by Megan Hart
At least that’s what she told herself, not believing herself in that moment, not with knowing Mick was sitting in the back of the room. She’d fallen for him hard and fast, and the relationship itself hadn’t lasted very long . . . but the feelings . . . oh, those had lasted, hadn’t they? All these years later, and the mere sight of him had sent everything inside her swirling and tangling all over again. It wasn’t love, Alice reminded herself as the wedding video ended. It might’ve tasted a little bit like it, but in the end, it was only desire.
The lights came up briefly while Bernie got up to switch the DVD. Cookie brought a fresh round of drinks and more snacks, and some people used the bathroom, but Alice kept to her seat. For the first time that weekend, she wished she had her phone in her pocket so she could pretend to be busy with something on it so she wouldn’t have to talk.
“You want a refill, Alice?” Jay held out the cocktail pitcher.
She shook her head. Gave him a smile. Jay had been one of her closest friends since college; he’d been the one to introduce her to Bernie. Jay had introduced Mick to their group, too, much later, because he and Mick sometimes worked on projects together. Everything was a chain, she thought. One link to another.
“You sure?” Jay gave her a smile and a nudge as Cookie flicked the lights and a new DVD menu appeared on the screen.
Alice lifted her glass, still three-quarters full. Though typically these weekends with Bernie and Cookie had always included a lot more drinking than she usually indulged in, tonight Alice wasn’t feeling it. Maybe she’d had too much to drink last night. Or maybe what had made her feel so drunk and now a little hungover hadn’t been the booze at all. She caught herself looking for Mick again, but stopped herself.
Jay didn’t miss her glance. He looked, too, then back at her. He leaned close to squeeze her. “You okay?”
“Fine. Hey, the movie’s starting.” She moved over so he could squeeze into the chair beside her. “Sit with me.”
Jay, expression solemn, linked his arm through hers and then tangled their fingers. Such a simple contact. Such a comfort. It was too much, though, because it made her want to burst into horrible, wrenching sobs that Alice held back only by the fiercest force of her will.
The universe, of course, had other plans for her. Bernie had been showing the movies in random order, and the one he’d chosen now opened with a familiar scene, similar to many of the other clips. The group of them in the kitchen, glasses and plates full. Lots of laughter. Music, dancing. Close-ups of funny faces.
But in this one, there was Mick.
His hair had been longer, and Alice had forgotten that he’d had a scruffy sort of beard the first time she’d met him. How could she have forgotten? Her breath caught as the camera tightened on his face.
“And here’s our new best friend,” Bernie said in the movie. “Michael McManus . . .”
“Mick,” he said. “You can call me Mick.”
There in the background, an open door, and Alice coming through it. She wore that green dress, the one she’d loved and worn so much it had finally fallen, literally, to pieces in the wash. Watching this now, Alice could not remember this moment, even as it unwound in front of her. She came through the door calling for a drink and succumbed to hugs and kisses from Jay and Cookie’s niece Tanya. Alice waved at Bernie’s camera. She looked at Mick and gave him a small, hesitant smile, and just as quickly looked away to focus on hugging Cookie.
There it was. The first moment she had ever met him. So quick it had been almost nonexistent. And ultimately nothing, right? A barely there greeting, the passing of her gaze over him, a stranger. Scarcely an acknowledgment at all.
Yet so much had come from it, that first glance. Meeting Mick had changed everything for her. And how many people had the moment of their first meeting captured that way? Alice wanted to ask Bernie to rewind it, replay. She wanted to be greedy with it, gorge herself on it.
That first moment when everything between them had yet to happen.
There was more to that movie. Glimpses of the party, Mick brooding in the background. Alice accepting a glass of wine and lifting it in a toast. And one heart-thudding shot of the two of them through the French doors. She’d gone outside to the deck, she remembered that. Tipsy on wine and laughter, she’d found Mick standing with a beer.
“I’m Alice,” she’d said, and he’d tipped his bottle toward her.
“I know.”
