Gone With a Handsomer Man

by Michael Lee West

  “Are you still enjoying the beach?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I tried to control my face, but from the way Ava was staring, I knew I’d failed. This was my cue to gather up my dignity and leave, tossing out a comment like, I’m out of here, the stakes are too high.

  All the bits and pieces of my personality began to talk at once. My logical self said, Fight or flight, what’s it gonna be, Teens? Thanks to my criminal record, and my undecided punishment over trespassing, fight wasn’t an option. Nor was flight.

  Ava looked away from me and smiled at Coop. He stared back, and I could have sworn that the store’s overhead lights dimmed.

  “We’re in a rush,” Coop said. “Take care.”

  He steered the cart away from the meat counter, down the baking aisle. I shot her a final glance, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were latched onto Coop. I strode ahead and started piling items into the cart. Flour, sugar, vanilla, baking chocolate, confectioners’ sugar.

  “I guess you’re wondering who she is,” he said, eyeing me warily.

  “Not really,” I said and tossed in a Betty Crocker cake decorating kit. I turned. Ava was still staring. I grabbed a brownie mix and a bag of chocolate chips. I felt an urgent need to make triple-layer brownies, just the thing for sour thoughts and a worried mind.

  Coop leaned forward and rested his arms on the cart, watching me toss in items. “What’re you fixing to cook?”

  “Sweetness,” I said. “Lots and lots of sweetness. But I need cream cheese.”

  “I’ll get it,” he said. Before I could protest, he walked to the end of the aisle, where Ava was still standing. He took a sharp left toward the dairy department. I fought the urge to scurry after him. A homegrown girl like myself couldn’t defend him against a goddess.

  He caught up with me at the checkout. I was flipping through a fashion magazine, scanning articles: “Lose the Belly Fat!” “Do Cellulite Creams Work?”

  “I can explain,” he said.

  “Not here.” I tucked the magazine into the rack and loaded our items onto the conveyer belt with excruciating slowness. Ava glided into the next lane. With her few items, she checked out in a heartbeat and didn’t look at us as she started toward the exit. A hush swept through the grocery as she carried her plastic bag, the two lemons hanging low in the bottom like she was carrying a man’s balls. The electronic doors parted, and she floated through.

  I was on fire with curiosity, but I tried to act nonchalant as we piled our bags into a cart and hurried out of the store. My poor dog was standing in the window, ears perked forward, watching for me. Two rows over, I saw Ava sitting on a motorcycle, tucking her hair into a helmet. Her puny shopping bag was nowhere to be seen. I bet if I stripped her down, I’d find all kinds of tattoos—I Ching symbols, hieroglyphics, or naked Mayan figures. Maybe she even had a heart on her ass with COOP written in the center.

  She revved the engine. The motorcycle blasted across the lot.

  Coop and I climbed into the truck, and Sir began to squeak with delight. My plan was to act calm, no questions, just let him talk. Instead, I blurted, “Take me home. I’m not feeling good.”

  He turned toward his house.

  “Coop.”

  “Just hear me out,” he said.

  Lord, this sounded serious. Hear me out was what men on death row said before the lethal injection. I hugged Sir. Part of me wanted to listen, but another part craved silence. One thing was certain: I didn’t want to be trapped at his house after he admitted his relationship with this she-wolf.

  I wanted her to be a one-night stand, not someone he’d loved.

  But what had she meant about him being good with charcoal? No, she’d said gifted in a way that hadn’t meant food.

  A pensive look crossed Coop’s face as he pulled into his driveway. He shut off the engine and stared out the windshield, rubbing the top of his head. Through the windshield, the sea oats moved back and forth.

  “Just spit it out,” I said.

  “Ava is my wife,” he said.

  twenty-three

  I grabbed my dog, climbed out of the truck, and started toward the house. Fine, I’d just call a taxi. I wasn’t mad; I was scared. History was repeating. Only Coop wasn’t going back to his old girlfriend, he was being reined in by his beautiful wife.

