do anymore. I know they’ve been talking for the past few months. Mom tried to hide it from me, but she kept slipping and mentioning things that Dad had told her,” Mickey said.

  “That’s just so weird. Maybe it was a business thing? Something to do with the house?”

  “I don’t think so. Mom said she was going out to dinner, and although she didn’t say who she was going with, I could hear Dad talking in the background. You don’t think it was a date, do you?”

  The very thought gave me shivers. After everything they’d put all of us through with the Divorce from Hell, if they even considered getting back together, I’d have to kill them both.

  “Not possible,” I said.

  “I swear, I heard him. He was telling her to hurry up because he wanted to beat the crowds,” Mickey said.

  This did sound suspiciously like Dad. “Beating the crowds” had been a recurring theme of our childhood. He’d prefer eating dinner out at five in the evening at one of the least popular restaurants in town rather than risk having to wait ten minutes for a table.

  “What did she say when you asked her?”

  “I didn’t have a chance. She just said she’d talk to me later and hung up,” Mickey said. I could hear the sharp edges of panic in her voice, and it worried me.

  “Try not to think about it, Mick. I’m sure it’s nothing—this is them we’re talking about—and you’ve got enough to deal with up there. I’ll talk to Sophie and see if she’s heard anything,” I said. “Besides, Mom already told me that she’s seeing someone else.”

  “That’s a relief. Who is he?”

  “Actually . . . I’m not sure. She wouldn’t say,” I said, remembering how mysterious Mom had been about her new boyfriend.

  “It’s Dad!” Mickey wailed.

  “No, I’m sure it’s not Dad. Really, Mick, you know how they feel about each other,” I said.

  “What should I say when Mom calls me tomorrow?”

  “How do you know she will?”

  “She calls me every day.”

  “She does? Since when?”

  “Since forever.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. Typical. Mickey, my parents’ surprise baby—they’d gone on a second honeymoon to Hawaii, and nine months later Mickey had arrived—had always been Mom’s favorite. I fought off the jealousy by reminding myself just how insane it would make me if Mom were calling me every day.

  My door buzzer sounded. “Crap. He’s here, and I’m not ready. Mick, honey, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you later.”

  Chapter Six

  Zack held out his hand to help me jump down out of his bright red 1955 Chevrolet pickup truck (I knew the year only because Zack had told me, his face beaming with unmistakable pride). The truck was pretty cool in a retro kind of a way, which was a very popular aesthetic in Austin, along with vintage clothing, VW vans, and record stores that still sold vinyl LPs.

  We’d taken Route 2222, a lovely drive that winds through the limestone cliffs and densely wooded areas west of Austin, toward Lake Travis, and had pulled into the parking lot for the Travis County Marina. I wasn’t familiar with the area, but it didn’t look like there was a restaurant anywhere in the vicinity.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  “Having dinner, like I promised,” Zack said, and when he smiled at me, I briefly considered ripping off my bra and throwing it at him.

  Somehow, over the course of the scenic drive, I’d fallen seriously in lust with this guy. Maybe it was because I’d already halfway made the decision to sleep with him, or maybe it was because Sophie was right—Zack was a “hottie.” He was just so solidly masculine. Zack had a thick chest, sexy hips, and long, muscular legs. And he had the nicest hands—they were large and square, and when he held out his hand to help me out of the truck, I noticed they felt soft, which struck me as odd for a carpenter. I’d have expected them to be rough and calloused.

  “But where?”

  “That’s the surprise. I brought dinner with us,” Zack said, and pulled a blue cooler from the bed of the pickup.

  I looked around. “Are there tables out here? Overlooking the lake?”

  I had to give him points for originality. And it was a gorgeous October evening, the perfect weather for a picnic. It was warm enough that I was comfortable in elbow-length sleeves, and yet the heavy damp humidity that marked the long, uncomfortable summer had mercifully chosen not to linger.

  “I thought we could eat out on the lake. On my boat,” Zack suggested.

  “You have a boat?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  I followed him as the pavement of the parking lot gave way to a dirt and gravel path. We wound around the main building, a rustic, two-story structure with a screened-in porch that faced the glassy blue lake, down a steep incline, and then finally onto the long, sun-bleached dock where boats were lined up smartly in their individual slips. The majority were motorboats, some tall and opulent, others squat and utilitarian. I figured Zack’s would probably be one of the latter, but he surprised me by stopping at a white sailboat, small in size and impeccably maintained. The mast was up, although the sails were down, piling up on either side like a deflated parachute.

  Zack hopped nimbly onto the boat and reached for my hand. The water gently lapped against the hull as the boat shifted under his weight. I hesitated, my feet firmly planted to the creaking dock.

  “I have to tell you—I’m not really a boat person. I went on a cruise once, and I spent the entire time being sick to my stomach. All of the rocking and the swaying and the rocking and the swaying,” I said.

  Zack laughed. “It looks pretty calm out there today. Why don’t you give it a try, and if you start to feel seasick, we’ll come right back?”

  I noticed that there was a small gap in his front teeth. And the hair poking through the open neck of his polo shirt was a reddish blond.

  Yes, I thoug
ht. I was definitely up for a fling. What the hell. After everything I’d gone through over the past few years, I deserved it, didn’t I?

  I took his hand and step-hopped into the boat. The sailboat dipped and swayed under my weight, and I faltered for a minute—the last thing I wanted to do was fall in the lake—but Zack held on to me until I was safely sitting on the hard plastic bench built into the side of the boat. He handed me an orange pillow to cushion the seat—“It doubles as a life preserver, not that you’ll need it”—while he hustled around the deck, raising the sails, releasing the rudder, and finally untying the boat. He stretched out a leg and used it to push the boat back from the deck, before nimbly moving to the stern and taking hold of the tiller. He brought the sailboat about, and we began to slowly leave the deck, helped along by the light breeze blowing from the south.

  I lazed back, one hand dipped in the water, and could feel the tension leaving my body. Huh. Who would have thought I’d find boating to be relaxing?

  “Are you from here?” Zack asked, keeping his eyes ahead and on the edge of the lake as the boat skimmed slowly across the water.

  “From Austin? No, I grew up in Seattle. My parents moved here when I was fifteen, when my dad got a job at UT. He is—was, I should say, since he retired a few months ago—a professor at the engineering school,” I said. “How about you? Are you originally from Austin?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “You don’t have a Texas accent,” I remarked.

  “No, my mom was an English teacher, and she drummed it out of me at an early age,” Zack said, and this time he turned to look at me. As our eyes met, I felt a well-placed kick to my nearly forgotten libido, which had been numb since Scott had come bursting out of his closet.

  “I’ve traveled around quite a bit, as an adult, but I kept on ending up back here, so I decided to stop fighting it,” Zack continued.

  “Where have you traveled to?”

  “I spent a year backpacking around Europe and went just about anywhere my Europass took me. After college, I joined a group that sent English teachers to foreign countries, and through that I spent one year in South America and another in Japan. I still try to travel when I can, although now that my business is picking up, it’s hard to get the time off,” Zack said.