The movie didn’t show that, of course. Just the shadow of them outside and Jay’s voice asking, “Where did Mick and Alice get off to?” Bernie’s answer in the swing of the camera, a few seconds’ glimpse before the scene cut to a group shot of them playing a drinking game involving shot glasses and ping pong balls. Then it was over and the DVD returned to the menu screen. The lights came on. Jay squeezed her hand and used his other one to discreetly wipe away the tear Alice was mortified to discover had escaped the prison of her eye to slide down her cheek.
There were no more movies after that.
“I’m getting old,” Bernie said as they all gathered up their plates and glasses to clean up the theater. “I want to stay up and party with all of you, but I think I’m going to head off to bed with my beautiful wife.”
“That has nothing to do with being old,” called out Paul. “That’s just called being smart!”
Cookie laughed as Bernie hugged and kissed her. “I’d say it’s called being lucky.”
Bernie bowed at the collective awww that went around the room. “See you all in the morning.”
Upstairs, Paul and Jay went onto the deck to smoke cigarettes of a dubious nature while Dayna mixed another pitcher of cocktails. She poured herself one and offered a glass to Alice, who accepted though she knew she didn’t really want to drink it this late. Dayna pulled out a cheesecake from the fridge.
“Late-night snack?”
Alice winced. “Oh, my God. Wow. No!”
“You sure? Bernie made it, you know it’s good.” Dayna grinned and sliced off a piece, then put it on a small plate. “Mick do you want . . . where’s Mick?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he went to bed.” Alice eyed the cheesecake and put a hand on her stomach. “I can’t believe I forgot how much we eat at Bernie’s house. And drink. Damn, I’m gonna have to roll myself home.”
Dayna licked the tines of her fork. “No kidding. If I make it home without busting the zipper on my jeans, I count myself lucky.”
Alice pulled the cheesecake a little closer to cut herself a sliver. “I know I shouldn’t eat this, but I’m going to anyway.”
“What’s life without inappropriately eaten cheesecake?” Dayna dragged the fork through her cheesecake, but didn’t lick it this time. She gave Alice a long look, instead. “Pretty cool seeing those movies, huh? I’d forgotten some of that stuff. I guess we all are getting old.”
“Bite your tongue,” Alice said lightly.
“Lots of memories. And some regrets, no?”
Alice looked at the other woman. They’d met at Bernie’s years ago, and since they were both girls often ended up sharing the bathroom. You learned a lot about someone else when you had to use the same shower. They both lived in Central Pennsylvania about forty minutes apart, and kept in touch through occasional texts or e-mails, but it wasn’t as though they spent hours every week chatting on the phone or anything. They got together for lunch or dinner every so often, or met at Jay’s. Alice liked her quite a bit. Dayna had a great sense of humor and a way of putting everyone around her at ease in a way Alice had always admired. But they’d never been particularly close.
“I try not to regret things,” Alice said after it had become impossible not to say anything without this becoming weird.
Dayna nodded. She drank, then went to the fridge for a large bottle of seltzer water. She poured them both glasses without asking Alice if she wanted one this time, and Alice took it to sip gratefully.
“Maybe you should go talk to him,” Dayna said. “Maybe he’s waiti
ng for you.”
Alice didn’t pretend not to understand what Dayna meant. She rolled her eyes. “If he is, I’m sure it’s not for the conversation.”
Dayna laughed wryly. “Maybe not. Paul and Jay out there, they’re talking about something dire. You can see it in the way they’re standing.”
Alice looked. “And Jay’s smoking. I thought he gave that up. I guess he only does that with Paul, though to be honest, I thought he gave up Paul, too.”
“Yeah. Me too. Did Jay say they were getting back together?” Dayna’s tone was super casual, though her expression was anything but.
“No.” Alice sipped more seltzer, letting it settle her stomach and gave the other woman a curious look. “I asked, but he claimed he was done with Paul, done with a capital D. You know they’ve been on and off forever. They get back together, then they split up, then the next thing I know, they’re going away for some debauched weekend in the Bahamas or something. I try not to judge.”