  Behind me, I heard his door slam. The wind was picking up and the sea oats ticked. Dark, bruised clouds piled over the water.

  “Teeny, wait. It’s not like you think. We’re separated.”

  I stopped walking and turned. “For how long, O’Malley?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? And please don’t say ‘I was going to.’”

  “But I was going to.”

  “Sir’s getting hot,” I said. “He can’t breathe in this heat.”

  “Hold on, I better put T-Bone on the screened porch,” he said, unlocking the door. “He likes other dogs, but he’s mighty big, and you just never know.”

  He went to find T-Bone. I carried Sir into the hall. For a teenaged bulldog, he was a tad on the heavy side, almost sixty pounds, and I was breathless when I reached the kitchen. I set him on the floor and started looking in cabinets for a bowl. I could hear Coop talking to T-Bone, telling him to be gentle with Sir. Then he put the enormous beast on the porch with a large chew bone and shut the door.

  When Coop stepped into the kitchen, I was still looking for a bowl. I’d never seen so many cabinets in a kitchen. Not even the Spencer-Jackson House had this many.

  “What you need, babe?” Coop asked.

  “A dog bowl.” I pulled off my shoes and set them on the floor. He opened a bottom cabinet, grabbed a metal dish, and filled it with water. He set it on the floor next to my shoes. Sir began to drink greedily.

  Coop leaned against the counter. “The marriage is over, Teeny. I wasn’t hiding anything.”

  “Why does it feel that way?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you were all about the truth. Is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell?”

  “No.”

  “But you were surprised to see her.”

  “She’s been on a dig in Sudan.” He paused. “It’s a dangerous region.”

  So he cared. “A dig?” I asked.

  “She’s an archeologist. We met in England. She was a protester when ground was broken for terminal five at Heathrow Airport.”

  “What was she protesting?”

  “It’s an important archeological site. I was on her defense team.”

  “It took a whole team?”

  “She wasn’t the only protester.” He folded his arms. “She has nothing to do with us, Teeny.”

  “I need air,” I said and walked to the living room. I opened the French door, stepped across the deck, and ran down the steps. The walkway was so hot, it burned my feet as I raced to the shoreline. I crossed my arms and gripped my elbows, concentrating on the exact point where the sky and water blurred together.

  “Teeny!” Coop yelled.

  I turned. He sprinted toward me, kicking up sand. My thoughts moved in circles. He’d dropped Barb and took up with me. Then he’d dumped me for Barb. She got left behind and years later, he hooked up with Ava. Had he left her, too?

  His hand closed on my arm. “A storm is coming,” he said. “Let’s get inside.”

  “You go.” I pulled away.

  “I’m not leaving.” His hand moved again toward my elbow, and I stepped back. Lightning zigzagged across the sky, dividing it in half. Then it began to rain. Fat stinging drops hit my arms and shoulders and gouged the sand all around us. My sundress felt cold against my bare skin, but I couldn’t move. I bowed my head, and my hair swung forward.

  “Teeny, come on.”

  The rain fell at a slant, sweeping across the beach. The waves rounded, tipped with foam, and exploded against the sand. A tall wave slammed into my hips, pushing me against him. Coop grabbed my s
houlder, and I jerked back. My teeth clicked, not from the sudden cold but because I was going to cry. I bet Ava never cried.

  “I’m not in love with her,” he said.

  “Then you should’ve told me about her.”

  “I was going to. But I didn’t want to ruin things.” Water dripped off his chin. He was so drenched, I could see his skin through his shirt. He grabbed my hand and pulled me against him.

  “I’m falling for you all over again, Teeny.”

  I wanted to believe him but couldn’t. I didn’t want to spend the next decade mooning after him. I squirmed away. “Your groceries are melting,” I said and walked back to the house. As I approached the kitchen, Sir skidded around the corner, jowls flapping, and slid to a stop. Poor little fatherless bulldog. Bing had loved him truly. The dog stood on his hind legs and licked my hands—right hand, left hand, back to the right.

  By the time Coop returned, I’d found towels in the laundry room. I set one on the counter for him. He put down the groceries, lifted the towel, and rubbed it over his head.

