There wasn’t a name, because she hadn’t saved this particular number as a contact. It didn’t matter, though. She’d memorized it weeks ago, when she watched it being slowly written on her wrist.
36
The Orioles won, somehow.
The shortstop hit a walk-off home run in the ninth, and the Baltimore crowd went wild. The shortstop’s teammates threw water and sunflower seeds on him when he touched home plate. A few minutes later, when the shortstop was being interviewed on TV, one of the outfielders jumped into the shot and hit him in the face with a pie. Some of the pie got on the reporter, but she didn’t care, because everyone was so happy.
The Husbands would’ve been thrilled about all of this if they’d been paying any attention at all. They weren’t, though.
The game had been relegated to a muted background blur, and “Gin and Juice” by Snoop Dogg shook the speakers. Before that, “Jump Around” by House of Pain played. And, right before that, “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio. Terry had a music collection like no other, complete with crates full of vinyl and four looming CD towers, saved from college, and of course a thoroughly modern digital archive. At the moment, though, it was all about the nineties hip-hop station on Pandora.
Terry, Doug, Mitch, and Alan—the Husbands—were drinking and full-on dancing, just the four of them, as they waited for their guests. At first, they’d just stood there, swaying, beers in hand, the four of them, to “California Love” by Tupac and Dr. Dre. But then they’d started cutting loose, because, well, it was funny, and it made them forget how old they were.
Terry dragged the doomed SVÄRTA and all its boxes and misfit parts and pieces into the kids’ room, so there was plenty of space. The Husbands shouted “Biatch!” along with Snoop and laughed.
And then came the knock at the door. They were expecting it, of course. Terry had just notified his doorman, Gilberto, that guests were on their way. Still, though, all four men froze.
Terry turned the volume down with an app on his phone. To Mitch’s surprise, he didn’t say something Terry-like, like “Game time, motherfuckers.” Instead, he looked suddenly worried. “Wait,” he said. “You think we should change the station?”
“What? Why?” asked Alan.
“These chicks. Were they even alive when this music came out?”
The Husbands did some quick back-of-the-envelope math and determined that, yes, the girls standing out in the hallway were, in fact, alive in the 1990s.
“Still, though,” said Doug, “Terry’s got a point. Does it make us look old?”
There was another knock at the door.
“I think it’s our faces that make us look old,” said Mitch. “And…time.”
“By the way,” said Doug, “have you considered a daily moisturizer? I’ll email you a few links.”
“Thanks,” said Mitch.
“Relax,” said Alan. “It’s just music. You guys, seriously, don’t embarrass me.”
Alan’s shirt was tucked in now, his top button open again. Doug and Terry had stepped it up, too. Doug had done a quick fifty pushups to make his arms look even more ridiculous, and he’d borrowed some hair product from Terry’s bathroom. Terry, tapping into his home-field advantage, had changed out of the Metallica shirt into a nice polo and some darker jeans. All three of them, Mitch realized, looked better than he did.
This is what being single requires now, he thought. You have to constantly be on high-alert. You have to have the ability, in a matter of minutes, to go from half-assedly building IKEA furniture with a bunch of dudes to entertaining women.
Alan went to the door. The sound of female voices came from the entryway. And when Alan returned, four girls were with him. Their youth, vivid and glowing there before them, had wattage, like Christmas lights. “Guys,” he said, “this is Jenny.”
Jenny.
It was the girl from Alan’s phone, all freckled and blond, in three dimensions, and it dawned on Mitch that until that moment he’d never heard her actual name. “Hey, Jenny,” he said.
Terry and Doug said hello, too.
She was shorter than Mitch had imagined her to be, particularly in the context of a decade and a half of seeing Alan with Amber. She looked nervous standing in her sundress and nice flip-flops, but she smiled through it and tossed her jean jacket onto the couch. “Hi, guys,” she said. “What’s up?”
“And these are Jenny’s friends,” said Alan. The three girls behind Jenny smiled. Jenny introduced them as Kristen, Abigail, and Molly.
Abigail stepped up in front of the other girls. She had jet-black hair and smoky eye shadow. She nodded her head along to the music. “Vintage rap,” she said. “This stuff is dope. Turn it up.”
The Husbands all looked at the ceiling, because that was where “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone Loc was coming from. Mitch couldn’t speak for the other Husbands, but he was pretty sure each of them was asking the same question silently in his own mind: Did she say vintage?
37
I made this for you.
An instant later, an image appeared. It was a delicate-looking end table made of lightly shaded wood.
It’s a complicated feeling when something you tell yourself you don’t ever want to happen happens, and you’re left knowing that you’ve been lying to yourself.
Jessica sighed.
That’s lovely. But you shouldn’t be texting me.
She hoped that wasn’t too harsh. Apparently not, because Ryan totally ignored it.
What are you doing right now?
She imagined this happening on a normal Saturday night. She and Mitch would be sitting on the couch downstairs having a civil debate about what show to stream, or whether or not they should open a bottle of something. He’d notice that she got a text, and he’d notice her reading it. “Who’s that?” he’d ask. But on that particular Saturday night, Mitch was gone.