Dayna winced. “Paul can’t stay away from him.”
Alice looked again through the doors, uncomfortable at watching even from this distance. It felt intrusive, even voyeuristic. “That’s how it is with some people.”
“Yeah. Some people you can’t shut the door on, even when you should.”
Dayna’s voice had gone raspy and rough. She gave Alice a wobbly, watery sort of grin. From the deck a brief flare of raised voices turned both women’s heads for a moment. Dayna didn’t have to say a word, but suddenly, Alice understood a whole lot more than she had before.
“Even when you should,” Alice said by way of agreement.
Dayna swallowed hard and lifted her chin. She took a deep breath, visibly getting herself together. “Stupid hearts, always gotta break.”
If Alice saw Dayna only once every few months, she saw Paul even less often. She’d never been friends with him the way she’d been with any of the others, knowing him more through Jay’s eyes than anything else. And it was hard to like Paul when she knew how much he’d hurt Jay, over and over. Jay might’ve been able to forgive him, but Alice had always found it harder. Now that she had this sudden insight into the reason for at least a few of the breakups, she liked him even less.
“Does Jay know?” Alice asked.
Dayna shook her head. “No. And I don’t want him to know. Jay’s my friend—”
Alice laughed sharply, unable to hold it back though it came out harsher than she’d intended.
Dayna flinched. “He is. Believe me, that makes it all so much harder, because Jay’s my friend. But I love him.”
The French doors opened. Paul whirled through them, Jay on his heels. Whatever had happened outside, both men were keeping it close to the vest. Jay gave Alice’s shoulder a squeeze as he passed her. Paul, very carefully, Alice thought, didn’t look at Dayna at all. Or maybe Alice was seeing things that weren’t there because she knew something she hadn’t before.
“I’m heading to bed,” Jay said.
Paul nodded. “Me too. Night, everyone.”
In the silence after the men had left the kitchen, Dayna let out a long, shuddering sigh. She dug back into the cheesecake with a vengeance, and gave Alice a look. “You want coffee? I’m making coffee.”
At this hour, coffee would keep her up until dawn, but it seemed unkind to refuse or abandon Dayna so she could also go to bed. And she didn’t want to, really, did she? Not to her own bed, anyway. Alice wanted to slip down those back stairs to Mick’s basement room and crawl in beside him, to wake him if he were sleeping with her hands and tongue and lips. For the first time this weekend, she was smart enough not to give in.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll drink some coffee.”
While it brewed the women bustled with cleaning the kitchen. Not saying much, the revelation of Dayna and Paul hanging between them. With full mugs, each of them took a seat at the island and sipped in silence, until at last Dayna broke the mutual quiet.
“Does it ever go away?”
Alice blew on the coffee to cool it and give herself a chance to reply, uncertain what, exactly, Dayna was looking for. Comfort or validation. Maybe condemnation. Alice only had one answer. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The wanting.” Dayna added cream and sugar to her mug and stirred it, but didn’t drink again. She shrugged and gave Alice a bleak look. “I mean . . . I wasn’t going to come this weekend. Cookie had invited me months ago, and I figured if you could be here with Mick, I could stand to see Paul. I knew it was important. Twenty years, you know? I wanted to be here for them, but I also knew he’d be here. They’d both be here. And I didn’t want to see them together.”
“They’re not together.”
“I didn’t want to see him,” Dayna corrected herself. “And know there was no way he’d look at me. Not the way he used to, like there was nothing else in the world that mattered but the sight of me. Or worse, what if he did look at me that way? What would I do then, when I know that even if he still wanted me, there was no way for it to happen?”
Alice had no answer for that.
“I would have to pretend everything was okay when it’s not, because I look at him and my heart still breaks. So, I want to know. Does it go away? The wanting,” Dayna asked.
Alice wrapped her hands around the mug, which was really too hot to hold, but something in the sting against her palms was somehow soothing. “No. I guess it doesn’t.”