  T-Bone was still on the screened porch off the dining room. When he saw Sir, he stood on his hind legs, revealing a furry white belly. He looked more like the abominable snowman than a dog.

  I sat on a bar stool. The house was chilly, and my wet clothes made me shiver. I rubbed my forehead. I’d jumped in bed with him too fast—the exact opposite of what I’d done in the old days. Back then, I hadn’t jumped fast enough.

  “Who left who?” I blurted, wondering if I should’ve said who left whom?

  “It’s not that simple, Teeny.” Coop ripped the plastic off the steaks and set them on a wooden board.

  I waited for him to continue. He opened a cabinet and pulled out jars and boxes. Sea salt, pepper, meat tenderizer.

  “You got any espresso beans?” I asked. “If so, I’ll make a rub.”

  “Sure.” He looked relieved because the topic had shifted to food preparation, but he didn’t know me. If I didn’t chop, fry, or dice, I’d have a conniption fit. Cooking was the only way to calm down. I’d witnessed Aunt Bluette’s gentle guiding hand with Mama, controlling her excess energy through productive kitchen work, so it was only natural that I would use food as a stress-reduction tool.

  He moved to another cabinet and pulled out a bag and a grinder. I opened the bag and sniffed the beans. I thought I detected a fruity aroma. “Are they flavored?” I asked.

  “No.” He laughed. “Why?”

  “Raspberry espresso makes a horrid rub.”

  “The beans came from Ethiopia,” he said.

  I thought of Ava and her Sudanese dig as I ground the beans and shook them into a glass bowl. “I need chili powder and Hungarian paprika, if you’ve got it.” I paused. “So, why did you and Ava separate?”

  “We grew apart.”

  “Why?”

  “You ever ask easy questions?”

  “Not when you’re answering my questions with a question.” I paused. “Did she have a lover?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “She looks the type.”

  “No. At least, I’m pretty sure she didn’t.”

  “Did you have a mistress?”

  “Hell, no. How can you ask that?”

  “Easy. You’re married to her and you’re screwing me.” Just like he’d been dating me and screwing Barb.

  I poured the spices into the bowl and stirred them with a fork. I pointed to the meat. “While I’m doing this, could you rinse the steaks and pat them dry with a paper towel?”

  “Why? To make the rub stick?”

  “Well, yes, but it just freshens up the meat. Washes off the grocery goop. So, if nobody was unfaithful, what went wrong? And don’t say ‘we drifted.’ It’s got to be more than a drift.” I blinked. “Where’s your sugar?”

  He kissed me.

  “Not that kind,” I said.

  “I love how your mind works, Teeny. Like a bird hopping from twig to twig, never losing sight of the worm.” He handed me a twisted bag of brown sugar. I shoved a spoon inside. I hated being compared to a bird. Bing hadn’t liked my brain. He’d accused me of being simple, but I could focus when I had to. Like now. I wanted to know more about Coop’s marriage and his dashing, motorcycle-riding bride.

  “Tell me about Ava,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

  I added a pinch of sea salt and a grind of pepper. Then I dragged the fork through the seasonings. Coop pulled up a stool and leaned against the counter.

  “Can we talk about this later? Because I hate to go from making sweet love to you to my problems with Ava.”

  The way he said “problems” gave me hope. My mind filled with wildness. Maybe Ava smoked crack, suffered from bulimia, or followed a strict macrobiotic diet. You couldn’t be that thin and eat much.

  “You’re going to have to tell me sooner or later.” I lifted a steak and dredged it in the bowl, patting the mixture into the beef.

  “I wanted to practice law here in the Low Country, and she wanted to live in England. So we shuffled between her house in Wiltshire and Charleston.”

  “And the Wiltshire house was filled with her obnoxious relatives?” I smiled.

  “No, they’re all dead. It was me and her and sixty-three rooms.”

  “Wow. So, she’s rich?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was kinda hoping she was a gold digger.”

  “Her cousins thought I was.”