I’m alone. Going to do some reading.
He’s not there?
She felt heat blooming like some prickled flower on her skin—her lower back and palms.
No. He’s out.
He. Her husband, the pronoun.
What are you wearing?
None of your business.
Something sexy?
She looked down at her long-sleeved T-shirt and Lululemon pants and her chipped toenails.
Not at all.
If you’re wearing it then it’s sexy.
I suppose lines like that work well for you.
As she watched the text-bubble bubbling, she chastised herself for how well it had worked on her. Everything. All of it, from his first glance at her breasts weeks earlier at Bar Vasquez until this exact moment.
Send me a pic.
Jessica smiled. This was harmless. Mitch had had sex with someone. She had had sex with someone. There were no Rules against this.
A pic of what?
Be creative.
She took a total of nine pictures before she got the one she wanted. None of her face, of course, because as foolishly as she was behaving, she wasn’t a fool. She focused just below her breasts and down to the waistband of her stretchy pants, which she slid down strategically—low enough to reveal the soft V shape at the very bottom of her stomach, but high enough to cover her faint C-section scar. She looked at the picture for a moment. Her belly and hips, admittedly, weren’t the features she was most confident in, but taken lying on her back with the overhead light dimmed, the image on her screen looked objectively quite sexy. She hit Send.
OMFG!
Jessica laughed.
Stop it.
Ur so damn hot.
She didn’t respond, and for a while, he didn’t either. Jessica lay on her bed, phone in hand, clothes back in standard wearing position. She wondered if they were done talking. Perhaps she even hoped they were, because, again
, it was harmless. But then her phone buzzed, and a photo of Ryan’s chest and stomach appeared, and air escaped her lungs.
See look. I have a stomach too.
She looked at the digital version of the chest she’d run her hands over, and the abdominals she’d bitten. A headless underwear mannequin turned to flesh.
You should work out more. You’re getting fat.
LOL
So, we’ve established that we both have stomachs.
Yes we have.
She ran the bottoms of her feet along the soft comforter. Her bedroom door was open, so she got up and closed it. She wiggled out of her pants, discarding them on the floor near her closet, and got back into bed to find another text message. Still harmless enough, right?
Your turn.
It only took three tries to get this one right. A photo of her black underwear.
Damn
She hated emojis, but she sent him one with a smiley face and tongue hanging out. And then she texted, Your turn, and waited.
Jessica didn’t bother lying to herself this time. She knew what she wanted, and it wasn’t a picture of his underwear. Ryan knew this, of course, and when the photo arrived a moment later, more air escaped.
She thought of Megan and Sarah complaining about their phones being inundated with these images. Looking at it now, though, her lower lip held firmly between her teeth, she was certain it was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. It wasn’t just that it was hard. She could find a million of those if she wanted to. It was that it was hard for her.
Hello you, she texted back, and then she grazed her right nipple over her T-shirt with the tip of her finger.
You’re alone right?
I am.
And so am I.
We’ve established that we are both alone.
She wondered if this was how it went. Sexting. Despite being totally accurate, it was such a stupid word. Regardless, there was no turning back now. She wondered if they’d take turns? Would she tell him to do things to himself and then be told to do things to herself?
Then he texted her back.
Come over.
38
So many things change.
Knees go bad and temples go gray. Dad bods appear one day in the bathroom mirror with zero warning. The world gets warmer, and thousand-year storms batter pristine landmasses. Priorities shift, net worths expand, and children are born. There’s progress, and then progress is replaced by proud anti-progress. Net worths are halved, apartments are rented, and custody is negotiated.
But so many things don’t change at all.
Like, for example, the effects of alcohol and music.
For the first fifteen minutes after Jenny and her friends arrived, it could’ve been a junior-high mixer in Topeka, Kansas: boys on one side, girls on the other. But then the orange crushes that Alan made for the girls broke the divide, and it became a party.
“That’s the thing, though. This nineties stuff. It’s fun and all, but it’s kinda just bullshit party rap, isn’t it?”
That was Kristen, talking shit about their music. She wore a short gray dress and a pair of Vans, and she had a small orange-and-red Baltimore skyline tattooed on the pale skin of her right inside biceps. The song in question was “Hypnotize” by Biggie Smalls, and Terry was deeply offended.
“What the fuck are you talking about, lady?” he asked. “You’ve just committed sacrilege.”
“No, I mean, no offense to the OGs and all that. They paved the way. But they weren’t exactly saying much, were they?”
They listened to a lyric in which the singer admitted that he liked being called “Big Papa.” Terry gave Kristen a big thumbs-down, but she sipped her drink and stood her ground. “I mean, listen to it. It’s all about hooking up and drinking. That’s it. Getting bitches and being stupid.”
“And those are bad things?” asked Doug.