“Shit.” Dayna gave a shaky laugh. She went to the cupboard and pulled down the bottle of Baileys, adding a shot to her mug and offering it to Alice, who refused.
“So why did you come for the weekend, then? If you felt that way? And to be honest, Dayna, I’d never have guessed if you hadn’t told me. I know Jay and Paul have had their ups and downs, but I would never have known you were involved with any of it.”
“Thank God. If Jay knew it, I couldn’t forgive myself. It only ever happened when they were split up, Alice. I swear it. I know Paul might find it impossible to commit to any one person, but I promise you, I was never with him if he was with Jay.”
It made it easier to know, though Alice still wished she didn’t. “I won’t tell him. It would only hurt him, and I don’t have any desire to hurt Jay for any reason.”
“Me neither. Which is why I never said anything. Why I put on the smile and act like looking at Paul doesn’t shred me open. I don’t want Jay to know, but I don’t want Paul to see it, either. I couldn’t bear it, you know?” Dayna sipped her coffee with a wince. “If he knew how much it hurts me, that he still affects me so much. I decided to come because not seeing him seemed like a worse torture.”
Alice laughed. “I almost didn’t come, either. But so much time had passed, I thought it would be okay.”
“And was it?” Dayna gave her a solid, knowing look.
Alice shook her head.
“Fuck,” Dayna said. “We’re both fucked, huh? Well, at least Mick looks at you like he wants to eat you alive.”
“Does he?” Alice asked, startled and pleased, flushing at the thought.
“When you’re not looking at him. Yes. He does. And it’s been how long?”
“Something like ten years.” Saying it out loud made it seem like so much longer.
“That’s a long time,” Dayna said.
Alice nodded. They both drank coffee. The clock ticked louder than the sound of their breathing, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Alice turned the mug around and around in front of her, contemplating how some time changed some things and left others completely the same.
“Do you still love him?” Dayna asked quietly.
Alice looked at her. “I don’t know if I still do. But . . . I think I still could.”
“So what do you do about that?”
“I don’t know.” Alice shook her head. “Things have changed. Or not. It’s just a weekend, Dayna. You know things are always different when it’s just a party. It doesn’t mean they can last, or be real.”
“Shit. Yes
.” Dayna sighed.
More silence. Alice yawned. Dayna smiled.
“To open doors.” Dayna lifted her mug.
Alice clinked hers against it. “May we learn to close them.”
Mick to Alice
I wanted to drink in the memories of you, absorb and consume them. I sat unmoving. Breathing, breathing, trying to keep myself covered in the way being with you felt. Trying to hold on tight to the memory of how it had been, that first time I saw you. It was like trying to grab a glass out of a sink full of soap. Slippery, sliding, and ultimately, the choice became hold too tight and shatter it in my fist, or drop it and watch it break all over the floor.
Everything about us had broken. The question was, could it ever be fixed? Or, like a glass you glue back together, would the cracks always mean we could never really be whole?
—Mick to Alice, unsent
Chapter 10
Mick wanted to be asleep, but when another hour passed and he did no more than toss fitfully, he swung his feet over the side of the bed. There was no hint of light around the edges of the window shade, and he didn’t feel like checking his phone for the time. It could be any hour after midnight and before sunrise. It felt like 4:00 a.m., which had always been, in his opinion, the shittiest hour to be awake. There was no good reason not to be sleeping at four in the morning. It meant you were sick or having bad dreams or had been making bad decisions.
He’d made some very bad decisions.
There was no help for it now, though. He could blame it on being unable to stop himself. He could tell himself the sight of her had made him lose his mind just enough to put aside reason for the sake of lust. He could try to convince himself that he shouldn’t be held responsible for what they’d done—booze, old times, nostalgia. But he couldn’t make himself believe any of that.
The truth was, he’d wanted Alice the moment he saw her again. He could’ve, should’ve stayed away, been polite and distant. It would have been okay. But no, now he’d touched and felt and smelled her, tasted her, and how the hell was he supposed to go back to not knowing her anymore?