  “And they drove a wedge between you?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?” I flipped the steaks, sending up a cloud of rub.

  “This is embarrassing.” He rubbed his forehead. “She expected me to sit home and shoot clay pigeons while she skipped from one dig site to the next.”

  “Why didn’t you go with her?”

  “Oh, I tried. For a while. At first, I liked it. All of that history. Then the novelty wore off. I broke her concentration.”

  “You were in the way?” I was thinking along the lines of, Please god, let this be it, even though I was having trouble seeing him as a long-suffering husband.

  “It felt like that, yes. When she was working, she gave it her full attention. I went back to Wiltshire.”

  I couldn’t imagine a hot-blooded man like Coop sitting beside the fire with hunting dogs, playing cribbage with the butler. “Are you sure you didn’t fool around?”

  “Never came close.”

  “Because you loved her, right?”

  “Yes.” His brows came together. “Then Uncle Ralph died. Ava and I flew home. We stopped off in Charleston for a few days. I ran into a friend from law school, and the next thing I knew, I’d agreed to work part-time—in Charleston. Ava pitched a fit, but it seemed like a good solution for us both. She could play in the dirt and I’d play with torts. And I could plan my schedule around hers so we could play together.”

  “And y’all broke up?”

  “Not right away. She flew in and out of Charleston. We rented a place at Seabrook.”

  I nodded. A picture was forming of a posh, la-di-da she-explorer who refused to give up her career for love—or the man who’d done backflips to please her.

  “I practiced law in Charleston,” he said. “She stayed at the resort, golfing and horseback riding. She learned to sail. She enrolled in a firearms class. And she took flying lessons.”

  On a broom, I thought spitefully.

  “She got her pilot’s license. We went to parties and art galleries and restaurants.”

  “Sounds heavenly.”

  “The social scene bored her. She called Charleston the land of deep-fried magnolias.” He shook his head. “She thought my friends were pretentious and shallow. Funny, I’d thought the same thing about the crowd she ran with in Wiltshire and London. But it was more than that. She missed the dampness of England.”

  “It’s wet in South Carolina,” I said.

  “Yeah, but England is home. The wetness over there is more like a glaze. Perfect for her roses. S
he tried to grow them here, but the thunderstorms beat them to a pulp. So she got bored and went to the desert.”

  “To punish you?” I asked. “Or does she like contrasts?”

  “Both, I think.”

  “Oh,” I said, but I thought, Please, if there’s a god in heaven, let her have a bedouin lover. A dark Biblical guy with a beard and a robe.

  “Now you know the gist of it,” Coop said.

  “Does gist mean all?” I glanced over the counter, into the dining room. Sir was licking one side of the glass door, and T-Bone was licking the other.

  “She flew back and forth, from Charleston to wherever.”

  “And?”

  “I got tired of it. One of my pretentious pals drew up divorce papers. She came home all lovey-dovey, and refused to sign. I thought maybe we had a chance. Then she was gone within the week.”

  “And now she shows up at the Red & White Grocery, when there are perfectly nice supermarkets on Sullivan’s Island,” I said.

  “She likes to charge full bore into everything—even a divorce. See, whatever she’s doing at the moment gets 100 percent of her attention.”

  “You said you wanted me to know everything.”

  “And I do.”

  “Keep talking.” I dredged the other steak in the rub. He still wasn’t telling everything about him and Ava. He was telling me what he thought I could handle. I refused to get all bent out of shape over his love life. What kind of crazy logic was at work here? Quirky astrology, stars in the wrong places, or bad luck? Sure, I was talking trash. Aunt Bluette would be so disappointed, but I needed to get it out. If I didn’t, I’d swear to god I’d burst into flames.

  “Would you have told me about Ava if we hadn’t run into her?”

  “Yes.”

  “She wants you back.”

  “It’s impossible to know what Ava wants.”

  “What do you want?” I understood the why of his marriage. I understood the why of their separation. I got all that. Two gorgeous, highly educated people from good families—hell yes, they’d fall in love.

  “Like I said, you ask hard questions.” Coop smiled.