Kristen lifted her sweaty glass. “No, not necessarily. But it’s pretty lightweight. Here, give me that. I’ll show you. You have Spotify on this thing or what?”
She took Terry’s phone, which he’d been using to hop around from song to song, and started tapping away with her thumb. Mitch instantly liked her. She was clearly the edgiest of the four girls. “Now, see?” she said. “This is what I’m talking about.”
The Notorious B.I.G. cut out, and a Kendrick Lamar song came on, all bass and anger.
Mitch recognized it. It was called “Loyalty.” He’d downloaded the album after the rapper won the Pulitzer for music so he could talk about it in class. Doug, Terry, and Alan knew it, too, and everyone embraced the tonal and generational shift in the room. The Husbands switched from beers to hard alcohol, which they poured together at Terry’s decked-out rolling bar. The girls kept at it, too. Occasionally, someone yelled, “Shots,” and things eventually fogged over in Mitch’s head.
Alan and Jenny held hands as they danced. He kissed her neck, and she squealed and laughed, and then they made out.
“Get a room!” yelled one of the girls.
“Loyalty” ended, and another song from the album came on. Then another song after that. The girls were in charge of the music now, and with each passing song it got louder. A$AP Rocky. Childish Gambino. Drake. Mitch was in the middle of all of it—the swirl of dancing and flirting and laughing and joking and musical smack-talking. And then he noticed a phenomenon. It was subtle at first, but it became increasingly obvious with each passing song. The people around him were coupling up.
Alan and Jenny were already together, of course, what with the making out and all. But it was happening with the others, too. Molly was the most athletic-looking of the girls—lithe in her dress, like a pole vaulter—and Mitch felt the gravitational forces in the apartment pull her toward Doug, whose shirt, thanks to the pushups, now appeared a full size too small. A similar tug occurred between Terry and Abigail, who were mixing drinks and discussing the view of the lit-up Domino Sugar sign over the harbor.
That left Kristen and Mitch.
They were two lone satellites in this tiny man-made galaxy of slowly colliding planets. She looked at him and looked away. Clearly she’d noticed what was happening, too.
And then Jenny briefly pulled herself from Alan’s grasp to shout, “Hey, Mitch. You’re an English teacher, right?”
Mitch admitted that he was.
“Awesome!” she said. “ ’Cause Kristen’s a writer.”
Of course she is, Mitch thought.
39
Jessica rang the doorbell and put on her old glasses. The world blurred for a second, then cleared when he opened the door.
“I didn’t think you’d really c—” he stopped and smiled. “Nice glasses,” he said.
“You like them?” she asked.
“Smart women,” he said, sighing, and Jessica nearly took off her jacket right there on his stoop. She didn’t, though. She told herself to be patient. He reached for her and pulled her into the house.
She hardly remembered the previous thirty minutes—all harried and thrown together in her head. She’d checked the kids again and then gone to the window that overlooked Luke. He was startled when she called his name.
“Oh. Mrs.— Hi.”
“What’re you doing right now?”
“Now? Well, I’m…” Instead of finishing his sentence, he held up a book. “You know, at first, I just sat out here to avoid my dad,” he said. “But it’s actually a really good reading spot.”
“Can I ask a favor?”
“Okay,” he said.
Jessica looked over at James and Ellen’s house, mostly dark. She wondered if Ellen was in there. “Can you do some quick babysitting?”
“Um, Mr. Butler isn’t there?”
“No,” said Jessica. “He’s out.”
She slid into her new black dress
and looked at herself in the mirror. And then she dug the glasses out of the back of the junk drawer on her side of the bathroom and hid herself with the longest jacket she could find. When Luke arrived, he had more questions about Mitch, which was weird, like he was suspicious, but Jessica was probably just being paranoid. “I won’t be long,” she told him. “It’s just an errand. I forgot something.”
Her hands shook as she sat in the car. She checked the time, started the engine, and then checked the time again. She told herself to relax. Mitch never came home early when he went out with the Husbands, and there was no reason to think that he would tonight. Like always, he’d surely stumble up the stairs at 2:00 A.M. after chugging water and tearing into whatever he could find in the kitchen. She had plenty of time.
* * *
—
Ryan’s little house was the same as before. It smelled like sawdust and paint thinner. The end table from the photo he’d sent her was next to the sofa.
“Can I take your jacket?” he asked.
As she removed her coat, she took in the expression on his face—that stupid, spacey look, as Scarlett would’ve called it—and she smiled. She could get addicted to that look.
“My…God,” he said.
“What, this?” she said.
When he kissed her there in his entryway, she leaned back against the door and pulled him close. His hands were on her body, a frenzy of sensation. She pulled away and touched his face. She’d never seen him not scruffy, but he was even scruffier now, to the point that his stubble had turned soft. He bit her throat gently, and she closed her eyes.
“Oh, wait,” he said.
“What?”
“My roommate’s here.”
She looked over his shoulder. The room was empty.
“In the basement, I think, with his girlfriend. She’s kind of annoying. We should go upstairs.”
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